So we're back from New York City, narrowly scraping in before the cloud of doom. We had a blast out there, and you can check out some shots on Alistair's NYC Flickr set. We've put together a Google Map of most of the places we visited too.

Our highlights were:

MoMA: a behemoth, but you can't beat its collection of the greatest hits of 20th century art

The New Museum: a great space for contemporary art

The New York Transit Museum: the history of New York's transport system, housed in a disused subway station, with a great collection of signage

The Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co: the brilliant front for the inspiring 826 NYC

Hell's Kitchen Flea Market: stylish junk

Printed Matter: all manner of artists and designers books and zines

Freemans: lush dinner down a back alley right by the New Museum

The High Line: a stunning urban park created out of an old elevated train line

Buttermilk Channel: delicious Brooklyn restaurant

Green-wood Cemetery: a vast and peaceful graveyard in Brooklyn

We'd planned to rely on an iPhone for navigation. We loaded up the NYC Subway Map app which was pretty indispensable, and works offline so you can check it while riding the subway; as well as My Maps, which lets you access any Google Maps you create. But, and it's a huge but, the data roaming charges in the US for overseas visitors are just nuts - £6 per meg of data, which you can plough through in moments. It's a massive hindrance, and we found working from a standard guidebook and map the only way to go in the end.

One of the things we truly loved was that at any restaurant or cafe, they immediately bring you a free bottle of iced tap water as soon as you sit down, which they replenish as much as you like. That's a damn fine idea, and London would do well to follow suit.

Have a nice day y'all.