We stayed mostly downtown in our week in New York, but I did want to show Somchai all the different neighborhoods that make up Manhattan. A lot of cities like to stress they are made up of distinct neighborhoods, and guidebooks are always organized around that theme, but honestly very few really are. They all have neighborhoods of course, but they're usually historical place names and have little distinctiveness. As I type this I'm sitting on my deck in Darling Point, looking at three other "neighborhoods", Bellevue, Double Bay and Point Piper, but they are almost completely interchangeable. Beautiful views, some great houses, but there's no way you could tell one from the other. NY is different,and each neighborhood is precisely drawn, and differs wildly by ethnicity, architecture, culture etc. Just to the east of SoHo are the very sharply defined Little Italy and Chinatown, with the gay center of Greenwich Village just to the north. Somchai trodded around all the 'hoods, and I'm not sure he saw the differences as clearly as I did, so I think you need to spend some time to really get to know the place. So maybe all the tourists that pound the pavement looking for the Hollywood New York aren't disappointed since they're just looking for a live version of their TV shows, but spending some time wandering the streets is really the best way to appreciate it. Oh, and as you can see, Central Park is perfectly safe and lovely. Before we visited, Somchai was sure only muggers were in Central Park, so I dragged him in there on the last day to show him that it's a lively, beautiful place that NY couldn't live without.

That was too happy an ending, so I'd like to amend the Central Park comments. It is beautiful, and safe, but also very, very unpredictable. When we first entered, I remember we saw this guy in tight white shorts with an enormous fake penis shoved down them. He was walking around the park and everyone was laughing. Somchai gave me such an "I told you so" look and I thought he was going to flee the park after that, but he persevered, and something like that happens to you, you should too, and just stash the memory for future use in your own blog.