Saturday. The Beginning
Saturday
Woke up super early again, but I really didn't have much to write down as I posted most of it yesterday. Friday closed with the return of Nancy's husband Jack from a business trip. Despite being very tired he stopped to have a brief friendly chat before taking himself off to catch up on some sleep.
As soon as possible I grabbed a brief shower.. It caught me out again but I got the hang of it fairly quickly. I got dressed and prepared for a day out in New York.
We drove to Hamilton station and caught the train shortly before 9 am to Penn Station New York. It was great on the train. It was nice to see ordinary Americans going off for a day in the city, to see all the interesting and infinite variety of faces mostly all smiling and happy about going out for the day. One thing that interested me was that the train guard who comes to check your ticket takes it away with him and doesnt give it back as they do in England. I figure it has to be a pretty easy system to cheat, but I dont know. The guard looked pretty scary, I wouldn't want to be on the wrong side of him.
At Penn Station we saw a security guy on a Segway.We got out and found a bathroom. The Toilets in the USA are really strange and dont feel at all private and you can see over them, under them and all around the edges of the door which is grim if you want any sort of privacy. I have been suffering severe bathroom anxiety and all these attendant problems. Why they are like this is anyones guess. I cant see any advantage to it at all and British women just would not tolerate it at all I am certain.
We left the station for a moment and took a photo or two outside. Then we went back in to ride the subway. We accidentally got the express, which didnt stop where we initially wanted to go but it didnt matter really, we just walked back over ground anyway. We spent all the day walking around New York. I guess we must have walked miles.
The first thing we did was get a bagel with cream cheese, which we ate in a pretty little area behind some tall buildings where there was a pleasant fountain and we watched the little sparrows cooling themselves in the water.
Walking on we saw a bookstore I think maybe Barnes and Noble? where I decided I would like to look for the USA DVD version of UHF.. the one with ALL the extras. Having seen them the other night I knew I could live without this item no longer and even though It will noy play on my home DVD it ought to play on my computer ok as that is US format dvd compatible. Yay!.
After that we went to Central Park and walked up to Columbus Circle, the entrance to the park and walked in. Nancy had never been before as mostly when she is in NY it is still winter and the park isn't as appealing.
It was stupendously HOT.. 91 degrees we saw on a Times Square billboard thing. The park was well shaded of course and it was just a great place. Reminded me a lot of the parks in central Southampton (bigger of course, but just as full of tramps on benches and people just sitting around reading, or jogging or cycling or whatever. It made me think of "Friends" and the dozens of movies I have watched featuring this location.
In Central Park there is a "Galloper"; an old fashioned carousel built in memorial to some poor mother's son. Nancy wanted to go on and persuaded me that it was stupid enough to be good fun, and so it was indeed. I loved particularly that the music for the ride was "Ding Dong, The Wicked Witch is Dead" and I spared a nanosecond of my life thinking evil of Margaret Thatcher at this point.
The carousel was enormous fun. Nancy and I have really hit it off I think and we just had a blast doing silly things. I ate something cold and very green, much to Nancy's disgust haha. I was really getting into the heat. I guess it was shortly before midday at this point. We left the park and rounded the corner and discovered that we had located the zoo. We watched the Llamas and some kids in the petting zoo playing with pygmy goats, but it smelled like poop so we moved on.
We walked all the way up 5th Avenue to all the prestigious places taking a few more photos. I really wish I had noted down all the places, but I didnt. Places I recall seeing are The Chrysler Building, Radio City Music Hall, Trump Tower and NYC Central library, but there were so many things. We walked down Broadway, and next to the theatre that is showing Mamma Mia currently was a MAD diner, Ellens Stardust Lounge, where the waiters did karaoke whilst waiting on tables. I just had an awesome choc milkshake, but Nancy had a quesedilla and something alcoholic. She also got sung to by a very gay waiter which was pretty funny. It was at this point I was very aware of being in an utterly foreign country and culture! LOL.
Walking through Times Square I got chatting to a guy handing out fliers. He was very impressed when I told him we were going to see Weird Al (twice) and wished he could come along. We talked briefly about Bill Bailey and the Jongleurs comedy club in the UK. It was a pleasant exchange with a very nice guy and we shook hands as we said goodbye. People here are so nice. We did see a whole load of police carrying big old machine guns which was kind of strange.
Nancy took heaps of pics of me looking very fat and ugly standing in front of various landmarks. I expect I'll have to spend ages cropping myself out of the pictures to make them presentable. What else did we do? We went to a cool street market which had a very festival feel and then went to the Waldorf Astoria hotel and used their bathroom which was very plush.
I will blog some more later as it's late and I have an early start tomorrow. Theres still a lot more of Saturday to go
After the diner we walked for a really long time, just talking and really getting to know each other. We went to Rockerfeller Plaza, and into the Met Museum of Art shop where I picked up some stuff I hope Jenny will like.
We went in St Patricks Catholic Cathedral and lit a candle each. I said a prayer for my family, for friends and everyone in general really and especially thanked God for my great good fortune in being in that place at all. I can't remember all the places we went though. Nancy occasionally goes to New York, but it is generally in the winter months so she hadn't done the park or the street market before,but she was pretty good at knowing where stuff was in general. We wandered around all day.. the Public Library, the Waldorf-Astoria. I ended up drinking a huge Caramel frappuchino, sitting on the tree shaded benches at the Lincoln Centre, listening to a soundcheck for a salsa-jazz band who were playing there later that evening.
It was idyllic, it was awesome, it might be the most fun anyone ever had aimlessly wandering around New York on a hot summer's day, with no agenda and no list of historic sights to tick off a list; just a perfect day spent with a warm, wonderful, intelligent and fascinating person in the most incredibly vibrant and exciting city in the world.
Ok so I did only see the Empire State building in silhouette in the distance as the train pulled into NYC that morning; I may have not seen the harbour or the statue of Liberty (we saw a performance artist dressed as that though), but I did get to chill with real New Yorkers in Columbus Circle, just being a part of it all, and feeling a part of it all right to my bones.
As evening wore on we went home, the train was slow and crowded but we didn't mind.
When we got to the car, the SatNav sent us all through Trenton NJ, but it was all fun.
It was something past ten pm when we finally arrived home. We had to stop at Wegmans for some things for Erin.
A quick shower and then I packed my case for today and went to bed.... I am so happy.
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