About time I ran through some more of our NYC trip, I'll try to keep it brief. We woke on Saturday morning to apparently clearing skies and set out seeking a New York diner breakfast. Walked over to 8th avenue and found what we were looking for, one dirty big fry-up later and I'm firing on all cylinders, Jo went a slightly more health route, too bad for her I say. So now walking is the go, gotta burn off the 2500 calories I just ate. First the bus though, we bought a 2 day bus tour ticket that let us take any of the 3 different tours of Downtown, Uptown and Brooklyn, you can hop on and off the double decker, open-top buses at any stop, usually another bus is a few minutes away. So this is a great way to get around and costs about $45 each for the two days. So we head off downtown and see the courts (Law and Order filmed there), Greenwich Village, Soho, Chinatown and end up getting off at Ground Zero, site of the ex-World Trade Centre.
Frankly I didn't expect any real emotional feedback, I love the Yanks but they do try some peoples patience internationally and enemies will use whatever means at their disposal to counter-attack... it's a pretty brutal world and we westerners are very sheltered from it, we think that civilians are innocent and not valid targets, well our own civilians anyway, ask a Lebanese how he feels. Having said that I was moved by the very temporary and low key memorial, I had expected USA USA USA, not so. The photos taken of firemen dragging people from the rubble just before they went back in again, never to return, tugged the heart-strings pretty hard. Still, the site is now a flurry of building activity as they put in the foundations on the Freedom Tower, I wonder if it's a symbol for the whole planet, or just for the US... Anyway as I said I love the Yanks, they're as lovable and flawed as the next guy, and they have big guns.
We walked to the Hudson River and gazed across the half a klic or so to Jersey, Liberty Island and that famous green statue were just visable through haze. We walked around to Battery Park and the rain hit us pretty hard. By the time we found the bus again we were a little wet but the sky cleared and we stayed on board as it took us down the end of Wall St and around under the Brooklyn Bridge, past the United Nations ('Hey Kofi, give us a wave!'), by one of The Donalds many condo towers and eventually stopping outside the Rockafella Centre where we spotted that Lexington Ave had been blocked off to cars and had several blocks of street market set up. We had a burito for lunch, not bad but not great, Jo bought some cheap jewelry for the girls and walked on to Central Park. We had the obligatory horse and carridge ride around a very small part of the park, frankly it wasn't that good. Then we walked through the park, really only through about a quarter of it, and it's an amazing place. You can always hear the buzz of the city but for most of the time you can't see any buildings, roads, cars... it's a fantastic park, and it's huge! We then hoped back on one of our buses and tripped through the Upper West Side, Jerry Seinfeld territory, then through Harlem and back down to Central Park. Frankly we were a bit pooped by this stage and it was getting late in the day.
Dinner was a Hell's Kitchen Thai place that I'd seen in a local resturant guide. The place had seating for maybe 12 people and that food was awesome, some of the best Thai we've ever had, price was right too, really cheap. Fired up after this, and watching the Toronto Blue Jays kicking the New York Yankees butts at baseball on a pub TV, we were primed for our next stop a late night comedy club. Saw a pretty good show, 2 of the 5 comedians were fantastic, one was okay and two were average. Drank two Long Island Iced Teas, what else, and Jo had two Manhattans. Rolled into bed late and slept well. Oh I almost forgot, slept well in our 16th floor suite, I'd complained about the street noise from our 5th floor room and had been upgraded free to a full suite well above the street, truely outstanding.
Thats' enough for now, one more day of NYC to come... tired now, must sleep...
Andy, out.
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