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 !