TUESDAY

Our flight to New York was over very quickly - only 55 minutes and we had a bit of a treat because when we did our online check in there were very few seats left - Greg and Jasmin got two together but Sue and I were rows apart so I asked at the departure gate if we could change seats with someone and as we boarded the clerk gave us new seating together up the front with huge amounts of room! Once again score one for Rosey and his sweet-talking ability!!!
It wasn't until we got the shuttle to our hotel that we realized we had made a serious blunder - we had got the Best Western staff at Niagara Falls to book rooms for us close to the JFK airport because we have a pretty early flight to San Francisco on Friday and the traffic in New York is horrendous - but our hotel turned out to be just about in the airport grounds! It was newly renovated and you couldn't hear any airport noise, but there was nothing but industry around us and no food or anything! We couldn't get a reasonably priced room in the city because of an All Star baseball game - the cheapest were around US$250 so here we were stuck in the middle of nowhere.
There was a free shuttle to a nearby station to get into the city but it only ran in the morning so we got a taxi there and oh boy what a sight!!!!! I don't reckon the taxi was even registered (more about the taxis later) but we got dropped in the grottiest looking area ever!!!!!!!!! There were 15 cop cars outside the station and the streets around were awful!
However we got the train into the city - a lovely old West Indian guy helped us get the right tickets and wanted to talk cricket with us "Arssies" - and when we emerged from Penn Station 20 minutes later we were totally gob smacked! What a sight!! All of us had a life long image of New York in our minds and we were not prepared for the noise and throng of millions of people. We knew it would be busy (summer holidays etc) but this was ridiculous! The pavements were chock full of tourists, businessmen and women, gays, trannies, you name it they were there!!! I was blown totally away! The skyscrapers lined all the streets which were filthy and full of rubbish bags and dirty stalls and the smaller buildings were brown and stained with all the pollution from all the traffic. My initial reaction was "Get the Hell out of here" but we fought our way along 7th Avenue to the Empire State Building and joined the queue for a ride to the top! An hour and ten minutes later we finally got out of the elevator and goggled at the almighty view of New York! It sure looked good from 1025 feet up and it took a while to let it soak in that here we were in the Big Apple!
Down again and we elbowed our way along the streets (it was 6.30pm, but the peak hour goes until 8.30) until we found a bar and got a much needed beer - US$7.95 for a middy thank you very much - and then found Maceys food court where we a bite to eat before catching the train back to Jamaica Station and finding a taxi. The drivers were all hawking from the front of the station and we chose one who led us to a battered old Lincoln and took us back to the Best Western for 15 bucks. By this time it was 9.45pm and we were still dumbstruck so it was a shower and off to bed.
                                    

WEDNESDAY

Our shuttle took us back to the station again this morning - we couldn't get the train until after the end of peak at 9.30am as the peak fares are expensive - and again joined the 5.5 million souls who work on Manhattan Island each day!!!!! Last night we had bought hop on - hop off bus tickets so we boarded a double decker and set out to see the city. The traffic snarl meant the bus averaged walking pace but the guide on board gave us a colourful commentary on everything we passed. We got off at Ground Zero at spent some time feeling the raw emotion that echoes from this horrible spot. Construction is proceeding with two new towers that will be twice as high as the Twin Towers that fell (one wonders about the wisdom of this), but we got very close to the pit and just stood and imagined what it would have been like to have seen what happened on that awful day. 9/11 has changed the USA for ever - before it they could fly all over the place without any formal security at all - and now they are subject to ridiculous levels of screening and searching where ever they visit.
We had pondered last night as we stood on top of the Empire State Building what it must have been like to see those planes fly into the tower - there must have been hundreds on that building alone on the day - but to be right there and see all the buildings that have been repaired close by was something I will never forget. 
          

We saw lots of attractions including Wall Street and the famous bull, and we toured the whole city, Lower, Mid, and Upper Manhattan, Soho, Greenwich Village, China Town and Harlem and the more we saw the worse the impression was!!! Now that probably sounds like a disgruntled Rosey being a long way from home and being a bit negative, but we all felt the same. The famous name brand shops in Uptown were all fantastic inside but on the street outside were bags of stinking rubbish a metre high and street stalls selling cheap hats and tee shirts etc. What a contradiction!!!!!
                                  
                        
Anyway you can easily gather that New York is not my favourite spot and by the time we had got back to the hotel at 9pm again it was a place I would rather not be!!!!

THURSDAY

Our bus tickets included a harbour cruise to see the Statue of Liberty and so off we went into the city and duly got our trip, which was well worth it as Liberty is something we all want to see. 
               

                                                      
                                                                                                             
It was interesting that since we were in town early-ish (10.am) the place was a lot cleaner with none of the stalls and none of the rubbish and there was nowhere near the amount of traffic but it was still brown and dirty and not really very attractive. Of all the places we saw on our tours the only area I can say I enjoyed was the few blocks around Times Square which had real glitz and a bit of style. The people of New York are as different as chalk and cheese, the definite class structure of the USA is never more evident than here. Women in the latest fashions wobble down the uneven sidewalks in 5 inch stillettoes, men sweat in suits, tourists wander about in anything you can describe and the poor make do with what they can, meaning they sell cold bottles water at every corner or beg or hawk whatever they can lay their hands on.
I have never seen such a mixed up, hotchpotch of population ever, which is not surprising seeing that 35% of the people are not native Americans.
We got our train home early today (3.30pm) and when we went to get a taxi???? from Jamaica Station we had the most hillarious ride you could imagine. As we walked out of the station a bloke ran at us and offered us a ride - we replied we wanted a black taxi (as the bloke at our hotel had suggested) but this bloke was persistant and eventually we agreed to his request and he led us to a totally battered Toyota Corrolla of about 1990 vintage!!! God help us! I guess we should have run off there and then but we squashed in and were treated to the most hair raising ride ever. Nothing worked on the dash (it wasn't a taxi anyway - no meter or anything), there were no door handles inside, no seat belts and naturally no air-con! The driver took off at about 80 mph and weaved his way to the hotel in record time, driving with one hand, no use of indicators and swapping lanes on the six laned freeway at will! There was no time to do anything but laugh as he overshot the street we are in and dumped us a few hundred metres from the hotel!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Such is New York! My only advice to visitors to the Big Apple is to save a harder, pay the ridiculous amount for a hotel room in Manhatten and get the $50 PROPER shuttle into your hotel...... Lesson learned!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!