Background
For more than thirty years we spent Christmas in Blackpool staying with Lesley's mother, Margaret. Now sadly Margaret is lying in a care home with severe dementia.
George is doing his own thing so in 2015 we decided to spend a few days in Weymouth over Christmas. This was fine except that on Christmas Day we could not find anywhere for lunch.
So for 2016, I decided that we would stick to the seaside theme but go to a seaside place where we would be sure of finding food on Christmas Day. New York City sprang to mind.
A Norwegian Air Shuttle Dreamliner took us from Gatwick to JFK. I had not realised that food on cheap air flights is now an optional, chargeable extra so we had to starve for eight hours.
On
our USA trip in 2012 we had to queue for 90 minutes to get through US immigration. This time it was only about 75 minutes but despite that we got to our hotel before midnight local time.
Playlist
Songs mentioning New York and mainly concerned with transportation.
First impressions
My first and ongoing reaction to New York City is: I have seen all this in the movies.
I already knew that the "Bronx is up and the Battery’s down" - important because it is the reverse of British usage where you go "up" to London.
This is the view if you climb out on to the fire escape of our hotel.
In fact there are a lot of dogs in New York and most of their owners seem responsible
These fire escapes look like they were afterthoughts but they were probably part of the original design
Outside Schatzie Prime Meats on Broadway just up from 101st Street
Looking up Broadway from the corner of 102nd Street. Our hotel is at the centre of this photo
Cropped out of the previous image. The Marrakech Hotel at 2588 Broadway on the corner of 103rd street. I assume the hotel occupies all four of the upper floors of this building and there is no elevator! Fortunately we were on what the Americans call the second floor.
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