Home

Not much to say about arrival home.. you know the story... tired, jetlagged and you face your last challenge- Customs. Unfortunately for us, this was appallingly slow. 4 planes arrived simultaneously. This must have taken them by surprise (do they look at the scheduled arrivals and plan accordingly?). It took an hour to get from the aeroplane to the exit from customs.

The purple line is the queue.. it was HUNDREDS of people long

I had been glorifying Melbourne Airport in my mind. In fact I thought it was voted quite highly by passengers (I was not too wrong here, but Vancouver way outscores it if you look at www.worldairportawards.com). Suffice it to say Melbourne airport let me down. Here's the length of the queue (in purple). It was horrific and the guy herding people into the queues should have got a job at Los Angeles he was so rude.

We had Judy (from Murrells Chauffeurs) to drive us home and she had waited patiently while we negotiated the Customs delay. She delivered us safely home and also updated us on local news and weather. Thankyou Judy.

The end for now.. bye.

Penultimate Day, Guggenheim, Grand Central Station

It's amazing how much you can achieve in a few short hours when you are running for a deadline. This is our last day in New York and as expected, there was still a long list of must sees: it was impossible to see them so I had to prioritise.

I wanted definitely to see the Guggenheim, recently featured in The Worlds top 20 most beautiful museums. Check out the website.. there are some lovely photographs of some very beautiful museums.

It opened at 10am so I headed out at 9.35 walking at a pace along the southern and eastern sides of Central Park. With regret I passed the Frick Collection and The Met(!!) The museum mile had another name this morning. It was the smokers mile. I had not seen as many people smoking as I saw on the way to the Guggenheim. These were commuters on their way to work, having a last puff.

 The Guggenheim is beautiful inside. You are not permitted to take photographs inside. Here are some of my shots:

 My favourite exhibition was a collection of photos of teenagers by Rineke Dijkstra whose purpose was to catch people when emotions are conflicting. She had shots of young adults in the French Foreign Legion, the Israeli Army, young women standing naked with their newborn babies and videos of teenagers dancing alone in her studio to music, looking self conscious and then abandoning this. It was excruciating and strangely magnetic.

Some more of Central Park..
my serpinous route back to the hotel
from the Guggenheim

Opposite our hotel window

 The hotel apparently was to be full tonight, so we couldn't do a late checkout. I had packed, so I decided there was just enough time to race to Grand Central Station. This was worth the quick visit.. It really is an impressive example of late 1800s architecture.

 And I found another one of these...

An Apple store in Grand Central Station

Which brings me to the name "big apple". I'm not sure of the origin of the term unless New York was considered the "apple" of America's eye. In any case there are a few apples around.

(13 July back at home. I just looked up the etymology of "Big Apple"- it's complicated)

 We were all packed by midday and arranged for our bags to be held. We also accepted the offer of the porter to arrange a private car company to take us to the airport. "he works with us" said the porter. This was a bit more expensive ($60) but gave the security of knowing he would be here and "he has a slightly larger boot". My advice is .. Don't . Just hail a cab. The guy we had was in a real hurry and we had an hour of him tooting, changing lanes constantly and responding in monosyllables to any question.

some views from the car to JFK

My impression is that if ever you get a service with the tip "built in" there is no incentive to make it a pleasant experience, and you won't get one. Or are these the people who never attracted tips so they incorporated them into their business plan? Which came first.. The poor service or the built in tips?...the chicken or the egg? Oh.. Forgot to tell you that after storing our bags and waiting in the hotel lobby we did a quick ice cream dash to Grom.

This was our penultimate New York dining experience and it lived up to expectations as well as providing an excuse to dump quite a lot of small change. At JFK all went smoothly and we had time to spare. V and I had a quite filling roast vegetable pizza. On the flight to Los Angeles we had quite a chatty steward who gave us lots of answers to our questions about Qantas, airbuses and travel.

 If you are reading this it means we got home safely and I posted this last post of the blog which i am writing on the ipad at Los Angeles airport in a much nicer Terminal.. Terminal International Bradley. I pretty much wrote the blog to force myself to keep a diary and sort my photos. So thanks for following the journey (if you have). I have only a couple of regrets. There was one thing I really wanted to do that I didn't which was to visit a shop in Vancouver on behalf of our friend, Lady Demelza, but our last night in that city wasn't as anticipated and I never got there. So sorry Lady Demelza! I also realise that keeping a blog does take an enormous amount of time which means for late nights or missing some outings. I am not sure if I would do this again in such detail... But maybe I would!

Camera buying and MOMA

OK. So I think I might have made a mistake today. I was looking for a compact superzoom and headed out to get the Panasonic TZ25. I came home several hours later with a Canon SX260 HS. How did this happen. Well, a combination of factors- the store didn't have the model I wanted, despite being advertised as "in stock". I had spent several hours of research and had asked my camera choice guru Peter who does his research well. I had already traversed New York and the day was slipping away. I had the choice of several more hours of travelling, or buying my second choice. I did the latter. Only time will tell how this choice will pan out.

Fortunately, this did give me time to do what I wanted to do today, which was to see the Museum of Modern Art or MOMA. This was superb, and I could have spent hours there. Amusingly, an exhibition I saw in London was debuting in New York, so I saw it again.

This is the exhibition I saw in London

On the second last day of a holiday such as this, the mind gets inexorably drawn back to home. I have had more and more thoughts about work and home and friends. They are mostly good thoughts, but some have anxieties attached. It's an interesting challenge to practise mindfulness and stay available to the experiences here.

We are watching CBS network New York at the moment while I write this blog. If I can stand the advertisements without changing channels I will get to see some amazing stuff on the News- some video of a police chase where a car mounts an embankment, becomes airborne and crashes into a house. According to the newsreader it's "worth watching". There's also an item about a dog which is stealing American flags from cemeteries, and some mobile phone footage of parents brawling at a Little League Baseball match.

This is the 9/11 memorial "you can run but you cannot hide" coin set!

I am astounded at the virtual complete blackout of international news items. In contrast, the MOMA had some interesting video including actors re-enacting the Guantanamo Bay trials using actual transcripts. They portray the immense disrespect for human rights, all justified by "national security concerns". Detainees had no access to the charges, and could therefore not defend themselves meaningfully. The unclassified evidence was given to them, but was so inadequate most didn't know what they were on trial for.

I have a theory about America's disrespect for international rules. I have never seen such wanton rule breaking as I have in New York. I have mentioned the use of Emergency Exits in the Subway, which are so commonplace that the alarm is ignored. Jaywalking is another local pursuit. A red pedestrian light means nothing here. In Australia, if you walked against a red light in front of a police officer you would certainly be given a talking to by the officer, if not charged. In New York, you can do it right in front of a policeman without him turning a hair. What sort of message does this give young children about authority, or entitlement? It now makes sense that America makes and breaks whatever rules they want. Cyclists also seem to break rules wantonly. They go down one way streets the wrong way, and sometimes at speed. This means you really have to look both ways when crossing the street. New York has a lot of one way streets, but you don't get the security of knowing that if the main traffic isn't coming, you are safe to step out.


I really enjoyed the Museum of Modern Art, but we had other things to do! I wanted to check out my camera, and we had a wicked schedule for the evening.

I took a few quick shots in the local neighbourhood.. yes the camera is good! What a relief. And very portable too.

It's rubbish collection tomorrow

 Wicked was wicked.

If only I knew the plot to The Wizard of Oz I think I would have got the references. Nevertheless it was good.

The set was fairly impressive. The production was pretty good too.

This place was less than average and overpriced, but at least it was open!

 William had to buy a pizza after having the main meal at Applejack's Diner.

The Hudson, 9/11, Brooklyn Bridge, Wholefoods and Fireflies

The title says it all.. that's what we did today.

 THE WATER TAXI

This is a really good way to see a few places in a day. It's hop-on hop off.

from http://wirednewyork.com/waterfront/ferries/water_taxi_fulton_ferry_landing_5oct02.jpg

Tickets were $29 and it was thoroughly worthwhile. Here are some photographs from today

 9/11 MEMORIAL. This was moving and actually quite beautiful.. cascading water falling away

 A PROTEST NEARBY

The guy I spoke to said the workers were being paid Virginia rates for a New York building. Once completed they will charge Manhattan rates for accomodation as they are in an expensive part of town

 More from 9/11

Nearby

THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE- I found it to be an object of art.

 SOUTHPORT AREA

to the promised land?

THE STATUE OF LIBERTY

I'm glad we didn't do it this way

There was heaps of room on our boat

BACK NEAR THE HOTEL

I went for a wander around sunset and took a few shots in the local area.

FIREFLIES

Whoops.. nearly forgot.. we saw some fireflies in Central Park tonight