Mini Adventure 1 - Finding a supermarket

We are finally here, Safe and sound.

Thanks to Togo's silver card and BA working their magic, we manged to get an upgrade on the flight over, so arrived fresh faced and bright eyed in NYC. After a few intense role plays with Togo I felt I was ready to face the stern faced official at immigration for some serious interrogation on why I was here and more importantly, when was I leaving. Discovered however that there must be millions of people coming through on the visa waiver programme each month and I had not done anything wrong- yet. Breezed through with my three month stamp - all that panic for nothing. Not sure how many times they will let me try that one though before getting suspicious. Keep you posted.

Arriving in peak hour traffic is always recommended and it took us over an hour to get through the Jersey tunnel. Rule 1. When purchasing a car here make sure that it is big enough to hold all your household furniture, extended family and food for 2 weeks... and that's just in the boot ( sorry trunk).
At the corporate apartment we discovered that despite living in high rise buildings everyone still has pets. We shared the lift up to our new home with 2 massive Alsatians, 3 mini things and a dachshund with a pink jersey on.. its gonna be fun here!

The apartment is perfect and bigger than I was expecting. I hope we don't have to downgrade too much from here. :-) We have two bedrooms and two bathrooms so plenty of space for visitors ;)

Settled in and needing some supplies, we though we would take the opportunity of finding a supermarket as a means of exploring our new hood! Two things:

There is NOT a friendly Spar wherever you are AND Tesco is NOT taking over the world.

Currently on 43rd street we took a leisurely stroll up to find our closest "Sainsburys local". As luck would have it we found what we were looking for - ON 75th street. THIRTY TWO blocks up - and not so local. We then proceeded to do the most expensive shop ever, even by London standards. I don't know who was more worried at this stage, Togo, on one salary or me who had just paid £1, 50 for 1 plum. We were slowly coming around to why everyone says its cheaper to eat out. However one good thing did come out of the experience. Togo can finally say he got the telephone number of a check out girl. ;) In the usual incredibly friendly US way, and with us moaning about prices here for groceries, the teller wrote down her number and told us to call her and she will tell us where to go, we had definitely picked the high end of the scale for shopping. Whew was glad to hear it and even more chuffed we walked THIRTY TWO blocks to find out.

Finally, to end our mini adventure off in grand style, we got caught in a tropical rainstorm on the way home and managed to end up with soggy $30 bread for dinner. But all is not lost, we discovered a food emporium 1 block over, maybe a little easier for next time...