New York, New York

Approaching from the north we started to see the tenement buildings of the Bronx out the bus windows.

Then, down through Harlem onto 5th Avenue, and eventually, still on 5th Avenue, Central Park on one side, and all the fancy Lower East side apartments and museums on the other. Our hotel, Hotel Metro, is on W35th St, which runs between 5th Avenue and Broadway.

We checked into our hotel rooms, and then were taken out to dinner by the Institute at, I am afraid to say, the Hard Rock Cafe.

The Hard Rock Cafeis a truly nightmarish place; a perfectly commericialised insult from those who make music to those who buy it. It was arranged like an ampitheatre, with mezzanine floors of seating arranged on top of each other, over which giant video screens play music videos at ear-splitting volume. The waiters couldn't have been more offhand; ours told us as soon as we arrived that he was too busy to bring us menus, just did we want meat, salmon or vegetarian. It was a relief to leave, and emerge into the crazy circus of lights and tourists that is Times Square.

M 'n Ms have a strangely prominent place in the Square. A whole amusement-park-shop dedicated to the small coloured buttons - pencils, caps, shorts, T-shirts, pencil cases, cups, etc.

After a couple of hours of just wandering and wondering, this.

Tomorrow, a walking tour of Manhatten with an ex-New Yorker who is now a Political Science lecturer at U Mass.