New York City > Reviews > Noo Yawk, Nooly Revisited, Nooly Updated

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Full review

When I first wrote about New York some 13 months ago, it was subsequent to a 5-day break over the New Year of 2002/2003, so the whole thing had an air of ‘New York as a New Year destination’. Now that I’ve been there twice, having got back today from a 5-day February half-term break, I’ve decided to add in my new experiences, to make this more of a city guide, rather than a ‘what I did over New Year’ holiday diary (even if it did get a diamond!)

GETTING THERE – Virgin Atlantic v. American Airlines – A Clash Of The Tight ‘Uns?

a) Last Year With Virgin

Q: Are you fond of your knees, but feel you ought to get to know them better from close up?

A: Fly Virgin

We live near Heathrow, so it naturally becomes our preferred point of departure, and one from which Virgin Atlantic operates. Their latest advertising was boasting that they had “first dibs” on the new 4-engined A340 Airbus, the world’s longest commercial aircraft – don’t be misled by the latter. This leads to more rows of seats being crammed into Economy, NOT more legroom. The seat pitch is down to 30”, about the same as most charter flights (and worse than some!), and I’m over six foot in height. Need I go on? Still, I should have guessed that with a name like Virgin, something was going to be tight.....

b) This Year With American Airlines

My God what a difference a year and 4 inches make (now then, keep it clean, Chris). The AA Boeing 777, the world’s largest twin-engined plane, really came as a pleasant surprise after last year’s leg-knackering ‘trial by reclined seat’. Not only did the seats allow reclining without crippling your fellow passengers, but also you could actually eat from the tray in front of you without asking the traveller in front to sit upright. How did I establish this? By typing ‘airline seat pitch’ into Google and drilling down from there. AA’s 34” spacing really is a godsend is you’re tall. Of course if you’re shorter, then none of this applies and if you see a low fare, grab it!

FROM JFK TO NYC

Last year, to get from JFK, we used the NY Airport Services Shuttle bus, which ferries you to the north end of Park Avenue South, right in front of Grand Central Station and thence by feeder minibus to your hotel – in our case, a distance of about 200 yards, much to the amusement of the other more knowledgeable passengers!

However, this year, we knew that we were arriving too late for the last shuttle bus (especially if US Immigration take longer than usual, i.e. two hours instead of one), so we arranged for chauffeured limo hire, using the shuttle bus service for the return journey. Costing around $46, limo hire compares pretty well with a Yellow Cab, and there’s a sporting chance that your driver might even know where you want, or even speak English, (even if ours was Russian). Anyway, turning up in a swanky glossy black Lincoln Town Car (the bare bones of a stretched limo, without the ‘stretch’ bit) adds a bit of style to arriving at a mid-town hotel, and makes it much more likely that the doorman will fetch your bags.

Alternatively, JFK now has a shuttle train service interchanging with the Subway lines. This sounds fine, but as with the Heathrow Piccadilly Line link to central London, this involves arriving in downtown Manhattan with luggage on the Subway. You’ll see when I write about this later, that this is not your most user-friendly option with heavy suitcases.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK, (The Dutch Connection)

Firstly, despite what New Yorkers would have you believe, it isn’t the capital of its own state, let alone the USA – the World, yes, maybe. The capital of New York State is Albany if you must know.

Yeah, yeah, I know - it’s “so good they named it twice”. Apart from the original natives, New York has had many “owners”, predominantly Dutch, British, Dutch and British colonists in that order. The Dutch called it Nieuw Amsterdam, only to be forced to capitulate to British sovereignty by the forces loyal to The ‘Grand Old’ Duke of York. The last incumbent Dutch governor, one ‘Peg-Leg Pete’ Stuyvesant, of “smokes” fame, was allowed to retire to his estate (‘bouwerij’, I think it’s spelt). This area’s name is preserved, if anglicised, as the Bowery District. The Dutch did regain the colony briefly only to lose it by peaceful means again. To this day, New York City contains many traces of its Dutch past, for example Flushing (the town in The Netherlands now known as Vlissingen), and Harlem (Haarlem). Even Coney Island gets its name from the Dutch for ‘rabbit’, and as Mattygroves reminded me, there’s Nassau too.

THE BRONX IS UP, AND THE BATTERY’S DOWN

Mention New York to most visitors and their thoughts will turn to Manhattan Island alone, and then probably only the southerly half of this 13-miles-long-and-2-miles-wide piece of real estate. NYC does in fact comprise five boroughs, curiously only one of which is actually on the US mainland. This honour falls to The Bronx, which lies to the northeast of Manhattan, separated from it by the Harlem River. Queens and Brooklyn both lie on the western tip of Long Island, with Queens to the north of Brooklyn. These two then lie to the east of Manhattan across the East River which flows down the eastern side of Manhattan, meeting up again with the Hudson River which flows to the west of Manhattan.

If the truth is known, The Hudson is the only actual river of this trio. The Harlem River is just the Hudson’s attempt to cut another channel, and the East River is really just the narrowest part of Long Island Sound – it’s no more a river than The Solent is. The odd man out is Staten Island, which lies some distance off to the southwest of Manhattan, reachable by ferry from the southern tip of the island or, by road-bridge across the Verrazano Narrows, which form the throat of New York Harbour, from Brooklyn. Verrazano was the first European navigator to realise the potential of New York’s immense natural harbour.

So you see, the Bronx really is “up”, and the Battery (Park), near the Staten Island ferry terminal really is “down”.

Most people will have at least heard of Manhattan’s grid system - streets running east-west, usually numbered from the south “upwards”, and avenues running north-south, also usually numbered from the east “sideways”. There are several exceptions to this. Notably in the southern tip around the business district, streets cross streets, and there are even some roads not called “Street” or “Avenue”! Some avenues are named, and break the numbering scheme, like Park, Madison and Lexington Avenues whilst some are named AND numbered like 6th Avenue, aka Avenue of The Americas. The most famous delinquent is Broadway which shuffles diagonally across downtown Manhattan, crossing 7th Avenue at such an acute angle, that the ensuing diamond-shaped space created is known as Times Square (previously Longacre).

Even in the regular grid section, one length of a numbered street will attain a soubriquet, like the stretch of 46th Street named “Restaurant Row”. When navigating for yourself or asking directions, make sure that when someone tells you that your goal is on 42nd Street, you hone this down with “on the corner of what?” Equally, if someone tells you to go to 28th Street by Subway, beware, there are probably four stations all called 28th Street.

THE PEOPLE RIDE IN A HOLE IN THE GROUND

The New York Subway, like the London Underground is a tourist “must” and mental challenge all rolled into one. On the face of it, navigation shouldn’t be that bad. It has the same colour-coded diagrammatised map format as London’s metro. All the signs are in English. A Fun (?) Day Pass for the entire network including buses will only set you back $7 ($4 last year) Where you can come unstuck, especially if you’re a “leave this to me, I’m good with metros” kinda person, is finding yourself on the wrong platform.

Now in London, this is not much of a snag, since there will always be a way of rectifying this, normally without going back into the street. Not so on many of NYC’s many minor stations. You have to KNOW whether you want Uptown or Downtown before going downstairs. One hint – the trains drive on the same side as the cars. Trying to extricate yourself from this confusion can lead to your ticket being locked with a “Just Used “ error message showing up, once at the correct gate. Something else to watch out for since London has nothing like them - Expresses! You don’t just have to know which way you are going but whether you can make good use of a limited-stop up-or down-town Express, without being “shanghai-ed” and carted off to Harlem when you only wanted to get to the other end of Central Park.

To be fair, in several days usage, not once did we hear those dreaded words “Due to a signal failure, trains are terminating at….”, and once you get the hang of those Expresses, they’re the only way to travel. 35mph for 2 miles at a time is somewhat faster than the road traffic above is going, believe me!

Oh yes, I nearly forgot – “NEVER Mind The Gap”. On the few stations built on curves, “The Gap” is taken car of. Once the train has come to a halt, the worst of the overhang is bridged by metal combs, which slide out from the platform edge, laying a kind of retractable gangplank to the doors in question – neat eh?

Be warned – as with London, not many stations are at all wheelchair-friendly, but the platform edge is pretty well lined up with the floor level of the trains. However, stairs, particularly the ones leading straight from a platform a frequently VERY steep, making you feel like more like you’re on board ship rather than dry land.

The tickets are a tough plastic affair, and with the exception of One-Day Passes, can be re-used and topped up at automatic ticket machines. Many of these have run out of change at weekends and will then not take bank notes but they will, however, take credit cards IF you know the PIN number. The assistant’s booth will not dispense day passes, only single/double journey tickets. In such cases, I’d buy a $2 single journey and try again at the other end.

By the way - yes, you can still “Take The A-Train” as the song goes.

I WANNA WAKE UP IN A CITY THAT DOESN’T SLEEP

Of course, GETTING some sleep in a city that doesn’t sleep would be a fine thing.

First time round, we stayed at The Roosevelt, a newly refurbished 1920’s hotel on the corner of Madison Avenue and 45th Street. This was a mere stone’s throw from Grand Central Station, and therefore very convenient for the Subway. First impressions of The Roosevelt are, well, impressive, with a huge classically styled lobby two storeys in height surrounded by a mezzanine balcony. All is brass and marble. There is even a wonderful old glass-fronted chute for anyone too lazy to come all the way down from the 17th floor to post a letter. I waited for days to witness the terminal velocity of a skydiving envelope, but to no avail.

The room was competent, but despite the best efforts of the double-glazing, outside noise was prevalent 24/7. New Yorkers are a ‘horny bunch’, particularly if you have the temerity to double-park for a nano-second, say, whilst dropping a hotel guest off, and it’s not just a little toot either. A full continuous blast until the obstruction is cleared is the only thing that works, so it seems! Unfortunately, we were only seven floors above all of this. Still, at least we still had our Virgin earplugs – pauses for joke about “tight fits” again.

We only ate continental breakfasts at The Roosevelt, but even so, these were about £12 each when all was added up. Mind you, I did load my cereal plate up with the most enormous loganberries I’ve ever seen and went back for more, before tackling the other fresh fruit and yoghurts. I’m going to go off on my pet rant now. Why is it, when in the land that gave us cattle-drover's campfires and a never-ending coffee pot that the coffee tastes of F.A.? I begin to see why they put the fire out with it. It’s just some soluble vegetable matter, guys! You put enough of it into hot water, and then it tastes nice, see? – well, that’s the theory. Footnote: The Roosevelt’s bar does a humungous Club Sandwich, which we ‘revisited’ this year.

This year, we stayed at a smaller hotel in a similar location (44th Street near 5th Avenue) called The Mansfield – initially we were booked into the Radisson Lexington, but after reading 90% bad reports of it on www.tripadvisor.com, we contacted our booking agent, Expedia, and made some rapid alterations to a hotel that had 90% good reports instead, and what a relief it was to find that we hadn’t gone from the frying pan to the fire. The Mansfield is a little gem, little by US standards anyway, only having slightly over 100 rooms. The building has been lovingly and sympathetically restored, and decorated to a high standard. Rooms are surprisingly small, especially the bathrooms, but the whole ambience and the inclusive breakfasts endeared us to it, despite the occasional shortcoming. The staff were a slightly offbeat bunch, being dressed entirely in black, from shoes to polo-neck sweater. I half expected them to start carrying out a mime against a black background. In rebooking, we somehow got transferred to a suite, which meant that we got a lounge too, with yet another TV in it. Oh yes, and we managed to get some sleep as we’d requested a quiet room, this one facing inwards towards the light well. True to form, the coffee’s crap.

WALKING IN A WIENER WONDERLAND - EATING OUT

NYC is probably the most cosmopolitan place in the western world. Every imaginable cuisine can be found here, but unlike the usual “gut-bucket” approach of quantity v. quality so often encountered elsewhere in the States, don’t expect “proper” dining to be cheap. Its starts out LOOKING like it’s cheap, but then there’s 8% Sales Tax and the expectation that you’ll give at least a 15% tip – US waiting staff depend heavily on tips for their income. Some of their hourly pay rates make our minimum wage look utopian, so I’m a subscriber to the “when in Rome” principal.

To be fair, we had some excellent dinners both last year and this time around, particularly at Da Rosina in “Restaurant Row” or Dano in 5th Avenue, but got little change from £60 for two at these and at some other quite ordinary-looking eateries, despite only having individual glasses of wine to keep the cost down. Of course, New York is also famous for its sidewalk vendors, pushing a wide variety of tasty snacks from hot pretzels (the real ones) to hot dogs so you don’t have to wait till you’re starving before partaking of some well-timed in-flight refuelling. In theory, this should keep the cost of your evening meal down. In practice, you just get fatter by eating both. I did, along with a lot of native New Yorkers too, by the looks of things!

For sheer value-for-money, we surpassed ourselves this year, with a huge Greek-style lunch at The Tramway Diner, near the Roosevelt Island Tramway. With drinks, this came to the equivalent of about £12 for two including 8% tax and that hefty 15% tip.

PEOPLE TO SEE, PLACES TO MEET

One little gem we stumbled upon before leaving for New York the first time was the “Big Apple Greeter” organisation. They will assign you your own personal living breathing New Yorker for 2-4 hours just to give you the feel of the place. Our lady, Doris, came to our hotel and showed us around – we’d already been out during our first whole morning there, so we were able to take advantage of just having a local to talk to rather than sticking to some prearranged itinerary. Doris came equipped with two Fun-Day passes for us – we already had our own, so we kept them for the following day before activating them. The Greeters are a completely free service and, get this, you’re NOT ALLOWED to tip them. We rode buses up to Central Park and went over the Brooklyn Bridge on foot, which has to be just about the best free view of the Manhattan skyline. The best views of Manhattan are to be had by standing back from it – you’ll only see the “canyon” you’re in when you’re there.

Another excellent and free view of Manhattan can be gained from the Staten Island ferry, which leaves from one end of Battery Park. For a good close up of the Statue of Liberty, stay near to the starboard side of the boat as it leaves. It doesn’t pass so close on the way back, so get your pictures of the green lady on the way out. On the way back, the Manhattan skyline presents a breathtaking view even after the sad loss of the twin World Trade Centre buildings.

Not quite free is the Roosevelt Island tramway, but for $2 each way, it’s as good as. Despite its name, this is a Swiss-style aerial cable car from Manhattan to Roosevelt Island in the East River. On the way over, there are stunning and somewhat dizzy views of the Queensborough road bridge, which is right next to it.

So in addition tramping streets, eating out and navigating the Subway, here’s what else we did.

ELLIS ISLAND & STATUE OF LIBERTY – These are two small islands in NY harbour, now part of a National Park. Ellis Island’s former use had been as a post for the processing of immigrants, sometimes as many as 12,000/day in the years before WWII. It closed in 1954 to be left to rot. It has now been restored as a museum to immigration. Although entry is free, subject to a “conscience box”, it’s well worth the extra $5 to hire the taped commentary as you circulate through this impressive building. You can only start to imagine the wonder and trepidation of the newly landed immigrant. About 2% were weeded out here and sent home, after the “six second examination”. Doctors would wait at the top of a staircase to see who was out of breath or limped. Then they would undo shirt collars to check for goitres or throat tumours. Everyone got a coded chalk mark on their sleeve for further processing. If all this sounds brutal, bear in mind the numbers being dealt with, in God-knows how many languages. To be fair to the illiterate, they devised IQ tests that didn’t require literacy, so as not to mark someone mentally deficient just because they couldn’t read English.

You get to Ellis Island on a ferry from Battery Park. This also calls in at Liberty Island, home of the eponymous statue. We didn’t get off there, as security measures put in place, prevent anyone from going up the inside of the statue, and quite frankly, if you want to get a good photo of the Statue, the island isn’t big enough to allow you to step back far enough – well not with my camera it isn’t. On the water is a much better place.

THE FDNY MUSEUM – this is a well thought-out tribute to the “other New York’s Finest”, and since “9-11”, I shouldn’t think there are many people who have never heard of them. Entry is free with a “conscience box”. Exhibits range from actual fire vehicles to insurance company seals, in fact they have a whole wall of British ones. Of course, no public service museum in New York can be without its “9-11” memorial tribute, and it is particularly fitting that the FDNY should have one, since they lost nearly 360 good selfless people on that awful day. It is even more tragic to pass a real Fire House and see the plaques representing the loss from each station, some whole families of brothers.

On a lighter side, an excellent quality gift shop is included – my wife now sports an FDNY T-shirt with “Keep Two Hundred Feet Back” on her back. Good advice, especially if you know her! I must admit that in my experience of all “official” souvenirs, they are all good quality.

To this day, I still get a thrill of vicariously borrowed pride every time I see a FDNY machine going into action, horns blaring at all that dare to block its path.

THE NYPD MUSEUM - here again, “9-11” is much is evidence, as 23 officers were lost during the building collapse of the Towers. The NYPD must be about the most famous police force in the world, thanks mainly to the TV & movies, and this museum provides a fascinating insight into the development of the force to the issues they face today. Some of the gang-warfare confiscated weapons are just too horrible to describe. Yet again, there is no compulsory entrance fee, but it is suggested that $5 would be about right.

GROUND ZERO – I hesitate to include this as a tourist attraction, since part of me wanted to be there just to take in the enormity of what happened, and the other half of me, the bit that refuses slow down and gawp at motorway accidents on principle, didn’t. The former won. Of course, 16 months on (Jan 2003), the hole was exactly that, a square gap where New York’s two largest buildings used to stand. For me, the real miracle, apart from the fact that the towers stood long enough for thousands of people to get away safely, was that the two tallest buildings in New York fell vertically into such a compact space. The consequences of them toppling sideways like felled redwoods doesn’t bear thinking about.

The one thing I found hardest to take from this visit, was not the contemplation of what had happened there, but the fact that street vendors were selling the tackiest of “souvenirs”, including New York car plates with the word GROUNDZERO emblazoned on them. Now, I’m not a particularly religious or spiritual person, but the need to “throw the money-lenders out of the temple” seems to be as good a parallel as any!

SHOPPING – Ah yes, the legendary retail therapy. In short, I went into Macy’s, the world’s largest department store, was totally unimpressed and left without buying anything. This store is too big and old-fashioned for its own good. If anyone remembers Gamages in Holborn, with its seemingly never-ending maze of connected rooms, then multiply this by 5 and you’ve got Macy’s – a few more centrally placed store guides might have been a good idea, chaps! Also the layout didn’t make for easy browsing, there being no-one single place where, for example, all the men’s trousers would be. Oh no, you have to KNOW whether you want “Donkey & Gobby”, or “Gloriously Gerrybuilt” first. Then all you have to do is find a bloody store guide. Mind you, their themed window displays were a delight, all based upon the Muppets. Bloomingdales was OK I guess, but there’s only so much aftershave a lad needs, and even then, people buy it for me. One look at the store guide told me that there wasn’t a TV/hifi/photographic section so I buggered off out of there, PDQ.

THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING – In our first visit, we were very upset to have missed this. We only had one day in which to make the visit, and the queue, being an American holiday too, was enormous, stretching down 34th Street to Macy’s almost. This year, I’m glad to say, we pulled it off. Getting there at 9.00 am helps since it doesn’t actually open its doors, or rather, elevators until 9.30, but having a ticket by then helps a lot. Our ticket included a seat on the SkyRide, an audio-visual presentation culminating in one of those ‘moving seat’ dynamic rides filmed from a helicopter as it whirled around Manhattan. Whilst in the queue, I was amused by a whole series of adverts relating to the diversity of the people of New York. One in particular, depicted a whole line of bearded smiling men in black hats with a technical-looking shop’s counter behind them. The caption read ’You don’t have to be Jewish to own a camera store – but it can’t hurt!’ I just couldn’t see the same thing happening in London without some humourless do-gooder complaining.

As you can imagine, the view from the 86th floor is breathtaking. Even in the era of the Twin Towers, the ESB was still the place to be, partly because it was still the tallest building in this part of the city, the finance district being at least a mile away. I managed to shoot some really good movie footage of the view looking DOWN upon the superbly-adorned Chrysler Building. Having read a book on the subject, it appears the builders of the Chrysler building were hasty in declaring the total height of their building, thinking that a stainless steel spire would top the declared 86 storeys of the proposed ESB by a couple of feet. Then the ESB’s builders added a twenty storey ‘Zeppelin mooring’*, and the rest is history as they say. The ESB reigned supreme from 1931 right up to 1973.

*Needless to say, the Hindenberg disaster at Lakehurst NJ threw a new light on the wisdom of just such a facility, and apart from a couple of extremely hairy abortive docking trials, it was never used. It seems that no one had taken into account the unpredictable nature of air turbulence.

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY – this is a museum on the traditional scale, with amazing dioramas of scenes from plains and forests, all with stuffed animals posed showing that they had no idea that an American millionaire was about to shoot them, and donate them to a museum. To be fair, the museum have done a lot to make it less like a tribute to safari hunters and more as an educational facility. The section on world religions is excellent, and whole galleries are devoted to native Americans.

THE GUGGENHEIM – what a let-down, for me at least. I’ve no real interest in the contents, but I did SO want to walk around the famous spiral, taking in the works of art as I went. Bugger me , it was closed off for decoration (Feb 2004), so all I got to see were a couple of annexes filled with precisely what I hadn’t come to see and lots of guys with buckets of white emulsion doing stuff on the bit that I wanted to walk through. So THAT’S why the tickets were discounted!

USS INTREPID – A naval museum with a difference. This one is an aircraft carrier, well mostly, although you can also visit the USS Growler missile-carrying sub and normally, the destroyer USS Edson but this has disappeared for the moment (Feb 2004), giving way to a barge with one of British Airways’ Concordes on it! (Yes, why DOES the very city that banned them get to put one on show?) The hangar decks of the carrier form the lion’s share of the museum, but it’s only when you get on deck that you can take in the sheer agoraphobic awe of being on a 900-foot runway that maniac/brave naval aviators* landed on at 180 mph (I don’t suppose it looked big from where they were sitting). The deck has many interesting exhibits including some British, French, even a Mig-15 and the Blackbird spy plane, capable of flying at 95000 feet at 3500 mph. Intrepid has a distinguished history from several Pacific battles of WWII and even bears a commemoration on the spot where a Kamikazi plane knocked out an entire gun turret killing the gunners. In later years, its chopper crews were responsible for plucking several astronauts and capsules from the sea.

*Never EVER call these guys ‘pilots’ – see ‘Top Gun’ and ‘The Right Stuff’.

Incidentally, buy a Citypass for $45 instead of paying for all of these – the ESB/SkyRide alone cost $24. This gives entry to not only The Empire State Building, but also the National Museum of Natural History, The Guggenheim, Aircraft carrier USS Intrepid Maritime Museum, a Circle Cruises 2-hour harbour tour and The Museum of Modern Art (temporarily moved to Queens – we didn’t go there. If you found the Tate had gone to Chingford, would you?)

BROADWAY – Well, no, OFF-Broadway actually. First time around we didn’t catch anything, apart from a cold, but this time we went to see a production at the Astor Place Theatre called The Blue Man Group. This is ‘performance art’ by three guys, all with bald blue heads. Strangely enough, this makes their eyes extremely expressive, important, as they say nothing for the entire one hour forty. I can’t really go into detail except to say that the front four rows of the audience are all given ponchos to wear in case they get wet (!), and it’s probably the funniest most inventive thing I’ve seen in years. The theatre is in Lafayette St.in ‘The Village’, close to Astor Place Subway station. Early arrivers can sneak a free look at magazines in the in-store Starbucks in the Barnes & Noble bookshop – it seems that most of NY’s high-school kids are dojng their homework research in there too! Also, the nearby Time Café is a good eatery both for pre- or post-theatre; probably the only place I’ve ever been asked how I’d like my grilled salmon, err…’grilled’ maybe?

HA-PPEEE NOO YEAR!!!!!

Now for the pièce-de-résistance of our first visit, our night-time harbour cruise on New Year’s Eve. This did not start well for me. It was starting to look like every other river-boat disco I’ve ever been on, but things improved. For a start, we weren’t “freezin’ our asses off” in Times Sq. along with ‘0.75 megapersons’ – far from it, we had to keep going out onto the open decks for air. From there the skyline was stunning. We cruised under the Brooklyn Bridge, and out into the harbour, where, at the stroke of midnight, a firework display that would put most cities’ Millenium displays to shame started. Imagine the sight, all manner of pyrotechnics with the Statue of Liberty for a backdrop. Heady stuff! Then every ship in the harbour let rip with its siren! We got off the boat at around 1 a.m. and walked right across from Lower West Side to Midtown East Side, issuing and getting back the occasionally slurred “HA-PPEEEE NOO YEAR!” to passers-by. It really was all very good-natured and not a bit scary. What was scary, was trying to cross Times Sq. an hour after most of the crowd had gone, but only because you risked getting bulldozed along with the litter! The Circle Line cruise wasn’t cheap, but what is on New Year’s Eve? However, for $100 each, we got an inclusive buffet and an ever-open bar, plus of course, a view that is the envy of the world.

THEN OF COURSE, THERE’S JUST ‘BEING THERE’

As well as all these one-off attractions, part of the thrill for me, is merely ‘being there’; standing on one of the entrance balconies to Grand Central Station and marvelling at the calm bustle going on around me; picking any old bar and ordering a drink – forget Hollywood, this is where all the beautiful girls/aspiring actresses are, serving drinks in New York bars! The innate friendliness of just about everyone (enhanced since 9/11/ I’m told) is everywhere. On entering the Natural History Museum, we duly lined up to have our bags checked. The first lady behind the counter let out a huge impossible-to-stifle yawn.

‘Had a good Valentine’s Night, did we?’ I asked, to which she burst out laughing as soon as the yawn would allow. Her colleague butted in with ‘Well, honey, I went to bed EARLY, so there!’ to which I interjected, ‘Well, that’s nothing to be boasting about!’ They both broke out in hysterical laughter with a ‘Get outta here!’ for good measure. All great fun, as long as you’re prepared to be cheeky back! Just don’t joke about having a bomb in there – some twat did that already!

SOMETHING WE NEVER GOT TO SEE OR DO

Central Park – OK, we skirted round it and took pictures from the edge, and even got to site on a bench in the sun IN IT, after the Guggenheim debacle, but never actually got to take one of those horse-drawn carriage rides or get mugged. Whilst on the subject…..

MUGGING UP ON THE SUBJECT

We took three guidebooks with us, The DK Guide, The Time Out Guide, both of which are excellent in different ways but a bit bulky to carry around all day and the book that really did impress, and I’d recommend it to any NYC (mainly Manhattan) visitor is the Penguin Mapguide (ISBN 0-14-029459-7) @ £5.99 in the UK. This is a slim book of 64 pages, containing not only large-scale maps of (mainly) Manhattan Island, but also a Subway diagram and just about as much detail as you need to locate, and more importantly, decide if you want to go to, NYC’s various attractions

FOOTNOTE: Since 01/01/03, a new force of Transportation Security Administration officers are searching all bags being checked in, either by manual means, backed up by "explosive sniffers", or by a fully automated process.

People with heeled shoes may be asked to remove them and put them through the usual X-Ray machines. Some of this delays check-in so allow more time to get to the airport.

You are advised to leave baggage unlocked, because the TSA reserve the right to open it, and so the chances of your bags being intact at your destination are enhanced, by leaving them UNlocked!

We when we got home yesterday, we found a note INSIDE one of our cases from the TSA, letting us know that had we locked it, they wouldn’t be held responsible for damage. I thought it was funny it had a blue seal on it at the Heathrow end! 

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Liberty From Staten Island Ferry