Central Park, 5th Avenue, Tribecca Grill

Breakfast this morning was in an even better (we returned the next day too) diner a few blocks up 2nd Avenue from our hotel. The boys said the pancakes weren’t as good but the eggs and breakfast fries were better (and that’s what I had). We had booked bikes for Central Park and needed to charge up. I had found a place online and booked for collection on Broadway which meant somehow getting ourselves 3 blocks up and into Central Park itself. Typically, I had just figured it would work out fine but Helen (who’s never been comfortable riding a bike on roads) didn’t relish the prospect of cycling in New York batting with cabs and the like. Fortunately, there are a lot of dedicated bike lanes (riding on pavements is illegal and punishable by imprisonment in a State Penitentiary) and we made it there (obviously).

Once your in Central Park the world calms down. You still can’t cycle on the paths though (and 90% of the tarmac there is paths) and you’re limited to a main road which loops around the entire park – not quite Alice Holt. It was very peaceful, safe to ride and a nice couple of hours. We passed a queue line of people resting along one path which turned out to waiting in line to buy tickets for the Shakespeare in the park threat Check. We stopped at Victoria pond check which measures 5km around it – perfect for a parkrun.

We dropped the bikes off within our 3 hours and made our way through the upmarket 5th Avenue which has all the main designer stores along with flag ship stores such as Apple and the all important Williams-Sonoma. The boys had fun setting the iPhone home screens to their own rather silly portraits. We had lunch at a trendy bar and, nervous of portion sizes, ordered sensible quantities. Turned out to be nowhere enough – where are all the ridiculous portion sizes?

We took a long meandering walk back to the hotel calling in on Niketown, FAO Schwartz, Crate & Barrel and the like. Helen & I were dining sans enfants tonight so Tom, Harry & I stopped off near the hotel to collect a mammoth 18″ pizza the likes of which the boys had never seen before. I asked how much ($18) and could he make a fresh one and they set to work spinning the dough and arranging all the toppings (just pepperoni!).

Helen & I took a cab to Tribeca for the evening having booked at Robert De Niro’s restaurant Tribeca Grill. We had celebrated Helen’s 30th birthday nearly two decades ago (gasp) with Helen & Matthew. We arrived in time to wander the ultra cool district and had cocktails in Bubby’s which judging by what we saw going on could have been a fabulous discovery too. Their Bloody Mary was delicious. The food at Tribeca Grill was good with the noticeable exception of the Jumbo Lump Crab Cakes (served with Chipotle Roasted Corn & Cilantro Avocado Mousse ) which were out of this world – probably the best we’ve ever had.