A hot summer in New York

Hello everybody,

New York seems to be showing us its most extreme weather. After a bitterly cold winter which broke records we now have the hottest summer on record, reaching 39.5 degrees at it's peak. Can't complain though. Every weekend feels like a holiday.

The city really comes to life in the summer, with lots of free activities and a two month long River 2 River festival in downtown. There are lots of things for the children to do and they are really enjoying it.

On Lyn's birthday weekend we had the Red Bull Air Race on the river Hudson and from our window we could watch stunt airplanes looping upside down and weaving through obstacles. Later on Paul babysat while Lyn and I went on a wine-tasting sailing boat tour of the harbour. Sitting in the sun, with the wind in the sails and sipping wine was just lovely! We then went for a nice meal and had a lovely time. Thanks Paul!

The next week there was a family festival on the Saturday at the pedestrianised South Street Seaport with various activities for the kids including train rides, music and art workshops. It was another hot day and USA were playing in the World Cup last 16, so lots of bars had outdoor screens and it was a real party atmostphere. At dusk there were some good fireworks, which were Max's first. He liked them at first, but was getting tired as it was late.

That Sunday we went to see Prince Harry play in a Polo match on Governor's Island. It was free to get there and get in, but the catch was that the only drinks were $15 glasses of champagne. We'd taken a coolbag with beer, but had the beer confiscated. In all it was still good value, and quite fun. It made the news because Harry fell off his horse!

The next week Lyn's friend Sarah came to stay. I'll now hand the blogging baton over to Lyn for her to continue.

Hello - Lyn now. My main impression of New York summer is how unbelievably hot it's been. We've spent a lot of it preoccupied on finding somewhere cool. We've been darting from shade to shade, went paddling in some ice (that was glorious!) and have been tracking down air conditioned places. The air conditioning in our apartment is very inefficient and hugely expensive so we've not been using it.

It was so so lovely having Sarah over. She's like the sun - always bright and exudes warmth and energy - so it was a real treat to see her for 10 days. I don't think we've spent that long together since Sunderland. Great as it is over here, nothing quite compensates for being so far away from the people we love.

Despite the blistering heat, Sarah was keen to make the most of her time in the Big Apple and we went out and about seeing as much as possible. There is the added bonus of the subway being air conditioned which was blissful at times. We went to Coney Island which is a bit like Brixton by the sea but with a bit of Blackpool thrown in. The whole place has a definite edge and lots of tackiness - but it has to be seen because it's in so many films for one thing and there's a certain charm to the place. It has a very wierd side too. There's an attraction there called Shoot the freak. There's some poor chap in a pit with a shield in front of his face and the customers try and shoot him with a paint gun. We did learn the very useful art of planting our carosel in the sand in a secure manner. We sat watching other people's umbrellas fly at hurtling speed across the beach, feeling very grateful for our new found knowledge.

A couple of days later, we got a boat to Sandy Hook in Jersey Shore which was a much cleaner and altogether more civilised seaside destination. It was beautiful. It's a State park and nobody really lives there - but there are miles and miles of gorgeous unspoilt sandy beach with the Manhattan skyline on the horizon. We were quite a bit more relaxed there. We made sandcastles, played football and Max discovered the joy of jumping over waves.

Sarah was here for 4th July and I can confirm that the Americans can most definitely put on a firework show. It was very impressive. They are not frightened of a bit of flag waving either.

There are certain weekends we are entitled to free entry to various zoos and botannical gardens around the city through Tom's work. We went to Bronx zoo one Saturday. I think it is the best zoo I have ever been to. There is a little monorail that takes you high up near various animal enclosures which seemed less intrusive to them. Obviously they are all still in captivity, but it seemed better then other zoos I've been to. Also, the whole place is absolutely huge and felt better thought out. Max loved the baboons particularly and Sam was very relieved to see the crocodiles behind a thick pane of glass.

I had decided to try and go to as many different beaches as possible this summer as there are so many relatively close. Rockaway beach is very near to a subway stop in Queens. So, I'd arranged to take the boys and meet Paul (of Is this thing on? fame) there. It's about 1hr on the subway from our apartment. It doesn't feel at all like New york there. It feels a bit like an American version of off season Exmouth. Rain started lashing down while we were on the subway and the signal broke or something like that and we had to get the bus. I always plan to avoid buses on any New York excursion because they aren't very pushchair friendly. To my great relief, people didn't tut or shout at us on the bus as had been our previous New York bus experiences. Everyone was lovely and incredibly helpful. No-one even laughed as our carosel kept falling into the puddles. When we finally arrived at the beach, we were the only ones there except for scores of lifeguards huddled under their umbrellas as far as the eye could see. We had a great time though. Sam loves the rain, the seaside and Paul, so he couldn't have been happier. Paul was a real trooper - he's Californian and not so used to rainy windy beaches as us Brits! He managed to grin through it.

Hi, Tom here again for our next weekend when we went to stay with Uki and Suze, friends of my parents from Finsbury Park. They live in Virginia, just outside Washington DC, in a lovely house in proper American suburbia. It was like you see on the tv - wide roads with hardly any cars and individual houses, all different from each other. They were wonderful hosts and we were made to feel very welcome there. We spent the mornings with them doing countryside things in Virginia and the afternoons doing touristy things in DC. Washington felt more like Europe than anywhere else we've been in the US. There are no high rise buildings - nothing is allowed to be built higher than the dome of the capitol, a rule similar to the one in Florence. The Mall area was laid out by a French architect, and it shows. Parts of it reminded me of Paris, and parts of the garden in Versailles. The memorials are very grand and have a greco-roman feel to them. We also drove through Georgetown, now a district of Washington and the high street felt very English. It's a beautiful place and there's so much to see so it's definitely somewhere we'd like to visit again.

We've put up some new photos for you to see the summer so far on our flickr site. Hope you enjoy them. If you didn't see Sam's acting debut on Paul's online comedy show, scroll down for the link - it's very funny!

Finally, this made us laugh. Empire State of Mind by Jay-Z seemed like the theme tune to our first few months here, playing everywhere. Here's the Welsh version. Chips, cheese, curry make you feel brand new, washed down with Special Brew!

Lots of love from us all,

Tom, Lyn, Sam and Max xxx

England photos and Sam's acting debut

Hello everybody,

We had a great time in England! It was lovely to see you all. If we didn't manage to see you, sorry - it was a whistle stop tour, for me at least (Tom). Some days we took loads of lovely photos. Other days we either forgot the camera, or were too busy chatting to remember to take any!

Here are a selection of the photos on our website. Hope you enjoy them.

We've been doing lots of fun stuff since we've been back here in NYC, starting off with Lyn's birthday and this weekend we're off to Washington D.C. Got to pack now, so will try to post an update next week, with some stories and some new photos.

In the meantime have a laugh at this: Sam made his acting debut in Paul's online comedy show and you can watch the five minute episode here. The full series is at stonecomedy.blip.tv

Have a great weekend,

Tom