Life in The Big Apple

I can't believe we have been here for a whole week! The time is just flying by. Thanks goodness we've got three weeks left cos there's no way I'd be able to fit all those shops in otherwise, not to mention the restaurants, cafes, Starbucks...

Last night we went to Yankee Stadium to see the Yankees (not the Mets, which is who I thought we were going to see - durrr) vs the Cleveland Indians. It was soooo much fun. Basically a baseball match seems to be just a big old eating, drinking and talking fest for the people there, with this little bit of sport going on in the background as a vague distraction. I spent most of my time watching all that was going on around me, although I did watch a bit of the baseball too. There's a great tradition whereby the "beer man" and the "dog man" walk round with crates of beer and hot dogs and you call out to them with your order and then, if you're sitting in the middle of a row as we were, you pass your money from hand-to-hand, person-to-person along the row and then your beer and/or hot dog gets passed back along. No one bats an eyelid at having to perform this task umpteen times during a game. If you happen to order a bag of peanuts you better be a good catch as they just get thrown at you from a great distance. In the UK I bet none of it would ever be allowed for health and safety reasons.

And then, an even better tradition which is just so amazingly funny, is the YMCA dance routine that the groundskeepers perform while raking the sand between innings. It was just brilliant, with the whole stadium singing, clapping and dancing along. You MUST look at this link on You Tube to see what goes on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fVIjPY5fRo

Brilliant. This is why I love America - the Americans have so much fun!