No longer in America

Last night we had a pretty awsome evening in the The Village. The White Horse Tavern was charming and friendly, and I love the atmosphere of the area - it's my favourite part of New York I think. We ate at the Jane Street Tavern and had the most mellow Pinot Noir ever - with fish and chips. Very large fish and chips - there may have been three cod in there.

We walked all the way back. I'm not sure why, but wine may have been involved in the making of that decision. This morning my feet hurt. 

Staten Island was on today's agenda, but the downtown subway wasn't working. We knew this because we had been told there would be engineering works but went down to check after breakfast. There were four fire trucks and a fire car parked around the subway entrance, but we still went down to see if it was running anyway. We encountered a fireman, a strong smell of smoke and a sign that said the line was out of order due to engineering works. We came back up and admired many firemen standing around.

We debated walking, but did I mention that my feet hurt? So we took an alternative line which meant we had to change lines. It was a painless experience and I'm not really sure why we were worried about getting it wrong. We emerged right by the Staten Island ferry terminal and hot-footed it on board.  These ferries look remarkably like bright orange bricks, so taking a lovely picture of one was never going to be terribly attractive.

We only paid the briefest of visits to Staten Island, walking around the block. We saw the island's own memorial to the twin towers. Face silhouettes of Staten Island fatalities along with names, dobs and jobs make it more personal.  Such a shame that the beautiful and clever design is marred by the cheap construction and poor corrective repair. A lot of the harbour area is under construction, but we did identify a couple of grand looking official buildings as well as the Yankee's (Staten Island) stadium.

Seated on the front deck of the ferry on the way back, we were sharing a bench with a couple, when this large young man aimed his very large derrier at the three inch gap between myself and the lady next to me. He squeaked 'scuse me' while on his way down, although we had already moved apart rapidly for fear of being crushed.

He sat quietly until an older lady arrived, spotted him and immediately spoke in a very loud voice: "You did not just squeeze your very large bee-hind between those two nice people, did you? You did, didn't you? Did you at least say thank you?" He stuttered and squeaked: "Thank you."And she continued on. "And there's all that space on the other bench. There's all that space on the other bench and you still squeeze your large self in there?" I could go on... 

Back in Manhatten we searched for a cup of tea. Tea is quite hard to find in Manhatten. There are more variations of coffee than people there, but not tea. Our hunt took us to the seafront, then inland, and we encountered a wooden tugboat, a clipper, a lightboat and a street market selling creams, spiced cider and cakes. In Fulton market we finally located tea, as well as French vanilla coffee which tasted nice at the top, but less nice the further down the cup I got.

We decided to continue walking and passed many landmarks such as the Men In Black building (weren't expecting that were you?), Wall Street, Brooklyn Bridge, Law Courts, Supreme Courts, One Police Plaza, Municipal Building and the - seriously intimidating in an Azkaban way - Criminal Courts. This was not a place to be caught jay-walking.

There was some street entertainment involving some lads that were very enthusiastic and funny, and that we think were going to leap clear over the top of a line of six people. But ten minutes of standing in the cold without them even getting close to doing whatever it was they were going to do, we gave up waiting and so we'll never find out.

I didn't like Chinatown and never need to go there ever again. Heaving crowds, sticky fingers and bong stands were more than enough for me.  We got back to the hotel too early for our cab to the airport, so we diverted into the next door tavern for a final glass to say goodbye to the city that never sleeps.