Statue for the Immigrants near the ferry station to Ellis Island.

J's friend Craig joined us for a while too.

Like giant green copper pilgrims we ferry over to the big lady to pay our respects.

57th Street !

Some streets have these elevated steam pipes from the subway.

Feel the love.

We didn't realise until we were about leave that we had one of the bigger hotel rooms !
In fact it was as big as our flat in Glasgow or Melbourne !

Our favorite place for breakfast.
Actually, it was the ONLY place we ate breakfast.

and we had a little look at the United Nations building.

The Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the largest Cathedral in the world apparently!

'The News' building

Ian: we jumped on our cheap flight from Glasgow to Gatwick airport London, had a little sleep in a charming little hotel and left the next morning on our 7.5 hr flight to . . .

flying in over Long Island, the longest straight line of beach I have ever seen !

Part of New Jersey. (M: or should that be New Joirsey?)

New York living - directly across from our hotel.

Times Square !

Good to see political protest still alive & well in the U.S.
This was an anti-war rally in the centre of Times Square.

Our friend from San Francisco, J, flew across to meet us.

The space where the twin-towers were (M: ground zero)

Lost ? (M: Me? Lost? NEVER!)

"always ask a policeman!"

Venturing onto the subway !

M: I love the New York Subway. Very convenient and CHEAP!

The subway has these mosaics spelling out the station names -
a huge amount of mosaic work.

This guy with a huge bag of blown-up balloons got half way in the doors when they shut on him, half the balloons in and half out ! People helped pull him and his cargo into the carriage, but, we were giggling loudly to ourselves. Would love to have known - why ??

At least if was more entertaining than the other guy on the carriage who took it upon himself to start preaching to everyone (talk about a captive audience) about the saviour Jesus, and so on. No one said anything to him and some actually chimed in with 'praise the lord' at the appropriate spots ! Maybe it's a commuter service for people too busy to get to a church. Too bad for the rest of us !

Michael: This was the only bit of gun culture we saw while in New York.

Michael: New York is full of homely little Italian restaurants, making me quite nostalgic for Melbourne. The food was excellent and it was great to be able to have proper coffee!

more to come !

Michael: January 2, and we are in Edinburgh to meet up with Aliki and two of her friends, up from London for Hogmanay. Unfortunately the celebrations and fireworks were cancelled as the weather was atrocious, with high winds and driving rain. On Calton Hill
Claudette, Brad, Michael and Aliki on Calton Hill with the Acropolis in the background.

Ian : apparently Edinburgh is always colder than Glasgow and it sure was on that day !

Carnival Edinburgh :)


St Giles in the moonlight

Michael: Since today was a fine day - a rarity in the West of Scotland winter, we decided to chance it and take a trip up to Falkirk. While this town is steeped in history (William Wallace, Bonnie Prince Charlie & co..), it's modern claim to fame is the Falkirk Wheel. This is an amazing piece of engineering that serves to link the Forth & Clyde canals with the Union canal, which are at a height differential of 35 metres. The Falkirk wheel in action
Narrow boats on the Clyde-Forth canal.


Below is the ordinary lock system on the Union canal, just before the wheel.

Ian : I love this big window at Queen Street Station, Glasgow.