11.00pm, Thursday July 9, hotel room ....another long day

I walked and walked today. Good thing too, as I had Nathan's cheese fries for lunch and Indian food for dinner. SW and I slept in, had complimentary breakfasts at the hotel, and then made our way to Coney island on the F train.

SW wants to see dodgy New York and so far I have failed him. When I visited Coney Island in 2005 I found it a lower-class area: dirty, empty lots, black-sanded beach of Hispanic and Arab families. (This is my memory.) I loved it – it had character. Now the beach has normal-coloured sand, the sun-bathers are white people, and down the boardwalk a bit an enormous complex of luxury apartments has gone up. So, no real dodginess.

SW and I rode the WonderWheel. Its carriages slid down individual tracks as well as revolved slowly around so it looked like - and was - more fun than a normal ferris wheel and, of course, offered great views.

SW and I walked to one end of the very long boardwalk and head into the residential streets. We saw blocks of old brick Brooklyn houses, fronted by small flowering gardens. We ended up walking to the Sheepshead Bay station (I think; don’t quote me on that one). When I asked a few cops how to walk back to the Stillwell Avenue station (accessible) they told me it was too far to walk. But I've walked from there to here, I said. I don't think they believed me and directed me to a bus. We took the bus.

Our next stop was Prospect Park. We walked through the park to Grand Army Plaza, oohed and aahed over the sculpture there. I went in to the grand Brooklyn Public Library to pee and then we walked the gorgeous streets of Park Slope, with their rounded brownstones and elegant front stairways. Such a gorgeous part of town. You can imagine begowned 19th century ladies wafting out the front doors. After walking through some residential streets we walked down the main street of 7th Ave, where we decided to have an Indian dinner, sitting in the open front of the restaurant. The vegetable korma was lovely and the mushroom saag good too, though neither were spicy.

SW and I continued on our way to the Dekalb subway station and finally hit a more ordinary area - Flatbush Ave, a major thoroughfare in a black Brooklyn neighbourhood, all multi-laned road, ordinary city signage and meaty restaurants. Definitely not a beautiful area. SW used the internet in a hot convenience store in order to imbibe the local vibe, surrounded by black men.