Wet Monday in Manhattan

Really, really wet day. Started by heading out at 8am to the Lower East Side and finding Katz's Diner - which the guidebooks hail as the original NYC Jewish deli-diner, and which has been featured in various film scenes (e.g. When Harry Met Sally). I noticed a signed photo of FDR there among the many hundreds on the walls. Here's a picture of my fresh-fruit-rich breakfast: a pastrami-on-rye. I think it is fair to say that it has kept me going all day. And it was fantastic. After that, a walk westwards to Soho, then south and east to the Brooklyn Bridge. The original plan was to explore Brooklyn and get a view on the way, but the steady drizzle was getting heavier. On the bridge, you're not supposed to look back until at least half-way across so that you turn-round and get the sudden sight of the sweep of Downtown skyscrapers. And it was worth it, even though today the top half of each building is shrouded in rain-clouds. Got three-quarters of the way across the bridge before the rain got to me, and I turned back in order to get back onto Manhattan and find somewhere for water and coffee (especially water, after that pastrami-on-rye). Must have walked miles and miles, which is the only way I feel I can atone for such an irresponsible breakfast. Stopped off to buy a timed ticket for the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, which I'll go to later. And on the way back to the hotel, I noticed that Whole Food Market have their flagship store nearby, so popped in for some fresh fruit. So my overall daily diet will be quite balanced after all. At the hotel early-afternoon: some time to dry-out, check emails, skype home, wish Happy Birthday. Then out again, wandering through my 'local' neighbourhood, the East Village, then a few blocks south to the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, where some tenement rooms in use by immigrants between the 1860s and the 1930s were open - some left as they were, others restored. Very interesting, and moving. But I was struck by the way it was presented as being about ethnic and racial discrimination: no doubt true, but the conditions struck me as no different to ones probably experienced by millions of working people in industrial areas of Britain during the same period. It's about class, innit.