you never forget your first time...

Sunday morning, and I woke up in Abby's studio with her cat Slinky sleeping on my feet. Slinky has an odd habit of hanging around under the dripping faucet in the bathroom, so she has a very damp head usually. No jokes about damp.... er.... cats, please...

The night before Abby had waited for me at Penn Station in mid-town Manhattan. Our train was successively delayed by fastidious border guards and heavy rain (wow, a train that can be delayed by rain... that's something we don't have back home... leaves maybe... but rain...?) but we eventually made it in around an hour behind schedule. I didn't have a guide book with me (despite the best efforts of RAB back home...) so I let myself be led by my genuine New Yorker friend. She came up trumps, and took me through a torrential downpour to the 'best pizza restaurant in New York' - Grimaldis, right under the Brooklyn Bridge in Brooklyn. The pizza was indeed amazing...

So the next morning... From the apartment we picked up bagels and coffee from a little deli round the corner, and Abby headed off to work. I walked just one block west, and found the Brooklyn Heights promenade, where I caught my first glimpse of the famous Manhattan skyline. Arriving by night and heading out to Brooklyn by subway meant I missed the full force of the experience... wow ... :-) With New Yorkers jogging by, I just sat and ate my bagel looking at the skyscrapers, most of them with their tops hidden in the low clouds.

I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge, and then up Broadway as far as Times Square. That was a long walk that took a few hours with odd stops that didn't even get me near Central Park - but what a way to spend my first day in New York. The movies and television programmes that illustrated my childhood were telling the truth: the taxis are big and yellow; steam does rise from man hole covers in side streets and the buildings are feckin' huge.

Today I just meandered... a flaneur down from Montréal for the weekend. Maybe tomorrow I'll do the determined-tourist routine. Until then I'll just carry on tripping out on the feel of the city. A very happy James...

*j*