We then headed downtown towards the Empire State Building in what was a rather cold day around zero degrees, but probably more minus 3 or 4 with wind chill taken into account. I wasn't really rugged up enough for this as I only had on a pair of thin Australian jeans and my Chuck Taylor shoes so my feet and legs got very cold and somewhat numb.
The amount of people out and about around Macy's on 34th Street and that general shopping district area was intense. We made it to the Empire State Building but decided that as we were tight on time due to a performance we had tickets for tonight.
We headed back towards our apartment and stopped for an early dinner in a classic New York style diner on 9th Avenue. Vege burger and fries with the usual New York dill pickle. Sharon ordered a vegetarian club sandwich with fries and the New York dill pickle.
We came back to our apartment and showered and got dressed and headed up to Carnegie Hall to see the New York String Orchestra perform. It was a great performance and a great hall for acoustics even though we were in the balcony at the top and back. Unfortunately I seemed to have gotten cramped muscle along the bottom of my ribs somewhere between the diner and home, probably from being so cold whilst walking around downtown. This had left me in quite a bit of pain and it was a struggle to make it up to Carnegie Hall at all, then even more of a struggle to enjoy the performance when I had acute muscle spasm and every little move I made was quite painful.
Once the performance ended we headed back to our apartment and I tried to warm up and numb to the pain with some drugs. Unfortunately you cannot purchase any decent painkillers here in the USA over the counter. The best we could get was paracetamol or ibuprofen, neither of which did much to ease the pain, so after an hour or so I took some sleeping pills and went to bed for what ended up a rather painful and restless nights sleep.
Today's Weather
Afternoon
Sunny. Highs in the upper 30s. North winds 5 to 10 mph.
Night
Clear in the evening...then becoming partly cloudy. Lows in the lower 30s. Northeast winds 5 to 10 mph...becoming southeast after midnight.
