Breakfast in the courtyard this morning. Well that is until the gardener started mulching the plants. Then we moved inside.

Spent the morning exploring our local area – Lower East Side and surrounding areas. We walked about halfway across the Williamsburg Bridge, but it was super hot and also it was going to take too long so we turned back. The part we did was cool though. We like bridges apparently.

After wandering around all morning it was suddenly lunch time. And we had decided that today is the day we would go to Katz’s Deli for pastrami sandwiches. We were expecting it to be crazy busy, but it wasn’t too bad when we got there. They have a system that works well but it kind of makes you nervous. Do not lose you ticket!!!!!

Anyway, I ordered a Pastrami on Rye and Steve got Pastrami on Club Bread (whatever that means?) and then you get these huge kosher pickles too and look it is so amazing and delicious…but…perhaps we should’ve just ordered one to share. We found a table which coincidentally was right near the photo of Anthony Bourdain at Katz’s.

After Katz’s we decided we never had to eat again, so I guess that’s good.

I had an afternoon appointment with my nephew who was going to cut my hair at his hairdressing salon Cutler. Lucky because I was in dire need of a haircut after cutting it myself recently because I am so over hairdressers at home.

It was going off at the salon – super busy. I don’t have any photos to share with you, well I did take one but it’s extremely ugly so you don’t get to see that. Tyson did an amazing job (as always) – I think I was there for about 2 hours all up! Was also really lovely to chat and catch up with Tyson a bit more.

Feeling salon fresh we headed back out in to the heat and decided ice cream was in order. We went to a nearby place called Gentile Gelato which we had walked past many times over the last few days. It’s been an ice cream shops since sometime in the 1800’s. Crazy. Also: Chinotto flavoured ice cream! Wow! We both had to get that (I also got chocolate- hazelnut and Steve got his standard Lemon) but the Chinotto was the star here! Really delicious!

Ice cream devoured, we headed back to the hotel briefly before heading to Times Square/Broadway area as we were going to see a broadway show called Illinoise which is based on the Sufjan Stevens concept album of the same name. Kind of hard to explain but we are fans of Sufjan Stevens and particularly that album so we couldn’t not go.

We walked past Bryant Park and saw many,many people doing yoga in the park and also Bingo in the park being set up. We couldn’t stick around though, as much as we wanted to.

On the way to the theater we walked through Times Square and all the madness that surrounds it. It really is madness – so very different to where we are staying in the Lower East Side.

On to the St James Theater for the show. Lovely old theatre- and we had great seats in the balcony.

No photos of the show, sorry. It was great – really well done. Basically there was a live band playing the songs from the album and then dancers and the story was told through them. No speaking – just music and dance. We weren’t sure what it was going to be like but It was surprisingly effective and very entertaining. Go see it if you’re in town!

When we left the theatre, it had been raining outside and everything was all wet and puddle-y. I was determined to see the bright lights of Times Square though, so we headed over there. Bright lights seen, we decided that Times Square was just kind of weird and also just insanely busy.

We had a bit of a wander around and looked in a shop that just sold Portuguese Sardines – but at around US $30 a can it was a bit rich for our tastes.

We got back on the subway and headed back to the LES and grabbed a slice of pizza from Prince Street Pizza as we hadn’t had any dinner due to overindulgence at Katz’s earlier in the day. There is always a massive line at Princes Pizza and people on the internet say it’s the best pizza in NY. But to be honest, it was average at best. And the crust was just really thick. I was hoping for thin crust, foldy pizza 🍕

We are it back at our hotel.