New York, New York
A city of Friends, firefighters and a $140 sandwich 🍏
Inspired this week by the…well…inspirational
, who has just taken herself off to New York for a month, I got to thinking about this marvellous city, and why it rates for me as possibly my number one city in the world.Do you remember the first time?
The first time I visited New York was at the culmination of one of my own mini rites of passage. I had spent three months living and working in California on a University work exchange programme, as a fairground ride operator at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. For eighties fans - that is THE fairground that Kiefer Sutherland, Jason Patric (whatever happened to him?) and vampire friends flew over in the 80s classic films The Lost Boys. Yep - that scene, that rollercoaster. It was an awesome summer, and at the end of the trip, myself and my Uni bestie Vicki rented a car with two other guys and drove from Santa Cruz to New York to fly home from the other side of the continent.
I will perhaps write about that trip separately, especially as it will give me an excuse to chat to my beautiful friend Vicki who now lives even further away near Perth, Australia, but for now I will stay with NYC. At the end of the most incredible three weeks which took us initially south from California, into Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico before turning east across the southern states of Texas and Louisiana, we then began precariously snaking up through Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, West Virginia, Washington DC and Maryland before finally arriving in New York courtesy of New Jersey.
That whole trip had been conducted on the most extraordinarily tight budget, the four of us sharing motel rooms with spends of something like $10 a day (Race Across the World eat your heart out), and so it was that we arrived in the Big Apple with our remaining dollars, hoping to do the same. The year was 1991 so prices weren’t what they are today, but were still a world away from the rest of the USA. If my memory serves me correctly, we ended up managing to convince a shabby hotel owner to let the four of us share a double room for $60 in one bed (the boys slept on the floor), and we ate a grand total of 3 x 69 cent McDonald’s cheeseburgers each over the 24 hour duration. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. We got the Staten Island ferry several times as it was free then (before it became paid, and then free again), looked at the Empire State Building, visited the World Trade Centre, walked the streets and then wearily headed home. On this trip we saw little, experienced some, but I knew I would need to come back.
Second helping
Fast forward about 13 years and I revisited New York in my early thirties with my boyfriend (to become husband) and our best friends in the sweet years where we had a bit of money but hadn’t yet had kids, and we could do things like bugger off to New York on a whim. On arrival on that trip we were all so exhausted, we snuck off to our own beds early that night, but not before we bumped into each other sneaking out for a McDonald’s whilst our jet-lagged bodies craved all manner of crap. Cheeseburgers were no longer 69 cents I’m sure, but it was quite comical as Himself and I surreptitiously pushed open the doors of the Golden Arches that first night only to see our friends creeping out the other way.
The rest of the trip was everything I didn’t get to do the first time around as we ploughed the streets from Tribeca to Chinatown, Little Italy to Central Park. 9/11 was horrifically fresh and Ground Zero was still a hole in the ground with rubble, fences, around the sight, and makeshift ‘shops’ lining the streets selling memorial artefacts and postcards of goodness knows what.
Himself and I had had experienced 9/11 as air traffic controllers. Me in London, talking to multiple American and United airline flights on that day, listening to their ‘MayDay’ calls as they circled over Heathrow. Aircraft desperately wanting to get on the ground for reasons we were just beginning to fathom whilst we temporarily questioned whether London was also under attack. He had been working at air traffic control in Scotland as the USA closed its airspace - taking planes that were less than half way across the ocean back into the UK whilst those that didn’t have enough fuel to return were diverted to Canada. We both felt the pull to visit the heart of that place, although really didn’t know how to manage our feelings when we were there. Visiting Ground Zero felt necessary, but uncomfortable. Feelings that were not assuaged in the slightest by being there.
We were still very much pre ‘smart-phone’ so memories of this trip are in my head rather than being anything I can retrieve from a ‘cloud’, although I do recall how busy it felt. I was at a stage of life where I would make lists, prepare, tick things off. I wanted to see everything. I had been a travel agent for five years prior to being an air traffic controller, and my expectations were quite fixed and rigid; a world away from how I approach travel now. I cringe slightly at what I would have been like as a travel partner - knowledgeable and enthusiastic for sure, but lacking the flexibility or openness to stop and just embrace the heart of a place for fear of missing the next scheduled ‘event’.
I am grateful to my (now) husband and friends for their patience at my way of being, but life is an evolution… That was the trip were we saw ‘lots’ but by coursing through the arteries of the city at speed I perhaps missed its some of its enormous heart.
Third time’s a charm
In 2022 I got the chance to visit New York for the third time. This was a post-Covid, joint 50th (mine) and 16th (Fiver) birthday celebration. During the two year travel hiatus we dreamt of all sorts of elaborate trips - first planning Japan, only to discover that it entailed unexpectedly complexities for our coeliac child; then finally mapping out my all time dream trip from North to South Vietnam only to be continually thwarted by Covid hangovers and insurmountable red tape. We knew that our girls had always wanted to visit New York, something I suspect deeply influenced by the ‘Marvel’ Universe, but I had never really thought of it as a family holiday destination. The idea began to crystallise, and by combining it with a visit to Boston where I could visit family and also spend some time in the beautiful countryside, we decided to make it happen.
During the pandemic itself, our travel aspirations had been centred around a beat up old VW Campervan that we bought shortly after my dad died. When we were allowed away from our home town, we would jump in the van and take off in our own portable ‘bubble’. When we were confined to home, we undertook a quite extraordinary restoration project on the van itself [look out for a forthcoming collaboration between
and myself on all things campervan and adventures!]. Our lovely van, ‘Velma’ took us on so many adventures, not least a 14 hour dash from Germany through Belgium and France to get ahead of a closing border, without being allowed to stop even for a wee in the transitional countries! As we emerged from the Covid fog however, it became apparent that our girls had outgrown the campervan both physically and emotionally, so we took the difficult decision to sell it, and to use the proceeds to go to New York.
It was a beautiful age to take them to New York - 13 and 16. Old enough to appreciate it, to remember it, and to withstand the physical rigour of a prolonged city break. This time, we had very little plans. This was about experiencing New York in any way that felt right. I had only pre-booked 2 things for the whole 5 days (go me!). The rest of the time we were free to play, and play we did.
The first night was the chance to immerse ourselves in the overwhelming and wonderful tourist heart of Manhattan. Our hotel was a stone’s throw from Times Square, so we took our jetlagged bodies straight out into the madness, where we could not fail to be energised by the literal electricity in the air. This time we didn’t go to McDonald’s - Taz’s coeliac disease precludes it - but we did find an old school diner with gluten free burgers, fries and milkshake amidst the neon lights and music. Teenage heaven.
The next day we awoke super early due to the time difference, and headed to the Empire State building to see if we could avoid queueing. It had changed a lot since my previous two visits, and after debating whether we should visit at all (weighing up alternative options like ‘Top of the Rock’ and ‘The Edge’ at eye watering prices) we thought we’d stick with the trad. It was a great decision. It was remarkably quiet, and the King Kong exhibition on the way up was superb and created much mirth as Himself became indistinguishable from the main attraction due to his extraordinarily hairy arms.
At the top, the sky was an almost unimaginable azure blue, the walkways framed with pumpkins in the pre-Halloween October sunshine, and there at the top of one of the most photographed and heavily touristed locations in the world, it felt just so peaceful and calm. Perhaps a glimpse of how it one day used to be.
Having no plans gave us the most incredible freedom. As we walked downtown, one of the girls mentioned that they’d been recommended to walk over Brooklyn Bridge. This was not something we’d done on previous trips, so we ambled south over a few hours through Soho and Chinatown, absorbing the changes from district to district, seeing it through the eyes of teenagers. As we reached the bridge, the sun was almost beginning to set, and the two hours we spent meandering over the Brooklyn Bridge as day turned to dusk rates as one of the top travel experiences of my entire life. As I watched my daughters turn from children to young adults before my very eyes, we connected in a prescient and mutual understanding of the life adventures that lay ahead for them. Walking the bridge between their unknown future and the familiarity of their present, it was not something I could have planned if I’d tried.
Over the next few days we discovered gluten free doughnuts, bagels and pretzels at Grand Central Station, marvelled at the architecture, history and reading rooms of the New York Public Library, and watched street dancers and met Marvel and Disney characters in Times Square. One of our two ‘planned’ activities was a visit to ‘The Friends Experience’ - something that has bizarrely become as much of a pop culture landmark in the map of my daughters’ lives as it was mine. For me, having experienced that phase of adulthood alongside Monica, Chandler et. al.; turning 30 when they did, falling in love and having children within the same time frame (despite the parts of it that would not be written in the same way in our current era), Friends remains for me a place of comfort, of familiarity, and well…friendship. For my girls, it is just simply about love, laughs, and having people to rely on. If any of us ever feel lonely, we just often turn to our Friends in Central Perk, which is ever more poignant since The Death of a Friend, so to be sat there was really quite something.
This was a ‘girls only’ diversion as Himself has no interest whatsoever in Friends, so he took himself off to a Bavarian Beer Bar to watch American Football amongst locals whilst having a stein of lager. That feels about as ‘male’ as you can get without turning up with a wood axe hanging off your back. When we reconvened for a beer afterwards he described how his outdoor table was on the edge of the bar next door which was filled with colourful drag queens singing and dancing on the tables. He had the biggest grin on his face describing the joy of it, and that is the essence of New York in a nutshell - you never quite know what’s going to be around the corner.
A Firefighter’s Prayer
Layered underneath the bright lights and the shopping, the wow factor and the movie settings, one thing that really makes Manhattan stand out amidst other glitzy cities of the world is its emotional heart. It feels real, true, bruised and hopeful. Shiny, dirty, raw and colourful, and certainly not somewhere to be underestimated. The after effects of 9/11 are bled into its very fabric. The impact on those who were here is almost incomprehensible. In our small world thousands of miles away we watched it unfold second by second, and as the aviation world shrunk back in horror in the aftermath, my husband was made redundant from air traffic, and became a firefighter, in our own tiny flap of the wings of the butterfly effect.
Firefighters appear to be held in extraordinary esteem in New York City, and I’m sure that is in no small part to the role they played on that world changing day. There is a feeling of old-fashioned ‘heroism’ around the role, and as we walked through the city, we encountered several moments of remarkable poignancy, from the statue of the Firefighter’s prayer, to the devastating fire engine wreckage inside the 9/11 museum itself. This is the only other place we pre-booked before we left the UK, as we felt it was of critical importance to revisit this place, and to give our daughters some grain of understanding of the magnitude of this world event. Having spent a morning absorbing some of New York’s earlier history at Ellis and Liberty Islands, we lost the rest of the day in and around the new World Trade Centre site. Walking through the timeline room he and I both silently relived our own distinct memories of that day - listening to the recordings of calls to air traffic control, hearing the transmissions as they were broadcast into the ether. The disbelief as to what was unfolding, and the devastating consequences for all - not least the 343 (and counting) firefighters that lost their lives. It was affecting on a deeply fundamental level.
This experience in itself brought our daughters a significant step towards their own adulthood with the realisations that we, their parents, had been ‘people’ in our own right before they were born. That us and so many others had lived and existed through life changing world events that to them were something from a history class. It also shed a bright light onto the magnitude of the responsibility their dad holds as a rescue worker, as well as the uncertainty and unpredictability of the world and their lack of control over others’ actions. That there are things that cannot be made sense of, no matter how hard we try.
Afterwards we visited a local pub whose walls are adorned with badges of firefighter and police departments from across the world, displaying the solidarity of the rescue workers. Our silence comfortable and necessary as we each processed what the experience had left us holding.
A walk in the park
We let Fiver and Taz explore the city on their own at times, giving them little pockets of freedom to explore at their leisure, and he and I the freedom to be ‘us’ again, just for a moment. Despite it being one of the busiest cities in the world, it felt strangely safe letting them off the leash (despite having no mobile data) with the easily navigable grid system, and people everywhere. They had never been on their own in London before and now they were finding their way around New York. They were growing up in so many ways.
After a breakfast à deux for he and I at Grand Central whilst they shopped til they dropped, we reconvened on our final day before departing for Boston, heading north into the infeasibly large expanse of Central Park. Time to walk off the sparkle of shopping, styling, apple stores and clothes galore; time to slow down. I ‘googled’ a gluten free lunch venue to give Taz a treat, and after walking about two miles through the park towards the Upper East side, we finally came across an apparation - the cleverly named ‘Noglu: Gluten Free Bakery’.
As Fiver and I wearily took our seats, Taz and Himself approached the counter, bringing back three film wrapped sandwiches, one small pasta pot, two gluten free eclairs to share between the four of us, three teas and a juice. He sat down looking rather ashen and said ‘Em, that was $140’.
‘No, it can’t have been. That’s not possible’. I took the receipt to check, as sometimes his dyslexia can mean he reads things slightly wrong, but no…he was right. ‘I don’t understand. How can it be $140 for a couple of pre-packed sandwiches, half a cake each and some tea??’. ‘That’s not possible’, I reiterate, hoping that if I say it enough it will not be true. Yet, it was…
[It was something like $17 per sandwich, the same for the salad, $15 for each eclair, $5-8 dollars for each drink and then tax and 20% service even though it was self-service].
Sometimes you just gotta go with it. I looked at Taz and firmly said ‘don’t drop it’ as she excitedly started to rip open the packaging.
Our last meal of the trip ended up with us sat on plastic chairs out on the street with an $8 slice of ‘pizza pie’ each, watching the steam come up through the grates whilst people of all sorts milled around, just like in the movies. [What actually is that steam btw?!] And that really summed it up. From $140 sandwiches to $8 pizza, American football to dancing drag queens, dressed up dogs to dancing skeletons, Friends to firefighters, skyscrapers to Strawberry Fields, this is a city of surprises, stories and pure heart.
New York, I gotta say it. I just love ya. I’ll most definitely be back.
And as for Boston…? Well that’s a whole different story…
What cities in the world capture your heart? What cities have you fallen in love with and which do you dream of visiting one day?
I’d love to hear
As always,
Love & lemons 💕🍋
Em xx
Love your visits Emma, I've been to New York once and I'll admit I found it quite overwhelming. It was such a whirlwind, I feel like I could go back, but I'm even more sensitive now than I was then. I do love Buenos Aires and have been more than once, that is one cool place to visit.
Love this Emma :) and amazing pics