Wednesday 12th June

Another day centred around food! Got the subway to Harlem today and had lunch in the famous Sylvia's soul food restaurant. I have to admit it did live up to the hype; they bring out 'bread' for the table to start with which was more like madeira cake and the creamy garlic mash was some of the best mash I've ever had (sorry nan/mum!). We then had a walking tour around Harlem, famous for being a centre of black culture- but not where the Harlem Globetrotters are from! A lot of us were expecting a very run down, unsafe area- which I'm sure some parts of it are but the centre of Harlem is actually a very wealthy area, with architecturally beautiful town houses that can sell for $2-3 million. By then we were supposed to have walked up an appetite so we went to another famous diner, this time Tom's restaurant from the TV show Seinfeld... hardly any of us were actually hungry by that point so we just had a milkshake (amazing) and shared some mozzarella sticks. My favourite part of the day was walking round Columbia University, partly because it's a really nice campus, very historical and prestigious.. but mostly because my inner Gossip Girl geek was thinking 'this is where Nate goes!!' :)

A couple of the many famous names that have won the Apollo's amateur night