Mulholland Wanderings

New York, New York!

And what a fabulous time we had. It was a bit of a last-minute decision (booked through last-minute even) when we were deciding on somewhere to go for Neil's birthday, but it turned out to be awesome.

My first impression was not so great - there was a lot of dirty snow around and there were few pretty buildings, just construction sites and scaffolding everywhere. New York grew on me however and I discovered there can be more to a city than 500 year-old buildings (like great yarn shops ;-) sorry, that slipped in accidentally)

Things New York does well:
- Steak. mmmmmmmm. We had one big 'splash out' meal and managed to spend over $300. Not so bad when converted back to pounds though.
- Street names. It may sound boring to number everything, but trust me it makes a big difference if you're a visitor. Not only do you know where you are and where you're going but even addresses make more sense as usually the cross street is given (there were, however, no signs in Central Park and we spent 20mins looking for Strawberry Fields.)
- Service. After becoming accustomed to the mediocre what-they-call service in London it was refreshing to have people actually trying to do a good job for you.
- Shopping. Was awesome - from the Louis Vuitton bags at Bloomingdales right down to $2 a pair socks at Century 21. We came home considerably heavier of suitcase and lighter of pocket.
- Clean air. No smoking in any clubs, bars or restaurants. Can't wait for it to come in here.

Things I wasn't that fussed about:
- The food. If you're not spending a week's salary on the meal then the food is kind of meh. I had a 'salad' which consisted mostly of dressing and cheese - the ingredients were good quality but just very rich. It was hard to get anything healthy. We found great beer-battered fish (and the cricket) at an Australian bar though :-D
- Traffic. Scary!
- Queues. Seemed like every tourist in NY was trying to get up the Empire State Building at the same time as us. Airport security meant it took us 2 hours to get through customs on arrival at JFK compared to about 20mins back at Heathrow. Security on the Statue of Liberty was stricter than at the airport! At times I wished very much I'd had my knitting ;-)

We did lots more New Yorky things, including visiting Brooklyn Bridge, a Broadway show - Stomp, comedy on Broadway, Ground Zero, Museum of Natural History, Wall Street, yellow cabs and cheescake. I forgot to have a bagel.

See all the photos, with descriptions, in the flickr gallery in the sidebar.

posted by dianemulholland @ 3:23 AM