from the airline that you can’t fly directly into Rio without having an onward ticket - the airlines simply won’t let you on the plane. We had tried to book the flights over the internet but it hadn’t worked so Rob had phoned the airline and it got very complicated as TAM airlines had just opened an office in London but their credit card machine wasn’t installed yet. This meant that we had to organise a bank transfer and send them proof of this before they would email our tickets and we only had 2 days before we left America and today was Sunday and the TAM offices were closed! Arrhhh! Another slight problem was that Iguazu Falls borders 3 countries - Brasil, Argentina and Paraguay and we were flying to the Brasilian side of the falls so technically not leaving the country! Travelling sometimes isn’t easy!

After all of this ticket hassle we found out that we had got the free comedy

tickets for a performance starting at 8.00 pm in Greenwich Village. We soon forgot about our ticket hassle and headed out to the city. Our first stop today was Midtown Manhattan. It was another glorious day so we had a good wander around Union Square and the various parks of midtown then decided to head into Little Italy for a lunch time special. Little Italy is slowly getting consumed by Chinatown but this fact didn’t seem to deter the Italian spirit and we found the main street filled with tables and more menus than you could care to mention. They all sounded fantastic but the one which caught our eye was the one which offered a free glass of wine with an lunchtime special. We sat in the sunshine and enjoyed a fabulous meal with a superb (if a little distant) view of the Empire State building. A great way to spend a Sunday afternoon!

Next on the agenda was a trip up the Empire State