New girl in New York: You cant get a coffee til 10 in the village...so stay in bed

The village is a place for creatives. People like me who work into the wee hours of the morning bending to their creative will. So good luck if you happen to find yourself out and about before the early hour of 10am, because there is nothing open. Except maybe the 24 hour supermarket and pizza deli. Well my week has been quite busy and exhausting. Unfortunately I have come down with some sort of chesty cold so have been a little down, but cheery at the same time as I managed to finally find a place to live for the next 5 months. And it is in a wonderful place. It is in Greenwich Village, just a little west from where I am now. One block away is the Wha? Cafe where Jimi Hendrix played his first gig. 2 blocks away is the beautiful Washington Square Park. My place is sandwiched between a vegan cafe and a bong shop. It is a small one bedroom on the ground floor (so no five flights of stairs to scale everyday!) It is lovely.

During the week I have encountered a hoard of Dominican Republicans, it was Dominican Republic Day and there was a massive parade going on down 6th Ave near Times Square. Tracey had just arrived so I thought it would be great to take her out to Times Square for her first day in NYC. I did not, however, know that this parade would be going on as we were greeted by a sea of latinos wearing red white and blue and making a lot of noise. It was incredible. It took us a very long while to navigate the crowds to make our way to Times Square. And once we got there, it wasn't any better as the crowds were just as bad! There are so many good things about visiting New York in the summer however the crowds can be a big con. But if you can handle those, the immense number of free concerts, summer days in the park and trips to Coney Island make up for the people.

We also ended up in an office in Brooklyn, aiming to get a deposit back from a broker I had decided I didn't want to deal with. The office was in an old, run down building with no signage and was barely accessible. I'm so glad I decided not to go with them! It's strange how so many things here can be just a little bit dodgy.

I also realised that I got lucky with the dogsitting gig. I met a lady yesterday who was dogsitting a "wiener" dog and had a dog-stroller to take the dog out daily. Yes you read this correctly, she had to take the dog out in a powder-blue pram. Man am I lucky...Lily just doesn't like to go out in the rain and she loves to bark at the telly.