Sadly for one of us, his shoes were at that point in their lives where they are no longer as Consumer Law would describe them, fit for purpose. Yesterday’s little excursion filled them with sufficient damp that one of them at least bore an olfactory resemblance to an open sewer this morning. Despite being apparently thoroughly dried overnight, it actually squelched when the first tentative step in it was taken today. To butcher the words of an old song, they were sort of went plip when they moved and slop when they stopped and ewww when they stood still. If ever there was time for a new pair, now was it.
Happily, there is no shortage of places to buy shoes within a gentle amble from our hotel, and since shoes are about the same price as the hop-on-hop-off bus, it all seemed like a bit of a fair trade to purchase a new pair made for walking instead of taking the bus.
Signs are not in short supply either in the Big Apple, but none of them seemed to be telling us exactly what we wanted to know. Eventually we found a large shop owned by a lady called Macy, who happily gave us a tourist discount to offset the somewhat diminished value of our Australian Pesos.
With dry feet and gloriously cushioned heels and set off to explore the brave new world on something of a random path through quieter backstreets, in the hope of avoiding the tourist traps. We could not claim total success in that regard, seemingly stumbling across every one of them by happy accident, but a marvellous day was had by all, and on our return to our room the stench of the old shoes had almost entirely dissipated.
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