Ah New York.  'Tis an exciting place.

For starters, the flights were superb.  The kind people at British Airways prepared me by playing the whole of Dark Side Of The Moon repeatedly, then Qantas pleased me on the way out by playing a video of the 2002 Glastonbury Festival, where Roger Waters finished his tour.  They only showed Money from his set, but it was good.

In New York they don't drive on the right hand side of the road, they drive in the middle.  In fact, it would seem most drivers don't know their left from there right.  Our shuttle bus driver certainly didn't, as we went the wrong way out of the airport.

New York is at first sight very unimpressive.  It's dirty, the traffic is terrible, and the people were all incredibly unfriendly.  I later realised that most New Yorkers are super helpful, and it's only those in the service industry who are rude (it doesn't make any sense).  Once I'd been there a while I warmed to the place, as there is a lot of stuff going on.  As some guy told us when we had the Lonely Planet out - "Dis is New York.  You can't write down what you lookin' for."

Navigating around Manhattan is very simple.  If you're on 42nd street going to 34th street, you'll work out by the next block if you're going the wrong way.  However the subway is not very user friendly.  By the time we left we'd educated a number of locals on how to use their own train line.

The Empire State Building is very high (no matter what fact books tell you, it's higher than the Twin Towers, which aren't very high at all).  Times Square is colourful, 5th Avenue has lots of shops, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of Non-Objective Art is circular, and Central Park is in the middle.

Jo got incredibly excited by the clothes shopping, which, in New York,  seems to be what you do.  We also stalked Bruce Willis for a while (who looked and talked just like Drew Barrymore, but I wasn't fooled).

All very exciting.

I'm home now, living at my new address - 31A, No Fixed Abode, Sydney.  Off house hunting I go.

Cheers,
Wally