New York 2007

Wednesday 7th

Frantic packing and delicious food. Being me, I left the nasty stuff till last so I was left to frantically pack and iron before the big trip to New York. In between that I cooked a delicious lamb loin with roast vegetables. We saw an onion pumpkin (Squash) in Waitrose so decided to get one and see what it was like too. Not bad at all. Then ice-cream.

Thursday 8th

Wanting to get the most out of our time in New York I booked an early flight out to NY that meant getting up at 5:15 to get picked up and driven to Heathrow. We arrived with plenty of time to spare so all was well.

Security was tight and included an extra step just before the gate which included taking my smelly shoes off for them to inspect. Poor girl. Ha, ha! Then we boarded the American Airlines flight and prepared ourselves for the 7 hour flight.

Everything was pleasant and we had loads of room. The TVs in the back of the chairs we a good size and I watched Rocky Balboa and Déjà vu. Both not particularly good but they seemed to entertain me enough and stem the boredom.

We eventually landed and had our finger prints taken before going through customs and grabbing a yellow cab. (A major disappointment was that there we didn’t see any of the old style cabs, I think they have been phased out).

The trip from the JFK to the hotel was traffic ridden but we didn’t care as it was exciting taking in the skyline and the different sights.

Our hotel was good. Great location (one street up from the Empire State in-between 5th and 6th Avenue), pleasant insides and a lovely bed. Struggling to resist the temptation to go straight to bed we ventured out into the busy streets of New York.

One thing I noticed about New York was that the light was entirely different. It seems to be a much brighter bright. Except for one morning for the whole holiday the skies were the brightest blue. That said, I think I experienced the coldest temperatures I’ve ever felt. -15 degrees C (not including wind chill), for the first two days.

We walked down to Greenwich and had a good mooch around, eventually finding a café for a bite to eat and to get out of the freezing weather. Later on we headed back up to the hotel to get changed before eating at the restaurant next to the hotel. Then a well deserved early night.

Friday 9th

April’s 25th birthday! After giving April her present (necklace and earrings made by Harriet) we headed to do a bit of shopping. Or more precisely, April headed out to go shopping, I headed out to get tagged along.

Highlights include, looking round Tiffany’s, getting lunch in Bloomingdales, horse and carriage round Central Park, seeing the polar bears in New York Zoo, ice skating, got a rickshaw then having a look round Time Square.

Saturday 10th

The morning was devoted to mostly shopping but included lunch a Sachs and in the afternoon having a look round the Museum of Modern Art. We then went back to Grand Central to go to a fancy oyster bar that was too busy to go to on Friday.


Sunday 11th

In the morning we went to the Empire State Building, the view was tremendous on the 86th floor (it goes higher than 100 floors up) but I was left feeling a little annoyed by the whole process of security checks and constant annoyance of people trying to sell you stuff. After that we went to Macys then got a cab down to the South of the Manhattan to catch the ferry to Staten Island and get a view of the Statue of Liberty. We then went to a pub back in Manhattan then on to a comedy club then went home for an earliyish night sleep before the flight home the next day.

Monday 12th

Again an early flight, but we made it easily enough, not nearly as much security coming back and a much quicker one at that. It probably took around 6 hours. Then cab back to Putney, ordered a Chinese takeaway then an early night.

Tuesday 13th

Boo, hoo, hoo! I don’t want to be back at work!!!

I really recommend everyone to go to New York. It is a great place with lovely people. They’re really friendly and very helpful. I’m not 100% sold on the whole tipping culture but it seems to work and once we got used to it, it didn’t really bother us.