I heart New York

yeah, i know its corny, but thats kind of what it felt like being in NYC.

Well, not exactly corny maybe but... hmmmm, what on earth do I mean?
It felt the way I expected it to feel from all those iconic images and film & TV sequences: glamorous and exciting, buzzing, familiar whilst also being foreign, full of energy - tall loud lairy and all lit up.



Actually, I've just googled "lairy" as I'm never sure whether to spell it lairy or lairey.
And I have doubts now about whether this is an appropriate word as all the definitions seem rather negative. I didn't mean it at all in a negative way: I meant "in your face", up-front, self-assured, full of energy, non-apologetic, a little stroppy maybe... [lets not get started on definitions of stroppiness]...but in a good way
.
My google search defined lairy as to do with lurking and hairiness. Well, thats a revelation to me.
"mis-behaving and prone to deceit". Oh dear, thats not at all what I meant.
"My bunny is a bad lairy-sauce." ???? I have no idea what that means. Bunny? what bunny????

Well, even after a brief discussion with M - who understands the term as primarily negative - I'm keeping it in. I am a native speaker of English, and my usage partly defines meaning.
So there.
Is that lairy of me, or what?




We arrived at the hotel at around 9pm and though it was around 2am for our London body clocks, we had a preliminary wander around the streets, picking up on the way delicious home-made burgers from a little place around the corner. Betty had some kind of salmon burger, and I had a portabello mushroom burger which was absolutely delish. We walked a few blocks, ooo-ing and aaah-ing over the not-too-distant Chrysler building and the actually-pretty-close Empire State building. Me more than Betty, who'd been here before.

Evening was a great time to arrive in NYC, the city looks so impressive at night. During the week we took a Circle Line evening cruise around the island, watching dusk fall over the Statue of Liberty, transfixed by the golden evening sun shining back from the thousands of bright towering windows - and gradually all the lights coming on and reflecting on the water. Impressive and also beautiful.

Day 1 we had some booked "events" - it was great to be partly "led" on our first day. Especially as I had woken up rather early, in accord with British summertime, and stayed awake...
In the morning we joined a walking&food tour of Greenwich village - 3 hours of walking and tasting and looping round about and back again to Bleecker St. Highly recommended.

We ate canoli for the first time, the last of a series of samplings of local and typical and cross-cultural specialities. We compared notes (Betty and I, not the whole group) on the conformity of other tourists in the group to their national stereotypes - by which I mean, of course, our stereotyping of their nationalities. We thought we could have identified the other 3 Brits as Brits from some considerable distance. I wonder if they thought the same about us?

We'd walked to the meeting point from our midtown hotel and walked back after the tour - we walked and walked so much in our 4 days, its hard to imagine a better way to see New York - and I just loved the diversity of the city.

Which does seem like a prosaic and obvious thing to say, I suppose any city is diverse - its certainly one of the things I love about London. Maybe its something to do with the way the city is contained by the river, combined with the "image" of New York, which makes it seem particularly notable.
I'm sure some Brits, at least, think of NYC only in terms of Times Square and, maybe, 5th Avenue. Greenwich Village is so different, and Madison Square park - and Alphabet city and Tribeca and and and..


...and I just opened my NYC guide to check how to spell Tribeca, and an unexpected dogwood petal fell out...

which has me remembering all the blossoms and trees and colours of the city in Spring sunshine. A few of my favourite things.... but i'll save favourite things for another post, this one is getting rather lengthy.



To finish though, I do have a few pictures - from my trusty little compact camera. Being so compact, it was in my bag on the plane and hence not left behind and, being so compact, it was the camera I took to Broadway on the Monday evening where Gary had left tickets for us, bless his sweet heart.

We saw this:




































I was told off - along with many many other people - for taking photos inside the theatre. I received 3 tellings-off during my trip, this was the first.













































I had no trouble staying awake or getting to sleep that night. Or waking at British-summer-breakfast-time the following morning...

adrenalin can be a great thing and I have no doubt that NYC is one of its primary catalysts.
[i mean that in a good way.....]