Seriously underwhelmed with JFK! Immigration is a dream but the airport is pretty grim.  There only appears to be 1 ATM!! For christs sake!! The taxi line goes on for ever past the "20 minutes from here" sign.

We eventually get a cab and he finds his way to the nicely named Garden Inn and Suites. When he drops us you can tell he doesn't want to leave us here and suggests he waits while we check "it's the right place".  We make our way past the lines of black guys smoking huge reefers and doing drug deals.  Yep it's the right place, but they "ain't got no bar and the restaraunt done close years ago but there's a dunkin donuts up the road, a liquer store opposite and pizza express will deliver, I reccomend you get delivery"

Hmmm The place seems to be being used as a local authority B& no B for homeless folks.  Next morning I can still see out the window, cars pulling up, mostly black guys getting out, crossing the road, handful of dollars in a handshake, little packet back the other way.

We Uber into Manhattan, great driver manages to skirt todays labour day parade and we're dropped a block from our hotel as 5th avenue is closed.  We watch all the gays and girls marching through, bands, floats etc a great way to get bacxk into New York.

The hotel is pretty sweet, judging from the room rate I think I may now own it! We dump our bags and do our habitual "get out into the street and start wandering"

New York is ridiculously expensive but, most of what you get is really very good. The change in bars in the ten years since we were last here is pretty remarkable.  The only beer you used to be able to find on draft was Bud, which made beer drinking pretty pointless.  If you were lucky you'd get a bottle of Sam Adams.  There's been a craft beer explosion.  Everywhere offers any number of locally and nationally produced beers and bars are really happy for you to sample any that you don't know. A complete change.  We can find some good food, which is served in enormouse portions and we soon learn to order 1 entree and two plates!

We set out to walk from Manhattan to ground zero, rain or more accurately, drizzle has set in and it stays pretty much until we leave New York.  The walk down from 6th and 54th street, through times Square, the village down to the hudson takes most of the day with coffee stops but we get there in time to ascend the 101 floors to the viewing platform and bar in the new One World trade centre.

The views despite the cloudy, rainy weather are spectacular.  We Subway back to 42nd street and walk to a great Irish bar were we prop the bar for a couple of beers before going into the Italian next door to celebrate our 34th wedding anniversary.  Happy Anniversary, here's to our rainbows' end, my love, my best, my huckleberry friend.

We end the night at the hotel bar, jack daniels, served by probably the best barman we've ever seen, he needs to be, for what we've just paid for 4 drinks we could have bought the whole f*cking island a couple hundred years ago!

It's pissing down.  Down to 52nd street and into the maw of the New York subway, everyone is steaming in the heat, it's incredibly humid anyway, down here it's like a sauna.  We negotiate ticketing and make our way back to ground zero where they've recently opened the stunning Oculous Centre (I reccomend you go online to look at the architecture of this place) A quick coffee and into line for the 9\11 museum.

Jesus! no matter how many times you watch those planes "melt" into those towers it never ceases to amaze.  The entire museum is deeply moving and thought provoking.  Based in part around the footings of the buildings huge girders, bent u-shaped by impact line areas of the hallways, the museum manages to capture the enormity of the event and the very personal effects and events caught up in it.  The final cell phone messages from and to people on the planes or trapped in the burning buildings are here, as are photos of the victims, the unclassified details of the hunt for the perpetrators, the huge upswelling of national pride and determination are all captured.  Particularely touching is the exhibit of a fire truck, the crew actually on their way to another call but asked to divert as they'd had experience of a "high rise fire"

half the crew had actually just finished their shift, they have transcipts of their last calls as they acended the burning building directing survivors to safety, the whole crew perished.

In one room they have a crushed emergency vehicle, the only sound are the "man down" automated alarms, dozens of alarms beeping and radio traffic, it's impossible not to be moved. They have the air traffic control radar for the day, you can watch from when the order goes out to "Land everything" with the US airspace crammed with tracks to when a solitary aircraft is the last to land.

If I have an issue with the place the opportunity to reiterate that this was a multi national and multi cultural disaster, a crime perpetrated against us all by a lunatic fringe rather than representatives of any religion albeit on American soil isn't as strongly put as it could be.  As an example of what the people of this country and City can acheive however it's undeniably magnificent. 

After the museum, despite the rain we make our way down to the river for some fresh air and a view of the statue of liberty.  When last we were here there were some nice restaraunts here and we'd half an idea to stop for a beer.  They're all closed, so we wander up toward Wall Street and the subway back to central New York.

We've booked tickets and a table at "The Old Opry" at Time Square. Good ol' country fixin's with a bit of a hootenanny thrown in.  It's burger ribs 'n' grits all round in portions that would feed the average small nation.  Kim, eagle eyed as always, spots we're in happy hour. 

"I all ready got you-all started in on thet" Says our waiter, screwing up our bill behind his back.  Half price drinks aint to be sneezed at in New York so we "set too" with a will.  We have a good night here, the foods really pretty good, so ius the music and so are the beers and wine.  There was nearly gun play when a waitress suggests our wine order was outside of happy hour, but Kalamity Keeyam jus raght they-ar rests her thumbs on her gun belt, a twitchin' back her jacket, all cas-uu-all lak, 'n' tips back her het 'n' fetches this little miss with a look 'n' says

"If you'd taken your face out of your cell phone for two minutes, done your job and looked over here we'd have ordered these 10 minutes ago"

Bill suitably adjusted we make our way out into the street where the rain is just starting to slacken for the first time all day.  There's a bar at the end of 54th street and we drop in for a nightcap as we've decided to skip the hotel bar until we can re-mortgage.

We belly up to the bar and next to us, two blokes with thick London accents.  We start to chat, his sister married a bloke from Waterlooville! They're both retired rail workers, 

"Are your wives with you"

" 'Er? She won't come to New York, she's playin' bingo! Finks she'll get shot the minute she gets orf the fackin plane she does"....Priceless.

The morning we leave the rain has quit and the sun is out, New York! all it's steaming street vents, the yellow cabs, the sirens, the endless bustle, what a town!  We have downloaded two taxi apps Uber and Lyft, today we give Lyft a chance.  Picking through the traffic, he drops us outside Maddison Square Garden in the bowels of which is Pennsylvania Station.  We have an Amtrak ticket to Washington and we have abvsolutely no freaking idea how to use it!