Some two weeks ago (I know, I should be posting more often!), a heat wave struck New York City... yes, you've read it right, a heat wave in April - something we can only dream about in Belgium. The temperature rose to more than 30° C and the Big Apple felt like Sevilla in September - a little pre-taste of what is still to come in June, July and August, when apparently such temperatures are very normal in NYC.
So what do New Yorkers do when it's hot? Just a few examples:
1. Relax in Central Park in a bikini... something I already wrote about in my April 21 post "The Great Yawn".
2. Go to one of the many beaches just a subway-ride away from Manhattan. I visited Coney Island and Brighton Beach, just a 45 minute subway-ride from our apartment.
This is a strange experience: at one moment you're getting on the subway in a noisy and busy Manhattan subway station and one hour later you find yourself standing with your bare feet in the waves crashing onto the sandy beach. There are worse moments in one's life! We first had some snacks at Nathan's (apparently the place to be in Coney Island for a hot dog) and then had a stroll on the famous boardwalk to Brighton Beach, famous for its Russian-speaking community.
Photos courtesy of Pol
High season only starts after May 15, so I will certainly need to visit again this summer - to be continued!
3. Have a cooling lemonade and tasty burger at Shake Shack in Madison Square Park. Shake Shack is an institution for shakes, burgers and the like, not only with New Yorkers but also the tourists. As a result, it is not unusual to wait in line for more than one hour to get your burger - that was what we did on Sunday:
4. Have a cocktail on a terrace and practice one of my favourite sports "people-watching". For this sport, I strongly recommend a pair of sunglasses and a nice bar in Greenwich Village. Alternatively - if that's too expensive - get an icecream and stroll down Bleecker Street.
5. And last but not least, turn on the airconditioning... more particularly, turn on the airco until it feels like winter again.
New Yorkers/Americans think in extremes: in winter, it is extremely hot inside (as I already mentioned in my February 19 post "Let's Go...Green!") and in summer, it is freezing since the airco is set to about 16°C. We, Belgians, are not used to airco's (nor warm sunny weather, for that matter) so as a result, I caught a really bad airco-cold: soar throat, coughing, sneezing, runny nose... not a good timing for a cold when people are paranoid about the Mexican flu. I hope that by this summer, I am immune to airco-colds... as all other New Yorkers seem to be.
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