Filthy rich

These were seriously for sale at Barney's - a banged up pair of dirty sneakers called Golden Goose and at $450 bucks you'd have to be filthy rich to afford 'em.

Uber cool

If I wasn't a true fan of Uber - I definitely am now.  We've used them all over the States and not only are they cheaper and more reliable, you also get all sorts of extra things like water, Hershey's and phone chargers. I just thought they were a great brand case-study but now I know better.

She sells

We're at Shutters on the Beach in Santa Monica and I guess because they're beach side, there's all kinds of flotsam and jetsam collectables around the place. One such thing was a lovely wooden box filled with sand with perfect scallop shells dotted inside. David Attenborough or Nigel as I sometimes call him is an avid collector of anything found on a foreign beach. And if you are familiar with New Zealand customs, you will know that getting any kind of mollusc through is harder than muling a bag of cocaine, the only thing to rival them is a banana - the smell of which, has the beagles going quite literally bananas. One time coming back from Bali, he hid a whole cache of coral in the hotel laundry bag and then covered them with his Coast boxers and Country Road socks. As he blithely swept through in Auckland, he suddenly felt the greasy finger of a rubber gloved customs official at his scruff and in a few seconds he and all his smalls were revealed to a flight of Japanese coming in on an A380 from Tokyo. After a lot of shrugging which was meant to convey that the hotel must have left it all in there, he was released with only a couple of pebbles and a small conch to show for his troubles. Luckily I had anticipated this so I mingled in with the Japanese and pretended I didn't know him. As you can see his light fingered pilfering has enriched him with 3 new acquisitions so let's see how he and the beagles get on with this lot.

Germs

I do like this facility when I'm travelling - though often it takes me a few goes to get the damned thing to stay on the seat and often when you get those toilets that flush as soon as you stand up. Sometimes the weight of the paper will set them off and before you know it, your carefully laid out paper is whisked off down the u-bend before you've got time to say number 2.

Anal

This couple were taking no risks on the flight from New York to LA. They wiped down every single scrap of the seat, tray tables and armrests with a big tube of wet ones before they sat down. They then kissed and cuddled throughout the flight though talking dirty was off the agenda.

Breakfast At Balthazar

If Holly Golightly felt nothing bad could ever happen at Tiffany - I feel the same about Bathazar. My pulse slows down the minute I enter and as soon as my breakfast quiche arrives, all is right with the world. Balthazar opens 22 hours a day, from 7am right through until about 5 and I love waking up in the middle of the night and thinking that should I fancy it - I could pop down and have a plate of steak frites - of which they sell 200 plates a day. There are 2 prep cooks just to get the spuds ready for frying and they peel em at a rate of 6.4 seconds a go. The fella that does them has been there for 14 years and him and his mate peel and chip 600 pounds of potatoes a day - isn't that s'mashing. For more useless but interesting facts on Balthazar - go to The New York Times - 22 hours in Balthazar.

Fries with that?

We are notoriously lazy when we're in New York as we just go back again and again to the places we love to eat. But this time, we agreed we'd make an effort to find at least one new joint to add to our list. We checked out the top 10 new restaurants to watch and we loved the look of this one. Birds and Bubbles just off the Bowery - mainly because we liked the idea of their famous combo - Birds AKA chook and Bubbles AKA shampers coming together as an ideal combo, so to speak. And that's exactly what we had - a big bucket of fried chicken and a bottle of bubbly. It was bloody lovely but as Nigel said - it was basically KFC with a bigger price ticket.