New York, New York

As we left Washington, the Security Officer at the airport told us that “1 out of every 1 person in New York is crazy”.   Something to look forward to.

It seems that Mr President was so upset about missing us in Washington that he followed us to New York. He invited all his United Nations buddies along too, but in the end we were pretty busy so had to take a raincheck on a meeting with him. That’s our version of events anyway. The UN event meant that the streets were full of convoys of black SUVs with black windows – 160+ nations worth of men with curly wires coming out of their ears.  The only other vehicles on the road were yellow taxis, and every car wanted us to know that they have a fully operational horn.

Our hotel was ideally placed to be in the thick of the action, near Times Square. Times Square is an epileptic’s nightmare with strobing, flashing giant neon billboards that turned night into day. Large gangs of cartoon characters and Statues of Liberty roamed the crowd looking for suckers who wanted their picture taken for a fee.  

Times Square

To contrast the madness of Downtown, we sought refuge in the relative peace of Central Park, where we hired bikes and rode around for a couple of hours. I took time to have a short horse ride. 

We followed this up with a visit to the 9/11 Memorial, which is very simple and dignified – very moving, especially when there was a woman’s name, followed by the words “and her unborn child”.

Freedom Tower rises from the 911 memorial

The next day we visited the Statue of Liberty, a familiar symbol complete with size 879 shoes. Close up she’s huge, but compared with the rest of Manhattan she seems tiny. We endured endless “blah blah blah” about America’s freedom and equality – you would think from the way they were talking that America is the only country that knows of such concepts. Somewhat ironically, women were not allowed to attend the dedication of the statue. Please excuse my cynicism.

Big shoes to fill. This is how the copper on the statue would have looked when new

With Broadway around the corner, it would have been rude not to go. We saw the musical “Matilda”, based on Roald Dahl’s book of the same name. The lyrics and music were written by Tim Minchin, Australian comedian / musician, whose performances we have previously enjoyed.  Matilda was a super fun show, but a little scary for the young ones – the 7 year old girl in front of us spent a lot of the performance hiding behind her cardigan. Poor love.

I let Mike go to a Very Happy Place all by himself – the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, which had an aircraft carrier, a submarine and the space shuttle Enterprise, as well as many other exciting displays. He had a marvellous time, particularly in the knowledge that he could spend as long as he liked drooling over the displays without being hurried along.   In the meantime, I had a haircut and did a spot of shopping. For 6 months I had been promising myself a big shop in New York so I didn’t have to lug stuff around all over the US, but when it came to it, I didn’t find anything of interest.

One evening we joined a master class on queuing at the Empire State Building.  We had planned for a sunset view, but so had 25 million other people. So we queued for security, then to buy tickets, then to have a cheesy photo which they would sell for a motza, then to catch the lift to the 80^th floor, then the remaining 6 floors to the 86^th floor, then to get out of the door onto the viewing platform and then to get a spot near the balcony. Repeat the process to get back down but the return journey included a compulsory walk through the gift shop. We got a great view of the city eventually, but sunset was long over. Perhaps we should have started our journey before lunch to be there in time.

View downtown from Empire State

Chrysler Building

We went to a wonderful exhibition – The Art of the Brick – absolutely fantastic creations made from Lego. The artist was a corporate Lawyer but much preferred playing with Lego, so he’s made a career out of that instead. Of particular note were the Easter Island head made from 75,000 pieces and a dinosaur skeleton of 80,000 pieces. Very cool. Maybe that’s a career option for me now, with all the Lego Mike has given me for Christmas over the years.

We’re not sure that we agree that 1 /1 New Yorkers are crazy but it’s a close call.  I asked Mike what he thought of New York and he said that it’s like that crazy Uncle with a metal plate in his head, you put up with him because that’s just the way he is.

This is it folks. I am typing this in the departure lounge at JFK airport, as we are about to head home. In a final ironic twist, we hired a black SUV with dark windows to take us to the airport. The driver didn’t have a curly wire out of his ear though. Our epic adventure is at an end, after many fantastic months of seeing some really beautiful places, meeting all sorts of interesting folks and eating rubbish.  Thanks for sharing the journey, and watch out for the epic slide show coming your way. (Cue maniacal laughter).

So long and thanks for all the cheese on tap.