Tuesday 12 September 2006
so tiring they named it twice
I’ve come to realize, in the form of being absolutely knackered (getting up at 4am this morning to go to Cleveland is not helping) that a holiday driving 850 miles around California and a weekend break in New York walking the long streets is not actually conducive to relaxing.
New York as always was fun to visit, we concentrated on spending Saturday in the Greenwich, Soho and West Village neighbourhoods, as they are areas I didn’t particularly know that well. The villages are home to expensive boutiques, cool bars, narrow streets with very n
ice apartments and eccentric New Yorkers but the highlight of the day was the 12 minutes we spent in a helicopter flying up the Hudson River looping the Statue of Liberty and flying back over the downtown and Midtown skyscrapers. Pure unadulterated fun for $11.50 a minute – expensive but worth it if one is willing to don a tourist cap and pay the price.
Saturday night was spent drinking in the Meatpacking district, an area I originally came across on my first visit to New York about 11 year
s ago, when a friend and I found myself in Hogs and Honeys late one night. And finally on Sunday we strolled around Central Park before a delayed flight back to Chicago.
The whole reason for going was to attend the US Open Tennis on Friday. Flushing Meadows, like most sporting arena’s in the US is huge and purpose belt with comfort and hot dogs replacing tradition and strawberries. It certainly wasn’t Wimbledon but it was a great experience in beautiful weather and only encouraged me to one day see the other two Grand Slam even
ts in Paris and Melbourne.
In the two women’s semi-finals we watched Justine Henin-Hardenne fight back to beat an unfortunate Jelena Jankovic and eventual winner Maria Sharapova (is she really good looking or just the best of an ugly bunch), who surprisingly didn’t appear to find an awful lot of favour with the locals, beat Amelie Mauresmo. ¶ 22:13
I’ve come to realize, in the form of being absolutely knackered (getting up at 4am this morning to go to Cleveland is not helping) that a holiday driving 850 miles around California and a weekend break in New York walking the long streets is not actually conducive to relaxing.New York as always was fun to visit, we concentrated on spending Saturday in the Greenwich, Soho and West Village neighbourhoods, as they are areas I didn’t particularly know that well. The villages are home to expensive boutiques, cool bars, narrow streets with very n
ice apartments and eccentric New Yorkers but the highlight of the day was the 12 minutes we spent in a helicopter flying up the Hudson River looping the Statue of Liberty and flying back over the downtown and Midtown skyscrapers. Pure unadulterated fun for $11.50 a minute – expensive but worth it if one is willing to don a tourist cap and pay the price.Saturday night was spent drinking in the Meatpacking district, an area I originally came across on my first visit to New York about 11 year
s ago, when a friend and I found myself in Hogs and Honeys late one night. And finally on Sunday we strolled around Central Park before a delayed flight back to Chicago.The whole reason for going was to attend the US Open Tennis on Friday. Flushing Meadows, like most sporting arena’s in the US is huge and purpose belt with comfort and hot dogs replacing tradition and strawberries. It certainly wasn’t Wimbledon but it was a great experience in beautiful weather and only encouraged me to one day see the other two Grand Slam even
ts in Paris and Melbourne.In the two women’s semi-finals we watched Justine Henin-Hardenne fight back to beat an unfortunate Jelena Jankovic and eventual winner Maria Sharapova (is she really good looking or just the best of an ugly bunch), who surprisingly didn’t appear to find an awful lot of favour with the locals, beat Amelie Mauresmo. ¶ 22:13
