Our final week!Still determined not to fade, nor think ahead too much to the next adventure of returning to home, we approached New York as the monster that it is and blasted it/ knocked out the park/ hit a home run or any other ways you could describe truly maxing out a week in this fabulous city!

We stayed in a great Airbnb place on Staten Island, catching the free 24/7 ferry over to Manhatten every day past the Statue of Liberty. A (very) late arrival by train (the 12 hr Maple Leaf from Toronto) to Grand Central, followed by an Uber, a ferry and a 20 minute hike up to the house we were staying at, meant that our first day proper was an easy going affair.

In brief our week has looked like this so far:
Day 0: Arrive NYC 9.30pm, get to accomodation for midnight.
Day 1: Empire State Building.
Day 2: Guggenheim for the Giacometti exhibition followed by a Yankees game in the evening
Day 3: Walk the Brooklyn bridge into Manhattan to Chinatown for a vegan lunch. Evening 9/11 Museum
Day 4: The MET (Metropolitan Museum) for the Egon Schiele, Times square and Wicked on Broadway with a NY style massive pizza slice to boot
Day 5: Bike Central Park followed by the night bus tour of the city!
Day 6: Pack, catch up with blogs and journals and head to the airport for flight no 25 to London

Which is probably why my feet are throbbing sat in bed here at the end of day 3!

Highlights:
Empire State Building – We all loved it up here, both the museum and the view and both kids loved hearing all about me proposing up there in 2003 (they have heard that story WAY too many times already!)

Guggenheim – The Art, the Building, the free audio tour. What’s not to like!

The ball game – Hahahaha – the Yanks and their “sports”, you gotta laugh. Let’s face it, baseball is just a game o rounders for grown men, most of whom aren’t in that great a shape. We were well into the 5th round/ innings before either team had even scored a run! Colette and Henna had lost the will to live by round 3 whilst me and Arlo were determined to stick it out to see a home run (we got one in the end). It really is a bizarre experience. The event is mainly about food and drink, consuming as much as you can of it! All supersize! If they’re not eating the huge bucket of chicken ‘n’ chips, they’re getting up for a refill! Those not eating get a beer from the sellers traipsing the steps. Beers were going for a mere $18 inc tip! FOR A CAN OF HEINEKEN! For the uninitiated, Heineken’s like drinking warm piss. Even better than that, Bud Light! just a weaker warm piss! Also $18 a pop! Those not drinking or eating were on their phones, talking, face timing, even watching TV! When a home run finally gets hit, they all wake up and cheer before returning to their slumber. The action is SLOOOOOOW. Lots of swapping around, change overs, practice swings/ throws and then the pitcher, talk about milking it…………………just throw the bloody ball! Needless to say neither child is chomping at the bit to take a bat and mitt home. Think we’ll stick with the skateboard.

Walking the Brooklyn Bridge is best done from Brooklyn so you walk towards the fabulous cityscape. If you’re like us, it also means you can end up in Chinatown for a top lunch! We were a bit concerned about the souring temperatures with no shade in 38 degree heat but the breeze on the bridge was just the ticket to make it enjoyable.

The 9/11 memorial and museum had an impact on the whole family. Images, text, installations, audio and video clips and artifacts take you through the whole event in great detail without being too visually graphic. It’s a really moving experience, a reminder of the crazy world we live in and an explanation of the use of paranoia and the politics of fear to control whole populations.

We hit the MET early afternoon following a morning catching up on journals and blogs, only to discover the exhibition we’d geared up to see, Klimt, Picasso and Schiele nudes was down the road at a spin off museum. We did this fast paced whizz around the modern art section of the MET which gave us the chance to see some favourites, from Chuck Close, Jasper Johns, Jean Debuffet and Lucien Freud as well as work we’d never seen before but blew us away. You had the kids goggling at humongous sized portraits one minute and asking about the 7 deadly sins (with a heavy emphasis on lust and gluttony) the next. We even managed a bit of Greek myth naked beheading based sculpture to tie in with Henna’s recent series of books she’s read. Anyway…………….That wasn’t our aim for the day so we hotfooted it (yes it’s shitting hot here) over to the MET Breur for our planned Schiele fest. WELL what a disappointment! Whilst the original drawings on show were beautiful, any reference to paintings were all reproductions. AND the bloody fabulous image the MET has plastered all over it’s website advertising the show wasn’t even in the show! Thank goodness for Chuck!

Only slightly deflated we realised we could now cruise over to Times Square. Yes it’s all lit up and spangly but it’s just shops init! Just advertising for all that shite that we don’t need. Anyway, we only headed here so we could have tea at Joes Pizza. Family verdict……………..Excellent thin crispy crust pizza but Santiago’s offering still beats it! Who’da thunk the best pizza we’d have on the whole trip would have been in Chile.

Wicked followed, the Broadway show that tells the alternative Wizard of Oz story from the perspective of the witches. No spoilers here, Henna may well do her own blog on it. We all really enjoyed it, at least we did after moving 4 rows back away from a family of 8 who were all coughing their guts up throughout the show. We ain’t come this far to get a bloody cough!

The day we chose to ride around Central Park was perfect as it became overcast in the afternoon and we quite happily sauntered there for a half day leisurely affair stopping at each and every playground we passed. We got in 13 miles powered by a picnic and ice lollies and helped a family whose boys had wrecked a bike crashing into each other. It set us up nicely for our nightime City Bus Tour. Whilst it was nice being on an open top bus as the sun went down, moving through this non-stop city at it lit itself up, the tour guide’s tone was very Steve Cougan. If you remember his safety officer character “in 1986 no one died, in 1987 no one died…………………………in 1993, someone died”, a bit dreary and unengaging. So much so that the tour proved to be Arlo’s Kryptonite! After 5 full on days of city life, being still full of beans at midnight, he finally crashed under those dulcet tones…….. Then he came round for our final race up the ferry steps. He’s a monster!

Last night in this great city for us, editing photos, writing blogs and backing everything up before we pack up and leave for JFK tomorrow.

2 more flights and we’re home!