The flight was uneventful. Too short to get two meals, a movie and a decent sleep in and I'm afraid the sleeping lost out. I couldn't convince my body that it was time to rest at 19:00 EDT when I've spent the last seven days convincing it that the night is still young at that time. Setting the watch forward didn't help.
After a somewhat delayed departure, we arrived at Heathrow bang on time, then had to wait within sight of the gate because the gate beacon hadn't been switched on. It was a coaching gate, so we had to wait for the buses. Then the set of stairs they brought out didn't work and we had to wait while they found another set. In all it was nearly an hour after we touched down that we got off the plane.
At least it meant that the luggage was waiting for us on the carousel!
Minimal formalities and then into the car. Traffic wasn't that bad considering we were hitting the M4 at 08:20. We stopped off along the way to get some more breakfast as we were both feeling peckish. Owen is going to stay awake for the day, I'm going to try and get three hours sleep and then get up again. He had two double sausage & egg McMuffins a hash brown and orange juice. I had a simple sausage & egg,.. don't want all that crap keeping me awake.
Dropped Owen off at his place and finally headed home myself. Am going to put my head down to sleep after posting this. Alas, my New York experience is now definitely at an end.
Goodnight.
Liam In NYC
I had leave booked, so I decided to take a week in New York City. This is how it went...
Friday, September 26, 2003
Thursday, September 25, 2003
Day Eight (Afternoon - Kennedy Airport)
Today is a travelling day. We got up late and basically spent half the morning packing. It’s a good job I had plenty of space in my suitcase on the way out because with the amount of clothes we’ve both bought the cases are packed solid now.
Under the door this morning was our bill and instructions on how to check out without having to visit the front desk. It was both a pleasant surprise and an irritation. I always forget about the tax. I’m so used to seeing ‘tax-inclusive’ prices in the UK that I keep on getting surprised when I’m asked to pay $5.90 for something priced at $5.00. The room rate was ‘before tax’ and there were no less than three separate taxes added to the advertised price. I’m beginning to feel like Victor Meldrew. I should go and live in a secluded English village somewhere and never leave home again.
Anyway, I wasn’t going to let a little gripe like that spoil my memory of what was an excellent hotel, so I made a comment on the quality feedback form and left it at that. 18% isn’t really that much… really…
So we left our luggage with the bellboy and took a final walk up Broadway to Central Park. The weather is good again and we spent a long while just sitting on a bench watching the world go by. We had lunch in the park, at the Boathouse Restaurant which (surprise, surprise!) overlooks the boating lake. It’s a slightly pricey spot but a lovely view and good food. The place had a slightly colonial/plantation feel to it and revelled in the ambiance, sipping my mineral water whilst watching the swans glide by.
We gave the subway one last bit of business too, because Owen didn’t want to walk back. Killed a bit of time in the big Toys ‘R’ Us on the corner of our hotel’s block before reclaiming the luggage. The bellboy pointed us in the direction of a Lincoln Towncar to get to the airport which was only $10 more expensive than a cab but quite a bit more comfortable I think.
I like the self-service check-ins that BA have got now: A whole pile less queuing than the old style. You just pop in your credit card and do the business via the touch-screen then take your luggage to be tagged and conveyored away. Once we were through to the lounges I was rather hacked-off to discover that there were no wireless hotspots in the BA terminal. There’s a global initiative by Intel today to make most wireless hotspots free of charge, which is a great idea. I could have blogged in the airport… if only there was anything within range to connect to! To coin a phrase: I don’t believe it!
Anyway, chatted to Brett on the phone for a while which cheered me up. He was just back from his sojourn in Paris – literally just walking through the door when I called, so we caught up with each other which was good. I’m afraid I pissed Owen off somewhat by being rather doey-eyed on the phone – but it serves him right as he’s been going on about how he’s single and I’m not as an excuse for eyeing up every bit of talent in sight!
So now we just have a two hour wait before embarking on an six-hour flight to arrive at Heathrow just in time for the Friday morning rush-hour. Boy, do I love the jet-set lifestyle!
More later.
Under the door this morning was our bill and instructions on how to check out without having to visit the front desk. It was both a pleasant surprise and an irritation. I always forget about the tax. I’m so used to seeing ‘tax-inclusive’ prices in the UK that I keep on getting surprised when I’m asked to pay $5.90 for something priced at $5.00. The room rate was ‘before tax’ and there were no less than three separate taxes added to the advertised price. I’m beginning to feel like Victor Meldrew. I should go and live in a secluded English village somewhere and never leave home again.
Anyway, I wasn’t going to let a little gripe like that spoil my memory of what was an excellent hotel, so I made a comment on the quality feedback form and left it at that. 18% isn’t really that much… really…
So we left our luggage with the bellboy and took a final walk up Broadway to Central Park. The weather is good again and we spent a long while just sitting on a bench watching the world go by. We had lunch in the park, at the Boathouse Restaurant which (surprise, surprise!) overlooks the boating lake. It’s a slightly pricey spot but a lovely view and good food. The place had a slightly colonial/plantation feel to it and revelled in the ambiance, sipping my mineral water whilst watching the swans glide by.
We gave the subway one last bit of business too, because Owen didn’t want to walk back. Killed a bit of time in the big Toys ‘R’ Us on the corner of our hotel’s block before reclaiming the luggage. The bellboy pointed us in the direction of a Lincoln Towncar to get to the airport which was only $10 more expensive than a cab but quite a bit more comfortable I think.
I like the self-service check-ins that BA have got now: A whole pile less queuing than the old style. You just pop in your credit card and do the business via the touch-screen then take your luggage to be tagged and conveyored away. Once we were through to the lounges I was rather hacked-off to discover that there were no wireless hotspots in the BA terminal. There’s a global initiative by Intel today to make most wireless hotspots free of charge, which is a great idea. I could have blogged in the airport… if only there was anything within range to connect to! To coin a phrase: I don’t believe it!
Anyway, chatted to Brett on the phone for a while which cheered me up. He was just back from his sojourn in Paris – literally just walking through the door when I called, so we caught up with each other which was good. I’m afraid I pissed Owen off somewhat by being rather doey-eyed on the phone – but it serves him right as he’s been going on about how he’s single and I’m not as an excuse for eyeing up every bit of talent in sight!
So now we just have a two hour wait before embarking on an six-hour flight to arrive at Heathrow just in time for the Friday morning rush-hour. Boy, do I love the jet-set lifestyle!
More later.
Wednesday, September 24, 2003
Day Seven (Bed Time)
All of a sudden it feels like the holiday is over. I've got that 'back to work' feeling in the pit of my stomach. I'm not back at work until Monday but the feeling is there.
The knowledge that I'll be feeling like shit all weekend from the jetlag doesn't help either. I'm scheduled to sing with the Chorus on Saturday morning. We're being recorded for that afternoon's Loose Ends on Radio 4. I want to do it, but the thought of having to be at Broadcasting House by 9am doesn't appeal.
Feeling dietary guilt about having eaten an Oreo's cheesecake after a Pizza Hut Supreme...
Off to bed now though to dream of some real debauchery.
The knowledge that I'll be feeling like shit all weekend from the jetlag doesn't help either. I'm scheduled to sing with the Chorus on Saturday morning. We're being recorded for that afternoon's Loose Ends on Radio 4. I want to do it, but the thought of having to be at Broadcasting House by 9am doesn't appeal.
Feeling dietary guilt about having eaten an Oreo's cheesecake after a Pizza Hut Supreme...
Off to bed now though to dream of some real debauchery.
Day Seven (Dinner Time)
…And so, the end is near. It’s time to face the final curtain.
Today has been spent doing most of the things we didn’t get around to doing before. This morning we headed off to the Chrysler Building to take yet more photographs and so that Owen can say he’s actually been there. I have a couple of photographs of him hugging it, which I suspect he will live to regret. It is certainly a beautiful building. The main lobby has a huge mural on the ceiling (which is actually a bit in need of restoration) and the design of all the fixtures and fittings is quintessential Art Deco. Beautiful.
We took a stroll from there down towards the UN building, but with the General Assembly in session it was cordoned off and we couldn’t get close enough to take a photograph of the flags in the plaza.
At 12:30 we were in the main hall of Grand Central Station for a free tour that takes you around the highlights of the building. The station has recently been restored and looks spectacular with huge gilded chandeliers, ornate plasterwork, marble and brass and a sea-green astrological mural on the great arched ceiling with fibre-opic stars.
After the tour we had a wander around the shop attached to the NYC Transport Museum, which is located in the station complex. They seem to be trying to merchandise the subway in the same way they do the Tube back home, but they don’t really have the image for it. The train numbers are nowhere near as distinctive as the Underground logo. They are just numbers in coloured circles and could just as easily be a new variety of M&M’s as memorabilia of the New York Subway. The London Tube map is quite iconic and very distinctive – and has indeed been copied in art – but the NYC subway map is really just that: A geographic representation of the city with the subway lines overlaid. Nevertheless you can buy both numbers and maps on everything from t-shirts to mouse mats, to fridge magnets, to photo frames, to paper plates and napkins, to silk boxer shorts.
So we meandered our way condescendingly through another of what Owen describes as a ‘Unique Marketing Opportunity’ but anyone else would call Tourist Trash and went upstairs to have lunch.
There’s quite a selection at Grand Central but the guidebook warns you that they are pricey. Still, we found an outlet of the Michael Jordan franchise which did a three-course lunch for $20 and the menu looked good, so we got a table. The whole experience of lunch was better than I expected. Michael Jordan’s is not a name I would have previously associated with fine dining, but the restaurant was quite stylish and the food excellent. I suspect we were eating Nouvelle Cuisine, but given the normal size of American portions they were quite satisfying.
I suppose I should have known better than to say yes when the waiter suggested a Garlic Bread side-order just after he’d relieved us of the menus, or offered us mineral water instead of tap water. I’m supposed to be the experienced traveller here! While the Garlic Bread was delicious, it set us back $9, the mineral water another $7.50, the coffees were extra, I’d ordered a cocktail before dinner… so by the time we’d finished we’d doubled the cost of lunch. But what the hell – we’re on holiday!
After lunch we headed further downtown, back to the Empire State Building. Way back on Day One, when we’d bought tickets for the Observation Deck, we’d also bought tickets for the ‘New York Sky Ride’ which is in the building too. It’s one of those motion-simulator rides that takes you on an aerial tour of New York. We hadn’t done the Sky Ride when we did the Observation Deck, so we came back for it today. It’s a waste of time. A seriously over-produced theme-park ride preceded by twenty minutes of mind-numbing hype and flag-waving. Save your money if you’re ever tempted by it.
By then we were pretty worn out from lots of standing and walking, so we headed back to the hotel for a relax before heading down to Brooklyn. The plan being to walk back across the Brooklyn Bridge around sunset, which gives you the best view of the Manhattan skyline. The plan unfortunately fell at the first hurdle, when we decided that we really couldn’t face going out again. So here I sit, blogging while Owen is in the bath (with my book again, despite the fact he bought two of his own in Barnes & Noble yesterday!!)
It being Wednesday, this is our last night here. Tomorrow night we are on the plane home (and won’t that be a bundle of laughs!) I’ll probably write a final entry while en route and/or when I finally get home on Friday morning, but I’m feeling in a retrospective mood just now…
I came to New York mostly because we had skipped it when a group of us did a fly-drive in the States this time last year. I hadn’t consciously been expecting anything of the city and yet somehow it hasn’t lived up to my expectations. There are plenty of things to do and see. There are fine museums, Central Park is lovely and the city has some truly stunning architecture but, at the end of the day, it’s just another city.
When I come back, I think I’ll not come in the head-on sight-seeing tourist mode. I’ve had my orientation trip now and next time it will be a more relaxed change of scene, probably not staying on Manhattan or at least not in a midtown hotel. Times Square is quite an experience, but it’s like living on Oxford Street: wall-to-wall people – and I hate crowds. Next time maybe I’ll find a B&B or a guesthouse in one of the mainland boroughs and hire a car and get to know the people a little bit. Apart from the concierge at the hotel and the guy who looks after the breakfast buffet I don’t think I’ve exchanged more than a few words with any native New Yorker other than Rob, Jim and Richard.
That said, the hotel has certainly been good. It’s a bit pricey, but given the location and all the little added extras it’s certainly worth it. And, although I know I’m going to get ribbed for being a nerd, the complimentary high-speed Internet access has been a huge bonus. The Internet, just like my mobile phone, is a cost of living to me. Whenever I need information, the Internet is the first place I go to search because most information is immediately accessible there. We’ve used it for checking the weather, for finding out details that weren’t in the guidebook, keeping in touch with the news and keeping in touch with friends and family. I’m sorry if it makes me sound sad, but the Internet is a part of my daily life and I don’t function as well without it.
Anyway, rant over. I’m off to get some dinner and then watch the season premiere of West Wing!
Today has been spent doing most of the things we didn’t get around to doing before. This morning we headed off to the Chrysler Building to take yet more photographs and so that Owen can say he’s actually been there. I have a couple of photographs of him hugging it, which I suspect he will live to regret. It is certainly a beautiful building. The main lobby has a huge mural on the ceiling (which is actually a bit in need of restoration) and the design of all the fixtures and fittings is quintessential Art Deco. Beautiful.
We took a stroll from there down towards the UN building, but with the General Assembly in session it was cordoned off and we couldn’t get close enough to take a photograph of the flags in the plaza.
At 12:30 we were in the main hall of Grand Central Station for a free tour that takes you around the highlights of the building. The station has recently been restored and looks spectacular with huge gilded chandeliers, ornate plasterwork, marble and brass and a sea-green astrological mural on the great arched ceiling with fibre-opic stars.
After the tour we had a wander around the shop attached to the NYC Transport Museum, which is located in the station complex. They seem to be trying to merchandise the subway in the same way they do the Tube back home, but they don’t really have the image for it. The train numbers are nowhere near as distinctive as the Underground logo. They are just numbers in coloured circles and could just as easily be a new variety of M&M’s as memorabilia of the New York Subway. The London Tube map is quite iconic and very distinctive – and has indeed been copied in art – but the NYC subway map is really just that: A geographic representation of the city with the subway lines overlaid. Nevertheless you can buy both numbers and maps on everything from t-shirts to mouse mats, to fridge magnets, to photo frames, to paper plates and napkins, to silk boxer shorts.
So we meandered our way condescendingly through another of what Owen describes as a ‘Unique Marketing Opportunity’ but anyone else would call Tourist Trash and went upstairs to have lunch.
There’s quite a selection at Grand Central but the guidebook warns you that they are pricey. Still, we found an outlet of the Michael Jordan franchise which did a three-course lunch for $20 and the menu looked good, so we got a table. The whole experience of lunch was better than I expected. Michael Jordan’s is not a name I would have previously associated with fine dining, but the restaurant was quite stylish and the food excellent. I suspect we were eating Nouvelle Cuisine, but given the normal size of American portions they were quite satisfying.
I suppose I should have known better than to say yes when the waiter suggested a Garlic Bread side-order just after he’d relieved us of the menus, or offered us mineral water instead of tap water. I’m supposed to be the experienced traveller here! While the Garlic Bread was delicious, it set us back $9, the mineral water another $7.50, the coffees were extra, I’d ordered a cocktail before dinner… so by the time we’d finished we’d doubled the cost of lunch. But what the hell – we’re on holiday!
After lunch we headed further downtown, back to the Empire State Building. Way back on Day One, when we’d bought tickets for the Observation Deck, we’d also bought tickets for the ‘New York Sky Ride’ which is in the building too. It’s one of those motion-simulator rides that takes you on an aerial tour of New York. We hadn’t done the Sky Ride when we did the Observation Deck, so we came back for it today. It’s a waste of time. A seriously over-produced theme-park ride preceded by twenty minutes of mind-numbing hype and flag-waving. Save your money if you’re ever tempted by it.
By then we were pretty worn out from lots of standing and walking, so we headed back to the hotel for a relax before heading down to Brooklyn. The plan being to walk back across the Brooklyn Bridge around sunset, which gives you the best view of the Manhattan skyline. The plan unfortunately fell at the first hurdle, when we decided that we really couldn’t face going out again. So here I sit, blogging while Owen is in the bath (with my book again, despite the fact he bought two of his own in Barnes & Noble yesterday!!)
It being Wednesday, this is our last night here. Tomorrow night we are on the plane home (and won’t that be a bundle of laughs!) I’ll probably write a final entry while en route and/or when I finally get home on Friday morning, but I’m feeling in a retrospective mood just now…
I came to New York mostly because we had skipped it when a group of us did a fly-drive in the States this time last year. I hadn’t consciously been expecting anything of the city and yet somehow it hasn’t lived up to my expectations. There are plenty of things to do and see. There are fine museums, Central Park is lovely and the city has some truly stunning architecture but, at the end of the day, it’s just another city.
When I come back, I think I’ll not come in the head-on sight-seeing tourist mode. I’ve had my orientation trip now and next time it will be a more relaxed change of scene, probably not staying on Manhattan or at least not in a midtown hotel. Times Square is quite an experience, but it’s like living on Oxford Street: wall-to-wall people – and I hate crowds. Next time maybe I’ll find a B&B or a guesthouse in one of the mainland boroughs and hire a car and get to know the people a little bit. Apart from the concierge at the hotel and the guy who looks after the breakfast buffet I don’t think I’ve exchanged more than a few words with any native New Yorker other than Rob, Jim and Richard.
That said, the hotel has certainly been good. It’s a bit pricey, but given the location and all the little added extras it’s certainly worth it. And, although I know I’m going to get ribbed for being a nerd, the complimentary high-speed Internet access has been a huge bonus. The Internet, just like my mobile phone, is a cost of living to me. Whenever I need information, the Internet is the first place I go to search because most information is immediately accessible there. We’ve used it for checking the weather, for finding out details that weren’t in the guidebook, keeping in touch with the news and keeping in touch with friends and family. I’m sorry if it makes me sound sad, but the Internet is a part of my daily life and I don’t function as well without it.
Anyway, rant over. I’m off to get some dinner and then watch the season premiere of West Wing!
Tuesday, September 23, 2003
Day Six (After Coffee)
Dinner with Ant & Keith at the restaurant in Greenwich. Very nice. Good food. Too much food again (no more wafer thin mints, thank you, garçon!) too much alcohol too. The boys are off to party some more. I'm too weary for such malarky. Off to bed now in the hope that I'll get a good night's sleep...
Day Six (Early Evening)
Today has been an odd day. We are both feeling pretty worn out but have had different reactions to it. Owen is strongly of the opinion that we’ve come halfway around the world and we have limited time, so we have to make the effort to get out and do things. I’m of the opinion that I’m on holiday and I don’t want to run myself into the ground just because I’m not at home: Barring any more acts of gross terrorism, New York will still be here next year and the year after, in pretty much the same state as it is now.
In the end (basically by default) we ended up compromising and spending the morning lazing around and then went out this afternoon. We spent a little bit of time around Times Square because I’m looking for new trainers and travel charger for my Palm PDA. Owen wanted to buy Hershey Bars for one of his friends back home and there’s a Hershey store on the Square too. In the end, Owen got his Hershey Bars, I got my PDA charger (although I got fleeced for it!) and I couldn’t find any trainers I liked.
Then we got out of the rain, back to the hotel and Owen read while I tried to get some pictures up into webspace. That was a trial in itself. I have two ISP accounts: BT & CompuServe. The BT account won’t let you manage your webspace unless you are logged on via their network (which I’m not.) CompuServe, despite the bells and whistles of its web interface, just doesn’t seem geared up to let you do anything unless you have your AOL/CompuServe front-end software installed. You can’t even download the software!
In the end I used my Chorus ID to get some free webspace through Yahoo and put up a basic page of photos (see the link on the right.) I don’t seem to have taken any photos today, but I may put some more of the existing ones up if I get time sometime. And there’s always tomorrow…
So that was our relaxing morning. This afternoon we went to the Guggenheim Museum and did some more shopping.
To get to the Guggenheim, we took the Green subway line and once again marvelled at the recorded announcements on the trains. They sound like they’ve been done by Buzz Lightyear (from “Toy Story”) and Majel Barrett (who does the voice of the computers in the new Star Trek series.) I will try and get a recording of them so that I can stick them up on the blog… but whenever we’re on the Green Line one of us will end up saying something like “To Brooklyn… and Beyond!” and we will sit and giggle like schoolgirls.
Anyway we went to the Guggenheim to see art. In fact we paid $15 each to see art. I would dispute that that was what was on display though. The main exhibition was entitled “Pollock to Picasso” but, coming down the spiral ramp that is the main hall of the Guggenheim, it felt like I was being asked to appreciate the Emperor’s fine new clothes. Only about half of the works on display – certainly towards the top – looked as if there had been any active creativity involved in their creation. There were several of the Pollock-style “let’s through lots of paint over a canvas, let it dry and call it art” pieces which to me is the art of natural chaos and people shouldn’t get paid for it.
Of the pieces that looked as if there was a human hand behind them, about half were fakery. There was one canvas which was, quite literally a toddler’s drawing with crayons: Stick people, lopsided play-school houses and scribbles that were probably meant to be trees. There was a canvas that was painted uniformly brown and then slashed in four places. There was a mound of fibreglass wool in a glass box.
Maybe the Guggenheim is on the cutting edge of modern art and my tastes are just not highly-tuned enough to appreciate it, but most of what we saw today was crap. It’s the kind of stuff I always fear I’ll see when I go to Tate Modern, but so far never have. I enjoyed the early Picassos and found some of the small Kandinsky drawings, that were on display in a side gallery, quite challenging. But I don’t think I got my money’s worth.
We went in search of a coffee shop but could only find a Starbucks, so we both had coffee and a cake, bitched about Modern Art and planned how to save the afternoon from being a write-off. Shopping was the only other thing to do in the area and Owen had been whispering ‘Bloomingdales’ in my ear all week, so off we went.
Macy’s may be the largest store in the world, but the best quality ones (or at least the ones where the most money is floating around) are on Fifth Avenue, just south of Central Park. We browsed the menswear department of Bloomingdales first off and Owen fulfilled another long-time ambition and bought something there. The sales assistant couldn’t have been more pleasant or helpful, but he knew we were a couple of tourists who could only afford to buy a tie: Not real money.
Next we wandered in to Bergdorff Goodman… then very quickly wandered out again. The place was so exclusive they didn’t even have designer labels. Everything had a hand-tailored look and you just knew that if you needed to ask what the price was, then you couldn’t afford it.
Tiffany’s we wandered by whilst looking for Saks Fifth Avenue. Strangely we couldn’t find it on Fifth Avenue so eventually we gave up and decided to head down to the Chrysler Building so that Owen could actually touch it. Somehow, though, we got on the wrong train and when we realised we got off and then got on an even more wrong train. Before we knew it we were on an express train to the Bronx and somewhere north of the Park. By the time we’d gotten ourselves sorted it was so late we came home again.
Dinner with Ant & Keith tonight, probably at the nice little restaurant we found on Sunday next to the Actors Theatre in Greenwich.
In the end (basically by default) we ended up compromising and spending the morning lazing around and then went out this afternoon. We spent a little bit of time around Times Square because I’m looking for new trainers and travel charger for my Palm PDA. Owen wanted to buy Hershey Bars for one of his friends back home and there’s a Hershey store on the Square too. In the end, Owen got his Hershey Bars, I got my PDA charger (although I got fleeced for it!
Then we got out of the rain, back to the hotel and Owen read while I tried to get some pictures up into webspace. That was a trial in itself. I have two ISP accounts: BT & CompuServe. The BT account won’t let you manage your webspace unless you are logged on via their network (which I’m not.) CompuServe, despite the bells and whistles of its web interface, just doesn’t seem geared up to let you do anything unless you have your AOL/CompuServe front-end software installed. You can’t even download the software!
In the end I used my Chorus ID to get some free webspace through Yahoo and put up a basic page of photos (see the link on the right.) I don’t seem to have taken any photos today, but I may put some more of the existing ones up if I get time sometime. And there’s always tomorrow…
So that was our relaxing morning. This afternoon we went to the Guggenheim Museum and did some more shopping.
To get to the Guggenheim, we took the Green subway line and once again marvelled at the recorded announcements on the trains. They sound like they’ve been done by Buzz Lightyear (from “Toy Story”) and Majel Barrett (who does the voice of the computers in the new Star Trek series.) I will try and get a recording of them so that I can stick them up on the blog… but whenever we’re on the Green Line one of us will end up saying something like “To Brooklyn… and Beyond!” and we will sit and giggle like schoolgirls.
Anyway we went to the Guggenheim to see art. In fact we paid $15 each to see art. I would dispute that that was what was on display though. The main exhibition was entitled “Pollock to Picasso” but, coming down the spiral ramp that is the main hall of the Guggenheim, it felt like I was being asked to appreciate the Emperor’s fine new clothes. Only about half of the works on display – certainly towards the top – looked as if there had been any active creativity involved in their creation. There were several of the Pollock-style “let’s through lots of paint over a canvas, let it dry and call it art” pieces which to me is the art of natural chaos and people shouldn’t get paid for it.
Of the pieces that looked as if there was a human hand behind them, about half were fakery. There was one canvas which was, quite literally a toddler’s drawing with crayons: Stick people, lopsided play-school houses and scribbles that were probably meant to be trees. There was a canvas that was painted uniformly brown and then slashed in four places. There was a mound of fibreglass wool in a glass box.
Maybe the Guggenheim is on the cutting edge of modern art and my tastes are just not highly-tuned enough to appreciate it, but most of what we saw today was crap. It’s the kind of stuff I always fear I’ll see when I go to Tate Modern, but so far never have. I enjoyed the early Picassos and found some of the small Kandinsky drawings, that were on display in a side gallery, quite challenging. But I don’t think I got my money’s worth.
We went in search of a coffee shop but could only find a Starbucks, so we both had coffee and a cake, bitched about Modern Art and planned how to save the afternoon from being a write-off. Shopping was the only other thing to do in the area and Owen had been whispering ‘Bloomingdales’ in my ear all week, so off we went.
Macy’s may be the largest store in the world, but the best quality ones (or at least the ones where the most money is floating around) are on Fifth Avenue, just south of Central Park. We browsed the menswear department of Bloomingdales first off and Owen fulfilled another long-time ambition and bought something there. The sales assistant couldn’t have been more pleasant or helpful, but he knew we were a couple of tourists who could only afford to buy a tie: Not real money.
Next we wandered in to Bergdorff Goodman… then very quickly wandered out again. The place was so exclusive they didn’t even have designer labels. Everything had a hand-tailored look and you just knew that if you needed to ask what the price was, then you couldn’t afford it.
Tiffany’s we wandered by whilst looking for Saks Fifth Avenue. Strangely we couldn’t find it on Fifth Avenue so eventually we gave up and decided to head down to the Chrysler Building so that Owen could actually touch it. Somehow, though, we got on the wrong train and when we realised we got off and then got on an even more wrong train. Before we knew it we were on an express train to the Bronx and somewhere north of the Park. By the time we’d gotten ourselves sorted it was so late we came home again.
Dinner with Ant & Keith tonight, probably at the nice little restaurant we found on Sunday next to the Actors Theatre in Greenwich.
Day Six (Mid-Morning)
It's raining and we are both feeling lazy. After breakfast we came back to the room and slumped. We are eventually going to brave the rain as far as the subway and head for the Guggenheim, but for now it's just nice to laze on the sofa and watch the rain falling outside the window (which is basically a wall of glass at the end of the room.) I love doing that: being nice and comfortable and warm and watching/listening to the rain falling outside.
Owen's taking a bath and has nicked my book to read. Hmm.
Owen's taking a bath and has nicked my book to read. Hmm.
Day Five (The Witching Hour)
After the Intrepid Museum, we headed back to the hotel and lazed for a while before getting sorted for dinner. While I was writing postcards Brett called from his hotel in Paris at what must have been about half-past midnight there. I’d called him earlier, but the Eurostar was late so he’d still been under the Channel at the time. It was good to catch up with him - and especially nice of him to call at that hour of the night.
Anyway, dinner this evening was with Rob, the chap that Owen met at the Cathedral on Saturday and I had been specifically invited along, so along I went. We started with drinks in a bar a few blocks west, where we met some of Rob’s friends. Unfortunately the bar couldn’t cope with the idea of cocktails (Really, what kind of gay bar is it that can’t do cocktails!?) so we ended up sinking G&Ts. Dinner was at a nearby Italian restaurant in a very narrow building. The food was excellent and Rob was most engaging company.
The strange thing about the whole affair though, was that Rob seems to have the same relationship with his ex-boyfriend Jim (who we’d met at the bar) as Owen does with me and was consequently able to give Owen some quite pithy advice.
In other news: I think that despite the overcast today, I got enough sun to burn my forehead, as it’s feeling very tender this evening.
As I was walking back from the restaurant tonight, I noticed that the sidewalks around Times Square sparkle in the lights from the signs, as if they’ve been frosted. It was really quite pretty. …And I’d only had one gin before dinner!
Off to bed now as it’s gone midnight and I’ve just turned into a pumpkin.
Anyway, dinner this evening was with Rob, the chap that Owen met at the Cathedral on Saturday and I had been specifically invited along, so along I went. We started with drinks in a bar a few blocks west, where we met some of Rob’s friends. Unfortunately the bar couldn’t cope with the idea of cocktails (Really, what kind of gay bar is it that can’t do cocktails!?) so we ended up sinking G&Ts. Dinner was at a nearby Italian restaurant in a very narrow building. The food was excellent and Rob was most engaging company.
The strange thing about the whole affair though, was that Rob seems to have the same relationship with his ex-boyfriend Jim (who we’d met at the bar) as Owen does with me and was consequently able to give Owen some quite pithy advice.
In other news: I think that despite the overcast today, I got enough sun to burn my forehead, as it’s feeling very tender this evening.
As I was walking back from the restaurant tonight, I noticed that the sidewalks around Times Square sparkle in the lights from the signs, as if they’ve been frosted. It was really quite pretty. …And I’d only had one gin before dinner!
Off to bed now as it’s gone midnight and I’ve just turned into a pumpkin.
Monday, September 22, 2003
Day Five (Late Afternoon)
An early start this morning. The alarm went off at 7am but I’d been awake since 5ish. Dragging myself out of bed was almost as difficult as a normal working Monday morning. Anyway we got sorted in time for our scheduled 9am rendezvous with Ant & Keith and duly set off west along 44th Street to the Hudson River.
Today’s plan was to visit the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space museum and to take a Circle Line Cruise around Manhattan. In the end we did it the other way around and did the cruise first.
It was a full circuit of the island, setting out from the pier at the end of West 44th Street and heading south along the Hudson and into New York Sound to pass Ellis Island, with its immigration museum and Liberty Island with the famous statue (which is smaller than I imagined it to be. It looks taller on TV.) Then we headed back around the south side of the island, past the financial district where the guide duly pointed out the gaps that weren’t there two years ago, and into the East River.
The East River separates Manhattan from the mainland boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens and Haarlem but has a few smaller islands in it too. One of the channels around these was cordoned off by the Coastguard in preparation for the UN General Assembly, which starts tomorrow.
Along the route we learned a couple of interesting new facts. We passed under a bridge which was marked “40ft (MHW)” which we were told meant forty feet of clearance under the bridge at Mean High Water. When the tide is high, so we were told, it’s very mean and you can’t get a boat taller than 40ft under the bridge. I wasn’t sure if he was serious, or if he was just winding us up as tour guides are wont to do…
The East River is the more industrial side of the island, but once you get around to the north it suddenly becomes very green, with lots of woodland and hills. Very picturesque. Rather made me wish we had time to do some out of town exploring.
Anyway, once the cruise was over we went off in search of lunch. For someone who was so keen to visit New York, Owen is remarkably reluctant to experience anything of it that he hasn’t already come across: I had to apply quite a steer in order to have lunch in a local diner rather than Starbucks. Lunch came in typically American-size portions but we all seemed to manage them. Keith left some of his Reuben sandwich though – probably because we’d all given him our complimentary Dill Pickles at the start of the meal because he claimed to like them…
After lunch Ant & Keith headed uptown to Central Park while Owen and I headed back to the Pier to visit the retired aircraft carrier, now a museum, the USS Intrepid. It was built in the early forties and saw service in WWII, Korea, Vietnam & the Cold War before being decommissioned a few years ago.
Just as we were boarding I got a phone call from Rob Smith, my fellow SysAdmin from Saga. We meet up for drinks/food every now and then, whenever we are both in the same town and he was ringing me to say he was on a course this week and did I fancy getting together one evening. While I did, neither of us thought the Concorde was really a practical way of meeting up, so I promised I’d arrange a weekend in Folkestone sometime soon. (I’ve been meaning to anyway.)
Aircraft carriers look big from the outside but they feel even bigger inside. It was impressive. Unfortunately, once we were off the hangar deck it was very difficult to work out what any of the spaces were originally used for. There was no information at all about what you were looking at and the Audio Tour had been ‘discontinued’. Still it was interesting just to get a feel for the size of what, by today’s standards, is quite a modestly sized carrier.
The most memorable part though will probably be the September 11th memorial in one corner of the Hangar Deck. We’d decided early on to avoid visiting Ground Zero because, by all accounts, it’s now more of a tourist-trap than the WTC ever was. Also, you get to see enough breast-beating (and gun-toting) about it everywhere you turn in the city. We had seen the ragged remains of the globe sculpture, which used to adorn the plaza between the two towers but was recovered from the rubble and relocated to Battery Park as a temporary memorial, and found it moving but had no wish to see the site itself.
The memorial on the Intrepid was not to the injured national pride, but was wholly to the dead. There were pictures, personal notes and some of the homemade Missing Persons posters. There were hundreds of contact prints from a photojournalist who was in the area and covered the rescue events, so you got to see some of the stories unfolding. There were a couple of cabinets containing rubble littered with the human aspects; scraps of paper from different offices, a scorched floppy disk. Most poignant to me was a recognisable section of fuselage from one of the planes that was crashed into the towers, along with a crushed laptop computer.
Today’s plan was to visit the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space museum and to take a Circle Line Cruise around Manhattan. In the end we did it the other way around and did the cruise first.
It was a full circuit of the island, setting out from the pier at the end of West 44th Street and heading south along the Hudson and into New York Sound to pass Ellis Island, with its immigration museum and Liberty Island with the famous statue (which is smaller than I imagined it to be. It looks taller on TV.) Then we headed back around the south side of the island, past the financial district where the guide duly pointed out the gaps that weren’t there two years ago, and into the East River.
The East River separates Manhattan from the mainland boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens and Haarlem but has a few smaller islands in it too. One of the channels around these was cordoned off by the Coastguard in preparation for the UN General Assembly, which starts tomorrow.
Along the route we learned a couple of interesting new facts. We passed under a bridge which was marked “40ft (MHW)” which we were told meant forty feet of clearance under the bridge at Mean High Water. When the tide is high, so we were told, it’s very mean and you can’t get a boat taller than 40ft under the bridge. I wasn’t sure if he was serious, or if he was just winding us up as tour guides are wont to do…
The East River is the more industrial side of the island, but once you get around to the north it suddenly becomes very green, with lots of woodland and hills. Very picturesque. Rather made me wish we had time to do some out of town exploring.
Anyway, once the cruise was over we went off in search of lunch. For someone who was so keen to visit New York, Owen is remarkably reluctant to experience anything of it that he hasn’t already come across: I had to apply quite a steer in order to have lunch in a local diner rather than Starbucks. Lunch came in typically American-size portions but we all seemed to manage them. Keith left some of his Reuben sandwich though – probably because we’d all given him our complimentary Dill Pickles at the start of the meal because he claimed to like them…
After lunch Ant & Keith headed uptown to Central Park while Owen and I headed back to the Pier to visit the retired aircraft carrier, now a museum, the USS Intrepid. It was built in the early forties and saw service in WWII, Korea, Vietnam & the Cold War before being decommissioned a few years ago.
Just as we were boarding I got a phone call from Rob Smith, my fellow SysAdmin from Saga. We meet up for drinks/food every now and then, whenever we are both in the same town and he was ringing me to say he was on a course this week and did I fancy getting together one evening. While I did, neither of us thought the Concorde was really a practical way of meeting up, so I promised I’d arrange a weekend in Folkestone sometime soon. (I’ve been meaning to anyway.)
Aircraft carriers look big from the outside but they feel even bigger inside. It was impressive. Unfortunately, once we were off the hangar deck it was very difficult to work out what any of the spaces were originally used for. There was no information at all about what you were looking at and the Audio Tour had been ‘discontinued’. Still it was interesting just to get a feel for the size of what, by today’s standards, is quite a modestly sized carrier.
The most memorable part though will probably be the September 11th memorial in one corner of the Hangar Deck. We’d decided early on to avoid visiting Ground Zero because, by all accounts, it’s now more of a tourist-trap than the WTC ever was. Also, you get to see enough breast-beating (and gun-toting) about it everywhere you turn in the city. We had seen the ragged remains of the globe sculpture, which used to adorn the plaza between the two towers but was recovered from the rubble and relocated to Battery Park as a temporary memorial, and found it moving but had no wish to see the site itself.
The memorial on the Intrepid was not to the injured national pride, but was wholly to the dead. There were pictures, personal notes and some of the homemade Missing Persons posters. There were hundreds of contact prints from a photojournalist who was in the area and covered the rescue events, so you got to see some of the stories unfolding. There were a couple of cabinets containing rubble littered with the human aspects; scraps of paper from different offices, a scorched floppy disk. Most poignant to me was a recognisable section of fuselage from one of the planes that was crashed into the towers, along with a crushed laptop computer.
Sunday, September 21, 2003
Day Four (Closedown)
The clue was in the title. All eight of them were stark naked and dancing within two minutes of the opening bars. That said, once you’d got over the fact of the nudity the songs were quite pithy and moving. It was a humorous musical review roughly centred around the male body and our preoccupation with it. Some of it was plain humour: ‘I beat my meat’ and ‘Why do I go to the gym’ will certainly stick in my mind. But there were also very poignant songs too: about a relationship between two neighbours who see each other at the window, but each waiting for the other to make the first move, or the song of the boyfriend turned away by the one love of his life. If you get the chance, go see the show – so long as you can deal with lots of male flesh, up close and personal.
The music owed quite a bit to Sondheim, especially the aforementioned song about the unrequited relationship through a window which (apparantly) used the same chord structure as ‘Marry Me A Little’, one of the Sondheim songs in the current Chorus repertoire and which I find especially moving. Maybe that’s why I’m somewhat melancholy tonight.
The music owed quite a bit to Sondheim, especially the aforementioned song about the unrequited relationship through a window which (apparantly) used the same chord structure as ‘Marry Me A Little’, one of the Sondheim songs in the current Chorus repertoire and which I find especially moving. Maybe that’s why I’m somewhat melancholy tonight.
Day Four (late afternoon)
Well, we’ve done stuff today. I think it’s the first time we’ve been totally free of jet-lag.
Ant & Keith came around first thing and had a coffee and a chat. They’re off to Coney Island today but they liked the sound of our plans for tomorrow and will be joining us on our maritime day.
Once we finally got our act together, we headed off to the Empire State Building and went through the rigmarole of queuing to get into the ‘Observation Deck’ elevators (which don’t actually take you to the Observation Deck) and then queuing some more in a room that looked uncannily like a Sixth Form Common Room before getting into more elevators to ascend the final six floors. At least while we were waiting we got our first ‘in the flesh’ sighting of the Chrysler Building (Owen’s favourite building ‘in all the world’!) but he was remarkably nonchalant about seeing it.
The view from the Observation Deck on the 86th floor is spectacular. You can see beyond Liberty Island to the south and all the way up to the north of Manhattan Island, with Central Park a distinct green rectangle above Midtown.
Once all of the photographs had been taken we headed back towards the elevators, past the inevitable gift shop. Oh my god! At the top of the Empire State Building is the height of American tat. I suppose it’s probably no worse than the ‘London Shops’ selling models of Big Ben and Union-Jack-everything, but beside the ‘I Luv NY’ key rings, crystal models of the Empire State and the foam Statue Of Liberty Crowns, there were very cheap-looking USA-shaped golden Christmas tree decorations inscribed (badly) with ‘Home of the brave, Land of the free’ and other such tasteful trinkets. I don’t think Britain can compete with that!
We escaped, picked up some drinks and relaxed in a little park area nearby, outside Macy’s. There we polished off the last of Owen’s Club Sandwich from last night and called it lunch. Macy’s Department Store (the biggest in the world, don’t you know!) was next.
If you’re ever in New York don’t bother with Macy’s unless you want to see what happened to Grace Brothers as they entered the new Millennium. It’s a big department store that has never been renovated. They have wooden escalators that make more noise than the people trying to thrust cologne samplers into your hand. That said we did get good service from the assistant who sold me a new pair of sunglasses.
The sunglasses were a slight bone of contention. I’d managed to lose mine before we came away and so was in the market for a new pair. Owen and I have differing views on fashion and what looks good on me. So there was much trying-on of different styles before I settled on a pair of mirrored wrap-arounds that weren’t quite the ones that Cyclops wears in X-Men (a deliberate choice to pick the ones that didn’t look like the movie!) Then, in a last desperate attempt to stop me buying something that he thinks I look stupid in, Owen throws in ‘Well, if you’re determined to go for that style, at least find somewhere that sells real Oakleys instead of wannabes.’
I’ve never really been a Label Queen… but I fear that in the last year or two I have been showing tendencies in that direction. I’m sure it’s just a phase, but I’m big enough to admit to the fact that I might just be a little bit more attracted to the products of certain designers than is strictly natural. So Owen’s last gambit worked and I walked away from the mirrored shades.
There is a god, however, because on the way out of Macy’s we passed a whole cabinet of Oakley sunglasses and a pair were duly purchased.
Oh and Macy’s has got the most incompetent branch of Starbucks I’ve ever come across!
We wandered aimlessly for a while trying to decide what to do, shopping was definitely on the agenda as Owen is knocking down his lifelong ambitions at a rate of knots today, so the next was the purchase of a Ralph Lauren shirt. Options were mostly uptown Fifth Avenue… until he remembered a place he’d seen yesterday in Greenwich Village while out with Rob: A discount basement full of designer clothes.
I quite fancied seeing New York’s answer to London’s Soho, so we hopped onto the subway (which I’m at least finding navigable now, although still pretty bleak) and headed to Christopher Street. We found the basement and duly bought Owen’s shirts and few Kenneth Cole sweaters for me. (Remember, dahling, it’s not how much you spend, but how much you save that’s important! *grin*)
Greenwich Village I rather liked. It’s gay without being quite so brash about it as Soho. It was just another part of town. Most of the locals were almost certainly gay, but they weren’t calling it a lifestyle. There were guys holding hands but it wasn’t anything you wouldn’t see straight couples doing elsewhere. I think we probably both got cruised a lot more than we would in Soho where no-one would ever look at either of us. … Nice to have an ego-massage every now and then.
Just outside the Christopher Street subway is a small theatre showing ‘Naked Boys Singing’ which is a show I’d heard of somewhere (Although I just can’t remember whether it was someone raving about or slating it. Ah.) and on the spur of the moment, we booked tickets for this evening’s show. So that’s where we’re off to shortly.
Points of note from today: I’ve remembered how much I prefer pretty much any other country’s currency to the US. Here you pull a bundle of notes out of your pocket and you have absolutely no idea how much you’re holding. You have to flick through them all to find the $20 note that you know is in there somewhere. Why can’t they do different sizes and colours like the rest of the world??
Also, we’ve been Brit spotting.
I think I started it, but Owen quickly got into it too and it’s frighteningly easy. Just as Americans abroad have a certain ‘look’ about them, so do the Brits. Some are easier to spot than others and we are hoping that we are on the harder end of that scale. Although, it has been pointed out that wearing a camera around my neck as I stroll along the sidewalk carrying my bag from Macy’s is probably not a very ‘New Yorker’ thing to do. Ah, well.
Ant & Keith came around first thing and had a coffee and a chat. They’re off to Coney Island today but they liked the sound of our plans for tomorrow and will be joining us on our maritime day.
Once we finally got our act together, we headed off to the Empire State Building and went through the rigmarole of queuing to get into the ‘Observation Deck’ elevators (which don’t actually take you to the Observation Deck) and then queuing some more in a room that looked uncannily like a Sixth Form Common Room before getting into more elevators to ascend the final six floors. At least while we were waiting we got our first ‘in the flesh’ sighting of the Chrysler Building (Owen’s favourite building ‘in all the world’!) but he was remarkably nonchalant about seeing it.
The view from the Observation Deck on the 86th floor is spectacular. You can see beyond Liberty Island to the south and all the way up to the north of Manhattan Island, with Central Park a distinct green rectangle above Midtown.
Once all of the photographs had been taken we headed back towards the elevators, past the inevitable gift shop. Oh my god! At the top of the Empire State Building is the height of American tat. I suppose it’s probably no worse than the ‘London Shops’ selling models of Big Ben and Union-Jack-everything, but beside the ‘I Luv NY’ key rings, crystal models of the Empire State and the foam Statue Of Liberty Crowns, there were very cheap-looking USA-shaped golden Christmas tree decorations inscribed (badly) with ‘Home of the brave, Land of the free’ and other such tasteful trinkets. I don’t think Britain can compete with that!
We escaped, picked up some drinks and relaxed in a little park area nearby, outside Macy’s. There we polished off the last of Owen’s Club Sandwich from last night and called it lunch. Macy’s Department Store (the biggest in the world, don’t you know!) was next.
If you’re ever in New York don’t bother with Macy’s unless you want to see what happened to Grace Brothers as they entered the new Millennium. It’s a big department store that has never been renovated. They have wooden escalators that make more noise than the people trying to thrust cologne samplers into your hand. That said we did get good service from the assistant who sold me a new pair of sunglasses.
The sunglasses were a slight bone of contention. I’d managed to lose mine before we came away and so was in the market for a new pair. Owen and I have differing views on fashion and what looks good on me. So there was much trying-on of different styles before I settled on a pair of mirrored wrap-arounds that weren’t quite the ones that Cyclops wears in X-Men (a deliberate choice to pick the ones that didn’t look like the movie!) Then, in a last desperate attempt to stop me buying something that he thinks I look stupid in, Owen throws in ‘Well, if you’re determined to go for that style, at least find somewhere that sells real Oakleys instead of wannabes.’
I’ve never really been a Label Queen… but I fear that in the last year or two I have been showing tendencies in that direction. I’m sure it’s just a phase, but I’m big enough to admit to the fact that I might just be a little bit more attracted to the products of certain designers than is strictly natural. So Owen’s last gambit worked and I walked away from the mirrored shades.
There is a god, however, because on the way out of Macy’s we passed a whole cabinet of Oakley sunglasses and a pair were duly purchased.
Oh and Macy’s has got the most incompetent branch of Starbucks I’ve ever come across!
We wandered aimlessly for a while trying to decide what to do, shopping was definitely on the agenda as Owen is knocking down his lifelong ambitions at a rate of knots today, so the next was the purchase of a Ralph Lauren shirt. Options were mostly uptown Fifth Avenue… until he remembered a place he’d seen yesterday in Greenwich Village while out with Rob: A discount basement full of designer clothes.
I quite fancied seeing New York’s answer to London’s Soho, so we hopped onto the subway (which I’m at least finding navigable now, although still pretty bleak) and headed to Christopher Street. We found the basement and duly bought Owen’s shirts and few Kenneth Cole sweaters for me. (Remember, dahling, it’s not how much you spend, but how much you save that’s important! *grin*)
Greenwich Village I rather liked. It’s gay without being quite so brash about it as Soho. It was just another part of town. Most of the locals were almost certainly gay, but they weren’t calling it a lifestyle. There were guys holding hands but it wasn’t anything you wouldn’t see straight couples doing elsewhere. I think we probably both got cruised a lot more than we would in Soho where no-one would ever look at either of us. … Nice to have an ego-massage every now and then.
Just outside the Christopher Street subway is a small theatre showing ‘Naked Boys Singing’ which is a show I’d heard of somewhere (Although I just can’t remember whether it was someone raving about or slating it. Ah.) and on the spur of the moment, we booked tickets for this evening’s show. So that’s where we’re off to shortly.
Points of note from today: I’ve remembered how much I prefer pretty much any other country’s currency to the US. Here you pull a bundle of notes out of your pocket and you have absolutely no idea how much you’re holding. You have to flick through them all to find the $20 note that you know is in there somewhere. Why can’t they do different sizes and colours like the rest of the world??
Also, we’ve been Brit spotting.
I think I started it, but Owen quickly got into it too and it’s frighteningly easy. Just as Americans abroad have a certain ‘look’ about them, so do the Brits. Some are easier to spot than others and we are hoping that we are on the harder end of that scale. Although, it has been pointed out that wearing a camera around my neck as I stroll along the sidewalk carrying my bag from Macy’s is probably not a very ‘New Yorker’ thing to do. Ah, well.
Day Four (early)
OK, so by the time I'd finished blogging last night, Owen was asleep and the DVD never happened. I didn't last that long either.
I don't know if something happens around 4am which wakes me but, sure enough, that's when I first opened my eyes again this morning. Wide awake. Decided not to bother trying to sleep on, got dressed and took the camera for an early morning wander around Times Square. At this time of the morning there are certainly fewer of everything, but it's still brightly lit by the display screens and there are still plenty of people and cars about. The traffic is all taxis and limousines and there are more police per head of passersby than at other times, but it's certainly a city that never sleeps.
Alas, despite it being brightly lit, it wasn't bright enough for flash-free photography so my documentary urge got rather pissed-on by blurring and over-bright ambient light, but one or two of them might turn out to be usable. I wish I had the money (and the patience) to do this kind of thing properly with 35mm.
I've noticed that the policemen around New York all seem to have come from the same mould: somewhat overweight thirtysomethings. There is a definite caste to them which I haven't noticed in the Met. Maybe I shouldn't compare NYC with London, maybe I should visit a major provincial city like Birmingham before making comparisons. I've just had a look on the NYPD website (http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/home.html) to see if they had any statistics about the force and they don't. I did find some interesting advice for candidates about to take the physical entry exam though: Avoid junk food and concentrate on a well balanced diet for several days before the test. Obviously the rest of their lives doesn't matter so much; just the few days before their physical!
Hmm. I'm sitting here in a darkened room, staring at the screen thinking that I ought to have some pearls of wisdom to post about the New York experience... but I don't. It's a city like any other. It has its attractions and peculiarities. It is both familiar and foreign, often at the same time. I keep coming back to lyrics from a song by The Beautiful South which I used to use to sum up how I felt while touring: This could be Rotterdam or anywhere; Liverpool or Rome, 'cos Rotterdam is anywhere, anywhere alone...
And on that cheery note, I'm going to put my head down again.
I don't know if something happens around 4am which wakes me but, sure enough, that's when I first opened my eyes again this morning. Wide awake. Decided not to bother trying to sleep on, got dressed and took the camera for an early morning wander around Times Square. At this time of the morning there are certainly fewer of everything, but it's still brightly lit by the display screens and there are still plenty of people and cars about. The traffic is all taxis and limousines and there are more police per head of passersby than at other times, but it's certainly a city that never sleeps.
Alas, despite it being brightly lit, it wasn't bright enough for flash-free photography so my documentary urge got rather pissed-on by blurring and over-bright ambient light, but one or two of them might turn out to be usable. I wish I had the money (and the patience) to do this kind of thing properly with 35mm.
I've noticed that the policemen around New York all seem to have come from the same mould: somewhat overweight thirtysomethings. There is a definite caste to them which I haven't noticed in the Met. Maybe I shouldn't compare NYC with London, maybe I should visit a major provincial city like Birmingham before making comparisons. I've just had a look on the NYPD website (http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/home.html) to see if they had any statistics about the force and they don't. I did find some interesting advice for candidates about to take the physical entry exam though: Avoid junk food and concentrate on a well balanced diet for several days before the test. Obviously the rest of their lives doesn't matter so much; just the few days before their physical!
Hmm. I'm sitting here in a darkened room, staring at the screen thinking that I ought to have some pearls of wisdom to post about the New York experience... but I don't. It's a city like any other. It has its attractions and peculiarities. It is both familiar and foreign, often at the same time. I keep coming back to lyrics from a song by The Beautiful South which I used to use to sum up how I felt while touring: This could be Rotterdam or anywhere; Liverpool or Rome, 'cos Rotterdam is anywhere, anywhere alone...
And on that cheery note, I'm going to put my head down again.
Saturday, September 20, 2003
Day Three (Part II)
I have to be nice about Owen now as he's standing over my shoulder to see what I write about him... but ask me later and I'll tell you the truth!
There were half-hearted attempts to do something else with the day, but we were both too knackered. I napped for an hour while Owen blogged (http://o-ablett.blogspot.com) and then we went out to dinner. Well, okay, we went down to the lobby and ate in the very comfortable Charlotte Lounge, next to the extortionately priced restaurant that looks like it does fantastic food. Oh, well. One day...
I had a very tasty grilled vegetable wrap, but still came away feeling stuffed to bursting point. I spent a while listening in on the conversation at the table next to us: three ageing gay men exchanging anecdotes about their time in the military. Owen meanwhile inspected the crockery with his usual flair. It's Doulton apparantly. We are eating in a classy joint.
Headed across Times Square to the Renaissance Hotel where Ant & Keith should have checked-in this afternoon and left them a message.
Now just going to watch a DVD before heading off to bed.
Although on the way back to the hotel we noticed that one of the screens was advertising the new season premiere of The West Wing for Wednesday at 9pm! Wehay!! Don't imagine we'll be doing much apart from watching TV on Wednesday night. Hehehe!
... Now how much can I charge the folks back home for feeding them information on how it goes...?
There were half-hearted attempts to do something else with the day, but we were both too knackered. I napped for an hour while Owen blogged (http://o-ablett.blogspot.com) and then we went out to dinner. Well, okay, we went down to the lobby and ate in the very comfortable Charlotte Lounge, next to the extortionately priced restaurant that looks like it does fantastic food. Oh, well. One day...
I had a very tasty grilled vegetable wrap, but still came away feeling stuffed to bursting point. I spent a while listening in on the conversation at the table next to us: three ageing gay men exchanging anecdotes about their time in the military. Owen meanwhile inspected the crockery with his usual flair. It's Doulton apparantly. We are eating in a classy joint.
Headed across Times Square to the Renaissance Hotel where Ant & Keith should have checked-in this afternoon and left them a message.
Now just going to watch a DVD before heading off to bed.
Although on the way back to the hotel we noticed that one of the screens was advertising the new season premiere of The West Wing for Wednesday at 9pm! Wehay!! Don't imagine we'll be doing much apart from watching TV on Wednesday night. Hehehe!
... Now how much can I charge the folks back home for feeding them information on how it goes...?
Day Three (Part I)
Well it’s Saturday already and what have we got to show for it? Not a lot if I’m honest. A couple of grumpy Brits abroad seems to be all we’ve managed so far!
Anyway, slept better last night. I woke up about 4am but slept fairly well for a while after that, until around 6am. I managed not to spill any coffee over myself at breakfast this morning, although there was plenty of excuse for it, given the amount of chuckling I was doing: Apparently people are over-dosing on Over The Counter (OTC) drugs because they don’t read the label, so this morning’s health spot on the news amounted to ‘How To Read The Label’. Seriously. They told us about the dosage advice. They told us about the active ingredients. They told us about the meaning of side effects and contra-indications. They even told us about expiry dates. God Bless America? God Help America!
So on to the day. The only thing on the plan for today was a ‘vertical tour’ of the Cathedral of New York (St. John The Divine). According to the guidebook this takes you into the more interesting places higher up around the cathedral, as well as doing the standard ground-based things. Tour didn’t start until 12noon, so we decided to take the subway up to Central Park and walk northwards as the Cathedral is located just west off the north-west corner of the park on 112th Street.
I like Central Park. It’s well kept. It’s big enough that you can completely get away from the city and it’s full of trees so you can walk on shady pathways on a hot and sunny day like today – unless you particularly want to be in the sun, in which case there are also plenty of open spaces too.
There was some kind of charity run on, so the perimeter road (which is closed to motor traffic at the weekend) was filled with joggers as well as usual cyclists and rollerbladers. Nevertheless, the park didn’t feel full and it was an enjoyable stroll in fresh-tasting air.
In the end we had to take the subway again from 86th Street in order to make the Cathedral by 12. As we approached 112th Street though, we encountered a queue of Nepalese people, all in their smartest clothes, not to mention a variety of monks in mulberry robes. Apparently the Dalai Lama is speaking at the Cathedral tonight and they were already queuing to get in!
So we hurried to the desk: “I left a message earlier to book us on to the vertical tour. Are we too late?” “I’m terribly sorry sir, we haven’t run the vertical tour since the fire two years ago. We hope to restart it by January though!”
Ah. Looks like they updated the guidebook to reflect the WTC becoming Ground Zero, but missed a massive fire that totally destroyed the North Transept of the Cathedral… Oh well, always a fan of religious architecture, we duly donated our $5 and had a wander around. There was a service in progress, so to begin with we could only do the aisles and side chapels which were fairly standard stuff. I was surprised that, for a modern cathedral (only just 100 years old and still not finished building) it was remarkably dark inside. It’s also a catholic cathedral, so there was lots of incense about during the service. On the whole it rather reminded me of the old Cathedral in Valencia. I thought at first it was so dim because of smoke from the fire, but apparently not – it’s always been that dark!
The service was strange at first sight. I am not religious at all, but Owen is and he was quite surprised to find they were using same service, word for word, that is used in the UK Anglican church. I was rather surprised to see the guy with the incense swinger. Previously I’ve only ever seen them swinging them back and forth in an arc, but this guy looked like he was practising for the Olympic Hammer Throwing – he was flinging the thing around in all directions in complete circles.
Anyway, the service finished and all of the clergy (and there were a lot of them!) processed out… and then processed down the aisle, behind the choir and out in front of the altar again – where they got applauded by the congregation and lots of people rushed forward to take photographs. As someone whose experience of churches involves fairly conservative, respectful behaviour I was amazed. We later discovered that this was actually an ordination service for new members of the clergy and, in that light, it does make somewhat more sense but at the time we were both gobsmacked by it all.
Once the service was over, we wandered around the Choir and Chancel and the eastern-most chapels. We could also see the extent of the fire damage – and it was extensive. The whole North Transept was gone and the windows of the south transept (which was completely blackened) looked like they had been melted out. It’s difficult to tell whether the Choir (and organ!) had somehow been miraculously spared or had been repaired/replaced in the intervening time, but they were immaculate and very ornate.
As we were heading out from the Choir, Owen caught me and told me he’d just been cruised. (It’d never happened to him in church before, apparently…) I didn’t think any more of it until I got out of the Cathedral a few minutes later to meet up with him, after I’d spent some time photographing the West Window. He wasn’t there. There were hundreds of well-dressed Nepalese, but no Owen.
Well, to cut a long story short: I spent an hour and a half sitting on the Cathedral steps, clutching my phone in case I didn’t hear it ring, scanning the crowd, desperately trying to remember what he’d been wearing in case I had to file a Missing Persons report.
At the end of the hour and half, along he comes, a real happy chappy with a new friend in tow. Probably best that he did have the guy with him (Rob it turns out his name was and a very nice chap he is too) because if he’d been on his own, boy, would I have given him a rocket! Apparently they’d been around the corner in the Cathedral gardens at some kind of reception for the new clergy… in my naiveté I’d incorrectly assumed that “I’ll see you outside” meant that we’d meet outside the doors of the Cathedral where we’d come in. How foolish of me… (!)
Anyway Rob, it turns out, is quite a pleasant chap and we chatted for a while on our way to the subway. He had been conducting the choir who’d sung at the ordination in the Cathedral and, although a native New Yorker, has spent time in London and knows various music types at some of the Churches that Owen knows.
Our ways parted on the subway. I discovered that I’d been planning to spend the afternoon in Central Park, while Owen and Rob went downtown to go shopping. It seemed like as good an idea as any if I was going to be spending the afternoon on my own, so that’s what I did. I had a wander along Columbus Avenue off 72nd Street and picked up some burritos and fruit for lunch before heading back to the park.
After a leisurely lunch on the main lawn in the middle of the park, watching all the beautiful people enjoy themselves, I headed south again – past a soccer game on one of the dirt pits, which could easily have been anywhere in England except that the goal keeper was the size of Pavarotti and they kept calling out “Yo! Dude!” which rather destroyed the familiar image.
I avoided the subway on the way home. (I fear I am getting to actively dislike the New York subway.) Instead I walked down Broadway from Columbus Circus, past the home of DC Comics at 1700 Broadway, which was actually a totally anonymous skyscraper with nothing to show it was the home of Batman, Superman, et al. There wasn’t even a shop.
Anyway, slept better last night. I woke up about 4am but slept fairly well for a while after that, until around 6am. I managed not to spill any coffee over myself at breakfast this morning, although there was plenty of excuse for it, given the amount of chuckling I was doing: Apparently people are over-dosing on Over The Counter (OTC) drugs because they don’t read the label, so this morning’s health spot on the news amounted to ‘How To Read The Label’. Seriously. They told us about the dosage advice. They told us about the active ingredients. They told us about the meaning of side effects and contra-indications. They even told us about expiry dates. God Bless America? God Help America!
So on to the day. The only thing on the plan for today was a ‘vertical tour’ of the Cathedral of New York (St. John The Divine). According to the guidebook this takes you into the more interesting places higher up around the cathedral, as well as doing the standard ground-based things. Tour didn’t start until 12noon, so we decided to take the subway up to Central Park and walk northwards as the Cathedral is located just west off the north-west corner of the park on 112th Street.
I like Central Park. It’s well kept. It’s big enough that you can completely get away from the city and it’s full of trees so you can walk on shady pathways on a hot and sunny day like today – unless you particularly want to be in the sun, in which case there are also plenty of open spaces too.
There was some kind of charity run on, so the perimeter road (which is closed to motor traffic at the weekend) was filled with joggers as well as usual cyclists and rollerbladers. Nevertheless, the park didn’t feel full and it was an enjoyable stroll in fresh-tasting air.
In the end we had to take the subway again from 86th Street in order to make the Cathedral by 12. As we approached 112th Street though, we encountered a queue of Nepalese people, all in their smartest clothes, not to mention a variety of monks in mulberry robes. Apparently the Dalai Lama is speaking at the Cathedral tonight and they were already queuing to get in!
So we hurried to the desk: “I left a message earlier to book us on to the vertical tour. Are we too late?” “I’m terribly sorry sir, we haven’t run the vertical tour since the fire two years ago. We hope to restart it by January though!”
Ah. Looks like they updated the guidebook to reflect the WTC becoming Ground Zero, but missed a massive fire that totally destroyed the North Transept of the Cathedral… Oh well, always a fan of religious architecture, we duly donated our $5 and had a wander around. There was a service in progress, so to begin with we could only do the aisles and side chapels which were fairly standard stuff. I was surprised that, for a modern cathedral (only just 100 years old and still not finished building) it was remarkably dark inside. It’s also a catholic cathedral, so there was lots of incense about during the service. On the whole it rather reminded me of the old Cathedral in Valencia. I thought at first it was so dim because of smoke from the fire, but apparently not – it’s always been that dark!
The service was strange at first sight. I am not religious at all, but Owen is and he was quite surprised to find they were using same service, word for word, that is used in the UK Anglican church. I was rather surprised to see the guy with the incense swinger. Previously I’ve only ever seen them swinging them back and forth in an arc, but this guy looked like he was practising for the Olympic Hammer Throwing – he was flinging the thing around in all directions in complete circles.
Anyway, the service finished and all of the clergy (and there were a lot of them!) processed out… and then processed down the aisle, behind the choir and out in front of the altar again – where they got applauded by the congregation and lots of people rushed forward to take photographs. As someone whose experience of churches involves fairly conservative, respectful behaviour I was amazed. We later discovered that this was actually an ordination service for new members of the clergy and, in that light, it does make somewhat more sense but at the time we were both gobsmacked by it all.
Once the service was over, we wandered around the Choir and Chancel and the eastern-most chapels. We could also see the extent of the fire damage – and it was extensive. The whole North Transept was gone and the windows of the south transept (which was completely blackened) looked like they had been melted out. It’s difficult to tell whether the Choir (and organ!) had somehow been miraculously spared or had been repaired/replaced in the intervening time, but they were immaculate and very ornate.
As we were heading out from the Choir, Owen caught me and told me he’d just been cruised. (It’d never happened to him in church before, apparently…) I didn’t think any more of it until I got out of the Cathedral a few minutes later to meet up with him, after I’d spent some time photographing the West Window. He wasn’t there. There were hundreds of well-dressed Nepalese, but no Owen.
Well, to cut a long story short: I spent an hour and a half sitting on the Cathedral steps, clutching my phone in case I didn’t hear it ring, scanning the crowd, desperately trying to remember what he’d been wearing in case I had to file a Missing Persons report.
At the end of the hour and half, along he comes, a real happy chappy with a new friend in tow. Probably best that he did have the guy with him (Rob it turns out his name was and a very nice chap he is too) because if he’d been on his own, boy, would I have given him a rocket! Apparently they’d been around the corner in the Cathedral gardens at some kind of reception for the new clergy… in my naiveté I’d incorrectly assumed that “I’ll see you outside” meant that we’d meet outside the doors of the Cathedral where we’d come in. How foolish of me… (!)
Anyway Rob, it turns out, is quite a pleasant chap and we chatted for a while on our way to the subway. He had been conducting the choir who’d sung at the ordination in the Cathedral and, although a native New Yorker, has spent time in London and knows various music types at some of the Churches that Owen knows.
Our ways parted on the subway. I discovered that I’d been planning to spend the afternoon in Central Park, while Owen and Rob went downtown to go shopping. It seemed like as good an idea as any if I was going to be spending the afternoon on my own, so that’s what I did. I had a wander along Columbus Avenue off 72nd Street and picked up some burritos and fruit for lunch before heading back to the park.
After a leisurely lunch on the main lawn in the middle of the park, watching all the beautiful people enjoy themselves, I headed south again – past a soccer game on one of the dirt pits, which could easily have been anywhere in England except that the goal keeper was the size of Pavarotti and they kept calling out “Yo! Dude!” which rather destroyed the familiar image.
I avoided the subway on the way home. (I fear I am getting to actively dislike the New York subway.) Instead I walked down Broadway from Columbus Circus, past the home of DC Comics at 1700 Broadway, which was actually a totally anonymous skyscraper with nothing to show it was the home of Batman, Superman, et al. There wasn’t even a shop.
Friday, September 19, 2003
Day Two (part II)
Well, I napped for most of the afternoon. Owen went out for a walk. In the late afternoon we decided to head uptown to the Metropolitan Museum Of Art which is open late on Friday nights.
Neither of us was quite sure whether we liked it or not. While the entrance hall is fairly ornate, the galleries themselves are very austere with liberal sprinklings of Objets d’Art. We went through their Egyptian collection and the American Art rooms, but in most places it felt more like a museum than an art exhibit. There were reconstructions of whole houses. There’s a pavilion with a reconstructed Egyptian temple. In other areas, though, there just seemed to be a huge number of small exhibits with no information about them at all. The MMOA is a place for the curious to browse through, out of interest, on a whim. I think you’d need to buy a guide book or something if you wanted to study any of the styles or periods in a structured way.
After a while we got bored and headed home, picked up pizza and ate in our room in front of bad TV.
An interesting thought occurred during a coffee break at the museum though: we are both feeling ourselves becoming ‘extra’ British. I’m sure there’s a thesis for some psychologist in there somewhere about identity and insecurities, but I’ll leave that for someone else to explore – or at least save it until you’ve bought me a few beers!
Mobile phones in New York seem to be rare and comparatively large.
Humorous highlight of the day had to be seeing an exhibit entitled ‘Some of the crabs from Cleopatra’s needle.’ We weren’t quite sure what to make of that.
The jetlag is getting to us. It’s looking like we’ll both be asleep before 10pm tonight.
I’m missing Brett.
Neither of us was quite sure whether we liked it or not. While the entrance hall is fairly ornate, the galleries themselves are very austere with liberal sprinklings of Objets d’Art. We went through their Egyptian collection and the American Art rooms, but in most places it felt more like a museum than an art exhibit. There were reconstructions of whole houses. There’s a pavilion with a reconstructed Egyptian temple. In other areas, though, there just seemed to be a huge number of small exhibits with no information about them at all. The MMOA is a place for the curious to browse through, out of interest, on a whim. I think you’d need to buy a guide book or something if you wanted to study any of the styles or periods in a structured way.
After a while we got bored and headed home, picked up pizza and ate in our room in front of bad TV.
An interesting thought occurred during a coffee break at the museum though: we are both feeling ourselves becoming ‘extra’ British. I’m sure there’s a thesis for some psychologist in there somewhere about identity and insecurities, but I’ll leave that for someone else to explore – or at least save it until you’ve bought me a few beers!
Mobile phones in New York seem to be rare and comparatively large.
Humorous highlight of the day had to be seeing an exhibit entitled ‘Some of the crabs from Cleopatra’s needle.’ We weren’t quite sure what to make of that.
The jetlag is getting to us. It’s looking like we’ll both be asleep before 10pm tonight.
I’m missing Brett.
Day Two (well, half of it)
Bad night’s sleep. Woke up at about 02:30 and only really dozed after that. Managed to keep on dozing until 06:00 local time, at which point I got up and lurked around on the web for a while. The TV in our room doesn’t have a single non-american channel on it, so had to listen to the domestic CNN for news (and it isn’t a patch on their international service!)
All the headlines are about hurricane Isabel which hit the coast south of New York yesterday and overnight. Lots of pictures of submerged cars, felled trees and general destruction. Washington was closed down and the President retired to Camp David for the duration. Anyway, it meant the weather forecast for today in New York was hot but rainy. As it turned out it was dry and sunny, although the evaporating early morning rain gave the day an unpleasant humidity.
Breakfast in the hotel was a fairly basic continental breakfast while reading a free copy of USA Today. Again: it contained no meaningful international news, but I suppose the clue is in the title… Maybe I should spend some time analysing the UK news content when I get home just to see if we include any more international news in our output than the Americans do in theirs. My feeling is that we do, but that is maybe just because I’m not getting my daily expectation of (UK) domestic news.
Anyway, today’s plan was to do the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings this morning along with a trip to Macy’s, which is nearby. We wandered down Broadway to 32nd Street (with me snapping photos like a Japanese tourist all the way!) and got into the Empire State building. This is a beautifully grandiose Art Deco confection inside. Hard to believe it was built at the height of the depression (at least that’s what Owen tells me.) Unfortunately haze was limiting visibility to two miles, instead of the usual twenty-five, and because of the high winds only one side of the viewing balconies was open. We decided to buy our ticket now, but to use it on another day when conditions will be better.
That left us with the choice of what to do next. We’d picked up from the adverts in Times Square that Macy’s Sale starts on Saturday, so we decided to put that off too and instead we headed downtown planning to take the Staten Island Ferry out to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. So we bought our 7-day subway cards and off we went.
For some reason I was expecting the New York subway to be grander. I don’t know why I should have been thinking this because I’ve seen enough examples of its grim utilitarian design in movies to know better, but for some reason images of the Washington DC subway came to me and I was expecting wide marble hallways and artfully lit platforms. Instead the platforms are quite unadorned and functional. There is very little useful information about. The trains have plastic benches (which while not the most comfortable, make more sense than the London Tube’s upholstery!) but they are quite spacious and, because the subway is so shallow, air-conditioned. There is no ‘stand on the right’ system on the escalators which seemed strange. I’d hate to be in a rush to get anywhere!
Anyway, we rode the subway down to Battery Park on the south end of Manhattan island where we discovered that, due to the poor weather conditions, tours to the Statue and Ellis Island were not running. (As I suppose any forward thinking person would have guessed – but then we’re on holiday so we’ve switched our brains off.)
We consoled ourselves with an ice-cream. Owen found a lollipop in the shape of some currently fashionable cartoon character and insisted I take photos of him holding it, so that he could make his (student) sister jealous. I humoured him and ate my more traditional one which, I suspect from his expressions, tasted a lot better in the end.
There was quite a wind blowing in off the water but we nevertheless decided to take a wander along Water Street and see if we could find the Abercrombie & Fitch shop, which I knew was down there somewhere.
We could. So we bought it.
Lunch was next on the agenda. For some reason, Owen wants to do lots of American things (i.e. McDonalds, Wendy’s & Taco Bell) while we’re here. And before I could remember I had half of last night’s club sandwich foil-wrapped in my bag for just such an occasion, I was sitting down enjoying (an admittedly very tasty) Big Mac meal. Ho hum.
We headed back up town, coming back via Grand Central Station which is very impressive (and not a train in sight!) I stopped off for a haircut along the way from the station back to the hotel.
The plan for this afternoon had been to take an open-topped bus tour of the Island to see what else there was we might want to see. This idea quickly got dropped when we had a look at their website and discovered that the tours were $35 dollars a head and you’d have to buy at least two different ones to get anywhere near covering the whole Island. I remember thinking that £15 a head for the London tour was a bit much – but at least there was only one tour that did all the sights of the city.
So right now, we’re sitting down recovering from a morning’s walking in a windy humid environment, before planning what else to do. Maybe a quiet afternoon and then a cut-price show…
All the headlines are about hurricane Isabel which hit the coast south of New York yesterday and overnight. Lots of pictures of submerged cars, felled trees and general destruction. Washington was closed down and the President retired to Camp David for the duration. Anyway, it meant the weather forecast for today in New York was hot but rainy. As it turned out it was dry and sunny, although the evaporating early morning rain gave the day an unpleasant humidity.
Breakfast in the hotel was a fairly basic continental breakfast while reading a free copy of USA Today. Again: it contained no meaningful international news, but I suppose the clue is in the title… Maybe I should spend some time analysing the UK news content when I get home just to see if we include any more international news in our output than the Americans do in theirs. My feeling is that we do, but that is maybe just because I’m not getting my daily expectation of (UK) domestic news.
Anyway, today’s plan was to do the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings this morning along with a trip to Macy’s, which is nearby. We wandered down Broadway to 32nd Street (with me snapping photos like a Japanese tourist all the way!) and got into the Empire State building. This is a beautifully grandiose Art Deco confection inside. Hard to believe it was built at the height of the depression (at least that’s what Owen tells me.) Unfortunately haze was limiting visibility to two miles, instead of the usual twenty-five, and because of the high winds only one side of the viewing balconies was open. We decided to buy our ticket now, but to use it on another day when conditions will be better.
That left us with the choice of what to do next. We’d picked up from the adverts in Times Square that Macy’s Sale starts on Saturday, so we decided to put that off too and instead we headed downtown planning to take the Staten Island Ferry out to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. So we bought our 7-day subway cards and off we went.
For some reason I was expecting the New York subway to be grander. I don’t know why I should have been thinking this because I’ve seen enough examples of its grim utilitarian design in movies to know better, but for some reason images of the Washington DC subway came to me and I was expecting wide marble hallways and artfully lit platforms. Instead the platforms are quite unadorned and functional. There is very little useful information about. The trains have plastic benches (which while not the most comfortable, make more sense than the London Tube’s upholstery!) but they are quite spacious and, because the subway is so shallow, air-conditioned. There is no ‘stand on the right’ system on the escalators which seemed strange. I’d hate to be in a rush to get anywhere!
Anyway, we rode the subway down to Battery Park on the south end of Manhattan island where we discovered that, due to the poor weather conditions, tours to the Statue and Ellis Island were not running. (As I suppose any forward thinking person would have guessed – but then we’re on holiday so we’ve switched our brains off.)
We consoled ourselves with an ice-cream. Owen found a lollipop in the shape of some currently fashionable cartoon character and insisted I take photos of him holding it, so that he could make his (student) sister jealous. I humoured him and ate my more traditional one which, I suspect from his expressions, tasted a lot better in the end.
There was quite a wind blowing in off the water but we nevertheless decided to take a wander along Water Street and see if we could find the Abercrombie & Fitch shop, which I knew was down there somewhere.
We could. So we bought it.
Lunch was next on the agenda. For some reason, Owen wants to do lots of American things (i.e. McDonalds, Wendy’s & Taco Bell) while we’re here. And before I could remember I had half of last night’s club sandwich foil-wrapped in my bag for just such an occasion, I was sitting down enjoying (an admittedly very tasty) Big Mac meal. Ho hum.
We headed back up town, coming back via Grand Central Station which is very impressive (and not a train in sight!) I stopped off for a haircut along the way from the station back to the hotel.
The plan for this afternoon had been to take an open-topped bus tour of the Island to see what else there was we might want to see. This idea quickly got dropped when we had a look at their website and discovered that the tours were $35 dollars a head and you’d have to buy at least two different ones to get anywhere near covering the whole Island. I remember thinking that £15 a head for the London tour was a bit much – but at least there was only one tour that did all the sights of the city.
So right now, we’re sitting down recovering from a morning’s walking in a windy humid environment, before planning what else to do. Maybe a quiet afternoon and then a cut-price show…
Thursday, September 18, 2003
Day One
I chose a 10:25 flight because it wasn’t too early. What I hadn’t given a lot of thought to was getting to the airport, so when I actually worked it out, it turned out the alarm had to go off at 04:45. Oh dear. That said, we made it around the South Circular without any problems and got to Heathrow on time.
The flight itself was actually okay albeit 1° above comfortable all the way. It seemed a bit strange though that they advise you to set your watches to your destination time immediately to start combating jetlag, but then serve you meals appropriate to London. If I were being fussy (who, me?) I would complain about being served a full lunch at 6am and then afternoon tea at lunchtime!
JFK was a surprise. Very small and shabby looking – but it turns out that we were in the British Airways terminal, which I guess hadn’t been redecorated in a while. Anyway we made it into an airport shuttle bus and had a kind of mini-tour of Manhattan on the way to the hotel.
The hotel is very nice. We went for a ‘Premiere’ room rather than the standard. Partly because I’m sad and wanted complimentary high-speed Internet access and partly just because the looked like much nicer rooms. And sure enough it is a lovely room. Quite spacious with a view, very large TV, CD player and large bathroom with separate bath and shower. The style of the hotel is a modern Art Deco (which Owen is loving, because he loves Deco.) and the staff are all very helpful. I would recommend this hotel.
After we’d arrived and unpacked we went for a wander along Broadway (Times Square is at the end of our block!) That was when I started getting excited! It’s rather impressive even by daylight. After coffee and a pastry at Starbucks (yeah, I know, but Owen wants to do ‘American’ things!) we headed back to the hotel and started planning an itinerary.
We’re doing the early morning things while the jet-lag is in our favour, so it’s the Empire State building tomorrow morning along with a visit to Macy’s and the Chrysler Building. In the afternoon it’s a bus tour on a double-decker bus.
We had a very pleasant light dinner in the lounge bar of the hotel and spent a good hour or so blethering before a night-time walk around Times Square and then to bed.
Points of amusement today: Owen had to translate my accent to the guy serving us at Starbucks. I didn’t think my accent was that thick! Also, there is an office of the New York Police Department on Times Square. It has a flashing neon sign on it. Somehow, that just doesn’t seem right for a police station. Or am I not getting into the spirit of things?
Anyway, enough for now. More tomorrow.
The flight itself was actually okay albeit 1° above comfortable all the way. It seemed a bit strange though that they advise you to set your watches to your destination time immediately to start combating jetlag, but then serve you meals appropriate to London. If I were being fussy (who, me?) I would complain about being served a full lunch at 6am and then afternoon tea at lunchtime!
JFK was a surprise. Very small and shabby looking – but it turns out that we were in the British Airways terminal, which I guess hadn’t been redecorated in a while. Anyway we made it into an airport shuttle bus and had a kind of mini-tour of Manhattan on the way to the hotel.
The hotel is very nice. We went for a ‘Premiere’ room rather than the standard. Partly because I’m sad and wanted complimentary high-speed Internet access and partly just because the looked like much nicer rooms. And sure enough it is a lovely room. Quite spacious with a view, very large TV, CD player and large bathroom with separate bath and shower. The style of the hotel is a modern Art Deco (which Owen is loving, because he loves Deco.) and the staff are all very helpful. I would recommend this hotel.
After we’d arrived and unpacked we went for a wander along Broadway (Times Square is at the end of our block!) That was when I started getting excited! It’s rather impressive even by daylight. After coffee and a pastry at Starbucks (yeah, I know, but Owen wants to do ‘American’ things!) we headed back to the hotel and started planning an itinerary.
We’re doing the early morning things while the jet-lag is in our favour, so it’s the Empire State building tomorrow morning along with a visit to Macy’s and the Chrysler Building. In the afternoon it’s a bus tour on a double-decker bus.
We had a very pleasant light dinner in the lounge bar of the hotel and spent a good hour or so blethering before a night-time walk around Times Square and then to bed.
Points of amusement today: Owen had to translate my accent to the guy serving us at Starbucks. I didn’t think my accent was that thick! Also, there is an office of the New York Police Department on Times Square. It has a flashing neon sign on it. Somehow, that just doesn’t seem right for a police station. Or am I not getting into the spirit of things?
Anyway, enough for now. More tomorrow.
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