I’ve been in New York for work for the last two weeks as you should already know from Kat’s last post and happily she was able to join me for the second week. We had a great time visiting many of the typical tourist attractions together.
See her previous post for the details of the first two full days we had sightseeing. For the rest of the week, I worked all day while Kat worked mornings and acted like a tourist in the afternoons. That left the evenings free for us to pick off a few more sights. In order:
Tuesday: We took the Staten Island ferry across to Staten Island. Staten Island itself was nothing particularly interesting, the point of the ferry ride was to look at the Statue of Liberty in the harbour that you go past half way across. It was a very dark, stormy and rainy night, so not particularly conducive to good viewing, but we managed to get enough of an impression to be satisified. The highlight of the evening however was dinner, at a wonderful bar called “Garage Bar” near the bottom of 7th street where we had wonderful food and live jazz music led by Valery Ponomarev.
Wednesday: We had a quiet meal in our apartment and then ventured out to the Empire State Building around 9pm. We’d read that the queues were much quieter at this time and sure enough we got straight up to the top with no waiting and enjoyed spectacular views of New York by night and the many many aeroplanes that were visible every direction on the horizon. The only downside was that it was even more bitterly cold than we had expected which made leaving your hands exposed to take photos rather unpleasant!
Thursday: Another nice dinner with friends of Mum & Dads, Dawn and Jim. Dawn was Mum’s host sister when she lived in Illinois for a year way back when (not that long ago really, but before my time so it seems like a whlie ago!). They took us to a nice diner on Union Square with delicious food and apparently a visit by some well known comedian at one point in the evening, although he was unknown to Kat and I!
Friday: Halloween. The city was mad with people of all ages, colours, shapes and sizes dressed in all manner of costumes. Sarah Palin (and family) seemed to be a particularly popular choice. We ventured out to the Halloween parade which travels up 6th street, and was therefore pretty close to us. It was an amazing display of costumes and a tribute to just how many people can be packed onto a street. After being jostled and squashed for an hour or two we retreated back to our room.
Saturday: Our last day together in New York, we walked over the Brooklyn Bridge and spent the late morning and afternoon exploring the leafy tree-lined streets of Brooklyn. We found a nice little cafe that served a very tasty Spanish omelette with outside tables where we could sit and people watch before heading off to the airport via the slowest subway train ever to deliver Kat to her flight back to Dublin.
If the tone of the writing hasn’t tipped you off by now, I was pretty impressed with most aspects of New York. The food, people and scenery were all as interesting as I remembered from my brief visit last year and the weather was pretty good too. While it was definitely no longer summer and we saw some rain, there was also plenty of sun and it was often too hot to walk around wearing a jacket. Should the circumstances present themselves (unlikely) I think I could happily live there for a while.
Kat’s safely back in Dublin now and I’m over in California (Mountain View) for another week and half of catching up with colleagues at the Google “head office”. I’ll be back in Dublin on the 13th of November, just in time for our 4th wedding anniversary. I’m looking forward to being back, as much as I enjoy traveling and seeing new sights, it’s never fun being away there is no bed like your own bed.
We do have lots of photos, and I will get them up eventually, but they’re all on my laptop with me in California at the moment, so you might have to be patient for another week or two, Sorry.
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