A week has gone since I’m back, but the highlights anyway:

• the day I spent biking in NY. Good to know: there’s a bike path going all round Manhattan. I started off in the lower east village, took that bike path, rounded the coast along Battery Park, biked a little bit on the Hudson Highway (not great), and then crossed over onto the Hudson Trail, which goes all the way up. The first bit is not really scenic, with mostly warehouses and underpasses, but then the bike path becomes lined with grass and trees.
  I could have gone the same way back, but where would have been the fun in that ? So I went into the city, biked in Central park, and crossed my way down from there. I even biked through Time Square (which is on one of the bike paths). It actually felt safer than doing it in Brussels ! The streets are wider, the drivers marginally saner, and in some streets there are separate bike lanes. The main problem comes from pedestrians, who see the bike lanes as a convenient extension of the sidewalk. In Time Square, where there are throngs or people, this becomes a hazard.
• Katz’s Deli: pretty well-known, mentioned in guides, and justly so. It’s a folksy place, with lots of pictures on the wall, as far from hip as you can possibly be. But they have great pastrami. I ordered a pastrami sandwich on rye bread, which came with pickles. The pastrami was warm, salty, juicy and delicious, the pickles were a nice green crunchy counterpoint (and they were salty too, not vinegared).
• In one of my wanders, I passed a place called ‘The Doughnut Plant of New York‘. It didn’t look like much, just a counter, but there was a queue of people looking like addicts waiting for their fix. 10 minutes later, I knew why: doughnuts that literally melt in your mouth. That day I had lavendar and mango. I had no choice but to come back the next day: I had a carrot cake doughnut and a creme brulee doughnut.
• In the ‘good beer pub’ category, the Blind Tiger is pretty decent. They had a Great Divide event going when I was there, so I didn’t feel like I’d wasted my time.
• The MoMa and the Guggenheim. The MoMa is in a fantastic modernist building, and the collections are unique. If you ever wondered how Mondrian got to his square thing, or what stages Picasso went through, or what kind of work led Pollock to his drips, you can see the it displayed there. They had a temporary exhibition on Henry Cartier-Bresson, with fantastic pictures from his whole career. Where the MoMa is more 20th century, the Guggenheim has a foot in the 21st, and displays more conceptual artists as well as the ones we know. Interesting if a bit more demanding.
• The Radio City Music Hall: it doesn’t look like much from the outside, but it’s Art Deco extravaganza by Rockefeller on the inside. There are guided tours, and ours was excellent, extravagantly gay and obviously into the whole broadway scene. The ceilings are actually gold plated (24carat), the light fixtures are amazing, everything is carefully preserved. It’s like a step on the movie set of a 30s pulp movie.

There, if you were wondering what to do next time you’re in the big apple (not likely).