NYC: Weather

Sunday was really a bit of a writeoff, what with the fucking insane rain. We were on the top floor of our guest house. The rain pounding on the skylight woke me up at about 2 am on Sunday morning, and it just didn't stop. It rained and rained hard for over 24 hours. At one point, we walked about 8 blocks - 8 short New York block, no less - and my jeans were wet through. We holed up in a cafe and read the paper and checked email and generally just tried to dry out a bit. It was grey and miserable.



It would, in fact, have been the perfect day to go to the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, which was one of the things I really wanted to do while we were there. But you can only see it by guided tour, and we never managed to get tickets - they were sold out or I couldn't get a hold of anyone on the phone to pre-order them.

Or we just didn't feel like it. Because the thought of trying to concentrate on Culture with clammy thighs was monumentally unappealing. So I drank a giant cup of coffee. And looked at my new green rubber boots.



Everyone in NYC is wearing rubber boots. Scratch that. Very very very many stylish NYC women, as well as some adventurously stylish men, are wearing rubber boots rain or shine. I am quite chuffed with mine. Shelley bought black ones. Without them, I think we would have stayed in our room, since the one pair of leather boots I had with me would have been soaked through after 4 blocks, and those same four blocks would have soaked through both pairs of Shelley's sneakers.

The rest of the days were lovely, however. Lots of sunshine, but even when the sun was hidden, it was still bright. And warm. I had my jacket open most days.

We ate a picnic in Central Park on Saturday and watched a Very Happy Rollerskater skating around and singing to herself and generally trailing a good mood in her wake. There were lots of other skaters there too.



I will tell you that people in NYC use their parks. After Central Park, we went to Union Square to look at dresses (more on that later) and found an open market full of flowers and organic food. I bought Eric some Curry Sauerkraut, and the guy in line in front of me paid $68 for less than 3 lbs of beef tenderloin. I hope his dinner guests liked it. Rest assured that Eric's sauerkraut, although local and organic, cost much much less than 68 American Dollars.



Along with warmer weather goes flowers. I will also tell you that New Yorkers do a very lot of prettiness with a very little space. After one particularly stunning front plot, Shelley turned to me and said "Don't ever let me say my garden isn't big enough to do something beautiful."

And the magnolia trees! Everywhere and out in full bloom. They're Shelley's favourites.