So good they named it twice

Thank you to Welshcakes for the invitation to guest-post on her blog while she is in Wales. I'd been thinking about what to write about when I suddenly realised that she'll back in Sicily tomorrow ... whoops. So here it is.

The day before Husband and I were to fly to New York Daughter phoned me.
‘Um … have you heard the news today?’ she asked tentatively.
‘Oh, yes,’ I sighed.
‘I was hoping you wouldn’t have done.’
‘Oh well, it can’t be helped.’
‘No, and it’s not likely to happen on two days running.’
‘What’s not?’
‘Another plane to New York crashing.’
‘WHAT?!!’
‘I thought you said you’d heard that Concorde had crashed on take-off?’
‘No, I meant I’d heard that Central Park was closed because of a mosquito outbreak.’

I hadn’t flown for over twenty years and with each successive year I’d become more and more nervous. The next day wasn’t the best day to be in Heathrow. Every newspaper carried a photo of Concorde exploding. Then when we finally boarded we were left sitting on the runway for two hours; the captain kept telling us, ‘There is a problem with the engine.’ Encouraging to know they were sorting it out on ground.

The main reason for our visit – and the reason why I’d persuaded myself to get on a plane – was for me to finish interviewing the ex-NY cop whose autobiography I was ghost-writing. The publishers wanted the manuscript by August and by June I still didn’t have all the material I needed. So there we were in New York City on some of the cloudiest, most humid days of the year.

We queued to go up the Empire State but when we were within seeing distance of the ticket office, they announced that the clouds had come back and there wasn’t any point going up if your main reason was to see the view. I suppose if you were going to jump or propose it wouldn’t matter but we were there for the view. We never got to see it.

While I spent two days locked up in a hotel interviewing Mikey, my cop, Husband, got to go up the World Trade Centre, see Grand Central Station and various other sights that he told me about.

What did I think of New York?

Well, everything is just so tall.

I know I should have expected it – and I did – but I didn’t expect to be so overwhelmed. I spent most of the time wandering round with my mouth open. I’d breathe, ‘That is so tall,’ then round the next corner there’d be an even taller building. It is truly awesome.

I’d like to go back some day.

Because of Blogger's strange handling of spacing I'll tell you here what everything is and hope you can work out what is what.

Top photo: view over south Manhattan from the World Trade Centre.

Next left: Twin Towers in the mist. Right: looking down from the glass floor.

Next: tall building.

Next left: St Patrick's Cathedral. Centre: Empire State Building in the mist and a brief glimpse of Macy's department store. Right: Chrysler Building.