The forecast was for thunderstorms, so Madame and Pest elected to visit an outlet mall in New Jersey. Fortunately the mall had a bus service direct to NYC so, after a good coffee, I left them and headed to the city alone, which was quite exciting.
I left the Port Authority (bus station) and strode out along 8th Avenue uptown towards Central Park. I came to the statue and fountains of Columbus Circle and kept going past another golden Donald Trump building and along the west side of Central Park, passing the Dakota Building with a slight detour to Strawberry Fields, where someone had placed a flower on the small 'Imagine' mosaic and a busker whined some Beatles song or other rather ineffectually. I did feel a twinge of horror for what happened to Lennon on his doorstep when I walked within a few yards of his doorstep.
Pressing north I came to my destination, the Museum of Natural History. Like most big city museums in any city, you can only dip into what it has to offer. I enjoyed the planetarium and the excellent displays about early man (or 'hominids' as someone corrected me on Facebook).
I walked back to Columbus Circle to meet the girls, but they were stuck in a traffic jam at the Lincoln Tunnel, so I had an hour or to people-watch (no not the photo on the right) and choose a restaurant from the guide book. When they arrived, we walked northwest along Broadway (the only diagonal road in this part of town) past the Opera House and State Theater to Amsterdam Ave to a tiny Israeli-run hummus restaurant where we had a superb and cheap meal. Tired by now, we decided to try the subway and after doing our 'helpless tourist' act were guided to the right downtown train. It wasn't hard as everything stops at 42nd. Another hike through the Port Authority and a quick bus trip back to the hotel. Exhausted.
The forecast thunderstorms hadn't hit NYC, they'd hit further down the coast. It had been a cloudy but dry and warm day.