MONDAY 3rd

Our last full day in the USA and today was our trip out to New Canaan in Connetticut to see Chris Nielson and as the train trip was about an hour we got going quite early and headed for Grand Central Station having to squash into the Subway with thousands of workers heading into the city.
The Metro North train left bang on time and we headed out through the slums of Harlem toward Stamford which was our first stop. Sights along a railway line are never too good, but the filth and mess that we saw around Harlem were too bad to believe!!! What a absolute disgrace!!!!! Americans go on about all they have and what they do, and yet right in their biggest city is poverty worse than anywhere!
Thankfully we passed through there very quickly and as we headed northward into Connetticut the views became so much better. We were not far from the coast and got infrequent glimpes of the ocean, going through Stamford and on to our stop at Darien. 
The family Chris works for live in one of the wealthiest areas of the USA, surpassing even Beverly Hills in terms of wealth!!! Most of these people work on Wall Street in the financial sector and can anywhere between a quarter and a half a million dollare a year! The homes in New Canaan, Greenwich and Darien are magnificent, all on an acreage in classic US style and are almost all made of chipboard and shingle! In summer the manicured lawns around the homes would be beautiful but all we saw was knee deep snow and slush, which was disappointing but Chris took us on a great guided tour of the sights, stopping for a mandatory Starbucks in up market Greenwich and boggling at the fancy clothes the ladies were all wearing and at the endless paraded of flash cars! Every second vehicle was a Beemer or a Merc (mostly X5's and the huge GL series wagons) interspersed with Audis, Porches and odd Lambo or Ferrari! Wowser!!! It was a real eyeopener! The shops were all name brands and apparently the area is home to a few movie stars and socialites such as Ralph Lauren - according to our resident shopping and social expert anyway!!! We toured through some of the fine wooded estates, often a single entry served three or four houses, each on about a hectare, but none having any dividing fences! 
We stopped at Chris's home and for a look and were surprised that it was quite small - certainly compared to Australian houses - although two stories and a basement! The rooms were very compact and being all chipboard, footsteps and voices echoed loudly! We thought the "outdoor esky" they used for NYE very novel - bottles of booze stuck into the knee deep snow at the back step!! Good one!!!!
From there we drove back into New Canaan and had some lunch at one of Chris's favourite spots and then it was back to the station to say our goodbyes and head back to New York!
Once again Mumsie and I headed straight back to our apartment, leaving Jase and Kate to get some last minute things, our priority was to get all the stuff back into our cases and clean up! It didn't take too long to repack and once we had got the place ship shape we walked to the end of our street to a nice little Italian restaurant where we had a lovely farewell dinner!