New York, New York

Crazy, contrary, contradictory, wild New York. One minute you think the noise will burst your eardrums and then you get taken by it’s vibrant atmosphere. It’s dirty, dusty and attractive. The area around Times Square and 42nd Street is a shambles, more like a back alley than world famous entertainment district. Times Square is a cross roads, not a square, how they get so many people packed in for New Years is a mystery. Manhattan of course is elegant, well most of it is. The huge space between that and the financial district down near the river is a bit of a wasteland but still interesting. The people are full of pride (we could tell from everyone we’ve talked to here) but that doesn’t stop stuff like some of them leaving their lunch leftovers where they’d sat. There are many green spaces, lots of flags flying, a lot of building going on and also lots of empty buildings, just like Sydney, only about 10 times bigger. We've walked our little legs off and still haven't done half the town.

We arrived early afternoon Monday, tired after rising at 5.00am. USA immigration have undergone a change since my last visit in 2000 and they are actually human. Which helped diffuse the 90 minutes it took to clear immigration, and customs weren’t interested in our luggage at all. We got a free hotel pick-up and after we checked into our Queens hotel decided to go out for a walk to pick up supplies. Queens isn’t on the tourist map. The area ranges from tidy homes to run down slums but it is safe and we have found the natives friendly and willing to offer assistance. Most of the people in this area are Hispanic, Asian or coloured, and most speak with accents. (From our visits to the city, 99% of people in the service industries are too.) Our walk covered two shopping centres with about 150 shops, none of which were a supermarket or even a convenience store. We wondered where these people would go for their shopping and still don’t know. Four departments stores later and we found an electric kettle in Macy’s, a fruit cart with passable offerings and directions to the local pharmacy/convenience store for milk and odds and ends. We didn’t find any bread and looked for a small tub of either butter or margarine without luck, only large and no variety like we have at home. After day three, we still haven’t got any, though we did bring back a loaf of grain bread that tastes like fruit bread (sweet). We have discovered New York delis which are a cross between a food supermarket and café, serving all manner of hot and cold foods, often self serve, and good quality and you can eat in or take away.

Tuesday we took the subway into Manhattan - about 9k away, and did a lot of walking. We covered about half of Central Park, ogled at the fabulous and ugly buildings equally, though the good ones are so interesting you can overlook the ugly and/or concrete bunkers. To be fair, there aren’t many concrete bunkers. The streets weren’t as busy as I expected until early afternoon when the peak hours started, then they started to clog up with cars. New York drivers give no quarter when someone gets in their way and stand on their car horns at the slightest excuse, but slow down and let pedestrians amble across almost anywhere particularly at intersections when they always walk against the don’t walk signs. Most traffic hold-ups seem to be caused by cars stopping where they shouldn't. I'd say that tourists rival locals for numbers here too, as in all the other major cities we've been to.

Wednesday we took a city tour from our hotel which took us first down to the river and wharf area (in the financial district, or, downtown) for an hour’s cruise on the Hudson for another perspective of the city, plus a close up of the Statue of Liberty. Unfortunately for Howard and me, 80% of the passengers were Korean and they swamped the decks and then the captain/guide gave such a syrupy speech we nearly retched. This man started off with how much he loved all of us and then spent 20 minutes telling us about he and his wife’s wedding anniversary outing the night before. Every time we passed another landmark he whipped himself up into a frenzy of national pride. We didn’t go over to the Statue of Liberty island as, apparently (since 9/11), it usually takes a long wait for a boat to go over to the Island and you must book as only 280 people per day get to climb up the pedestal of the statue and no-one gets to go up into the crown any more. We also toured the Empire State building which is a great example of Art Deco building. Ground Zero was a sombre but vibrant site. We viewed if from a purpose built platform inside the atrium of the Wintergarden Building in the new World Financial Center group of buildings, which is a great centre for both business (I guess) and sightseeing. They have about a dozen full grown palm trees in there to add to the atmosphere and a lot of open space. We did a lot of running around in spite of being driven around the city and were returned to our hotel at around 7:00pm tired as usual but happy.

Today we subway’d back into town to meet up with another of Howard’s friends, Britta and her 2 year old son Aksel who is a livewire, so we walked them back round to the Wintergarden where the sight of all the building kept him well intrigued for ages. Afterward we went out to the Irish Hunger Memorial, a memorial dedicated to the poor and hungry people of the world. The memorial is the reconstructed ruin of a potato famine era stone worker’s hut with the surrounding half acre thickly planted with native Irish grasses and flora, all this is on a raised, cantilevered platform (www.batteryparkcity.org). We sadly parted and walked down to Wall Street because I didn’t get a good look at the buildings yesterday then headed for Greenwich Village where tomorrow we pick up our hire car so that we wouldn’t get lost on the way there! A couple more subway trips, an exploratory visit to a Deli/supermarket and we made our way back home. Tomorrow we head for a small town called Wellfleet on Cape Cod to check out the coast line up there for the weekend.

Once again it’s late so you aren’t getting the best of reports and anything I’ve forgotten will likely appear later on when I catch up with writing.

Cheers for now.
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