Uptown and Queens

Dave and James left New York on a Delta Airlines flight to Paris yesterday evening. I have yet to face wrestling with the futon to get it back into its incarnation as a sofa, and at present it's halfway between the two in a bizarre, skewed and leaning identity crisis.

We all had a lot of fun over the last week or so, and took more photographs than I would have thought possible in the time...

But in the short time we had available, we did a fair amount of New York stuff, which I enjoyed enormously - not just because of the presence of friends I've known since the start of High School, but because it did me good to look at New York through the eyes of those who are eager to see and experience and learn about the city, just at the point in time when I was beginning to settle and be content with that which I've been shown or told or the things I have discovered myself.

We ate...well.
In amongst the week's worth of meals were two of the best pizzas in the city according to different sources - Grimaldi's under the Brooklyn Bridge and a little family run place on Broadway and 102nd, (the name of which escapes me for the moment) Junior's Cheesecake, claimed to be the best in the world, burgers at Island Burgers and Shakes, also occasionally rated as the best in New York, a delicious, MSG-free Vietnamese feast at Saigon Grill and last but not least, lasagne cooked right here at home by Krissa.

In terms of the big tourist sights, we cruised past the Statue of Liberty on the Staten Island Ferry, we watched the sun set over New Jersey and the city's lights flicker to life from the top of the Empire State Building, and we nosed around Grand Central Station and got strange looks from passersby as we explored the quirky acoustics of the place. We munched franks at Gray's Papaya and sauntered around St. Marks, playing Space Invaders and buying socks. We strolled around The Village, crested rocks in Central Park, tiptoed through St. John The Divine, and strode across the Brooklyn Bridge.

On New Year's Eve we ate Chinese food and went to a marvellous party thrown by friends, and at midnight we all piled up the stairs to the roof of their apartment block and watched fireworks explode over the vista of Manhattan's skyscrapers and the lower buildings of Brooklyn. Krissa and I kissed at midnight and looked up across the city, sharing the moment with a grinning Dave and James.

It was great to have them here, and I'll admit, I felt a bit homesick when it was time to say goodbye, but at the same time, they've made New York feel even more like home to me.

Good times.