I slept well but woke up with slight jet-lagged confusion during the night. At about 6am a police car was wending its way through the streets, 32 floors below. The driver was blasting on his siren, rather than letting it continously chime out, so it was a Morse Code of strange "Wooop" sounds of different lengths and intensities and I was reminded of that little sausage animal that used to whizz around the studios of Vision On. I fancied that the car was also whizzing around in the maze of streets below. Such were the connections being made in my battered brain.
I had a massive breakfast of six pancakes with maple syrup, like I was a proper obese American, rather than a boring obese Briton. But I needed this calorie overload as we spent the rest of the day walking. We headed up town to Central Park and meandered through the greenery and I felt like I was in the film "Cloverfield", though hoped that no gigantic monster would attack New York this week. Next week when I'm gone I wouldn't mind, but not now while I'm here.
The sun was shining brightly and it was a hot day and New Yorkers were out in force, rollerblading down the road or jogging in lycra or playing croquet or sitting in the shade. It felt like this would be a wonderful town to live in and no wonder Al Qaeda wanted to punch at it because at its best it shows why the Western world is an amazing place. People of all backgrounds living side by side, expressing themselves in whatever way they want, seemingly not judged by anyone. It's a friendlier place than London and though I am sure there is a dark underbelly things seem pretty cool here. Much less scary than the first time I came here in 1986 (on my way to Camp America) when I seemed to be offered crack on every street corner.
We were heading for the Guggenheim Museum, but first we chanced across the
Metropolitan Museum of Art and as that was one of the attractions we got into on the Passport ticket we were going to buy we headed in to have a quick look around.
As it turned out we'd be there for the next four hours, managed to see probably less than half of what was on offer and by the time we'd finished were too exhausted for anything else. It's an overwhelmingly good museum, with almost impossibly impressive exhibits. The quality of the finds from Ancient Greece and Rome was practically unbelievable and I was walking round open mouthed at the beautiful and often complete statues and pottery and metalware. There was room after room of the stuff, but then we headed through a doorway to find a collection of Vemeer paintings, then through another to a massive display of medieval art and then armour and weaponry. How did all this stuff end up in America?
Upstairs there was a vast collection of Old Masters and art by Rodin (Is "The Thinker" really that small or are there other versions) and Van Gogh and many more, as well as a not inconsiderable display of Modern Art and some fascinating stuff from Ancient Japan. We were flagging by now (for the second time) but still saw a lot of slightly chilling and scary Egyptian grave goods amongst much more. I think you could probably spend seven days in this place alone. We never got anywhere near the Guggenheim, so we'll have to try that another day.
We ate a giant Pretzel and then walked back along 5th Avenue, stopping to buy red, white and blue rocket ice lollies that turned our mouths blue like those old joke sweets you used to get.
We were pretty much exhausted but managed to head out for some pasta and a look round Times Square, where even the police station is lit up like a Christmas Tree.
We might be in the city that never sleeps, but after all this stimulation we needed to, though managed to stay up until just passed 11 by watching another episoide of "The Wire". This was on DVD though excitingly I had managed to catch a new episode of the Simpsons and the Office earlier on. The former was pretty lame, but the latter still looked good. I love America and I am never going to leave.
