Woke around 9am to another sunny morning and, my last day. I really, really need to get some presents sorted for folks at home, so I decide to make that the aim of the game for today, and, I think I’ve done ok. The weak dollar at the moment makes New York an attractive proposal – and its clear that I’m not the only nutter that’ll be going home with a shiny new suitcase, full of booty.

All the ‘discount’ electronics and giftware stores have hastily arranged ‘Luggage’ sections, with all manner of cases, from $400 Samsonites to cheap Asian knock-offs. I, obviously, plump for the cheapest bag I can find that’ll hold my stuff – $45 for a mid-sized expandable suitcase with a trolley handle. If it only lasts this one journey, I’ll be happy!

Wandered around the Flatiron district this morning – disappointing (though probably unsurprising, really) that most shops seem to close on Sundays (or not opening til mid-day, at the earliest). The Flatiron building is architecturally beautiful – if the people who owned the building across the intersection from it let people take photos of it from their rooftops, they’d make a killing.

Stopped for a chai latte at a popular coffee store whilst I got my bearings. The last person to sit where I was had left the sports section of the New York Times, which I had a quick thumb through. It’s all baseball, NFL and basketball, of course, but I spot a small article about European ‘Soccer’. It was an interesting read – explaining how having a ‘home advantage’ is a real plus in soccer games, drawing up statistics about how many points and goals, on average, teams take from home and away matches. To me, the average Brit, surely everyone understands the home advantage? Don’t American sports follow the same pattern? Anyhow – I point out the article, because having read it, I had to stop and re-read four times the following sentence: “But Barcelona – the second winningest club in Spain, holds one of the widest margins in La Liga.” What in Gods name is winningest supposed to mean?! This is the New York Times! Jesus Christ!

I took a subway to Grand Central station – another ‘must see’ in most of the tourist guide books. It was very uninspiring – a fairly big train station with a really high ceiling. If Americans think Grand Central is beautiful, they really need to pop into St Pancras the next time they’re in London, St Pancras’ trainshed knocks Grand Central into a cocked hat. However, coming to Grand Central did have one happy unexpected outcome – as I left the building – going through the MetLife building, and walked across the city, I bumped into a carnival parade, marching down 5th Avenue!

It’s Columbus Day tomorrow, and I thought this was an early celebration of it, but it quickly transpired that it wasn’t. All of the floats and dancers and singers were representing South American countries – Brazil, Argentina, Colombia and so-on – dressed in brightly coloured clothes and partying down the street. It was quite a sight!

I wandered past the Empire State Building and got a look at it from ground level – it’s weird, you look up at it, and you think “hey, it doesn’t look so tall”, and really it doesn’t – until you remember that New York is a city full of skyscrapers, all around you, and this skews your perception a little bit. In reality, it’s pretty massive. It once was the tallest building in the world, but to think that the current tallest building, the yet-uncompleted Burj Dubai, is over 880m tall – not far shy of 3 times the Empire State’s height – makes you wonder how long it’ll be before the Empire State is ‘just another skyscraper’, like so many others.

I caught up with my shopping in the afternoon – the highlight (or lowlight, depending on your viewpoint) was probably visiting the gigantic Toys R Us at Times Square, searching for things for Aimee. This is not a place for the faint-hearted! Do not visit this place with children, particularly your own, as I suspect you’ll leave with a bucketful of toys and a line of credit longer than your arm, not to mention a killer migraine. Still, needs must!

And that about brings us up to speed. Its my last night, and I have an early flight back tomorrow, so I will be taking it very easy tonight. I’ve packed up my new suitcase, and have just my laptop and a few bits to load into my rucksack (which, incidentally, has broken. Annoying), and that will be that.

I’ve been thinking of what I could write to sum-up my visit, and I’m not sure what to say. One thing I know for sure – 3 days is not long enough and you end up trying to cram so much into each day that you get sore feet and tired out! There’s so much more I want to see and do, but there just isn’t the time. I will definately come back here – maybe for longer next time (thinking about it, maybe not, the hotel prices are absurd!) – I feel like I’ve merely scratched the very tip of a gigantic iceberg, and there’s so much more left to visit.

When I was in Flight 151, the other day, with Justine and Bullen, another guy came into the bar – he was an older guy, in his mid 50′s, greying and balding simultaneously. He sat at the bar with us, and chatted with us while he ate his lunch. He said, “I’m not an American. I’m a New Yorker. We’re different to them. They can do what they want and say what they want, but we’re New Yorkers.”

I think that says it all – It’s been great, New York, thanks for having me. Just one last thing though, what the hell is a ‘knish’ anyway?

I went out for a quick look around when I arrived – even though I had been awake for 20+ hours by that point, to fool my mental chemistry into accepting the time-delay. This proved to be a great idea, for two reasons – 1) I have no jetlag at all, now, and 2) I found Smiths Bar, a couple of blocks from Times Square.

I like to think that I’m not the ‘regular’ tourist – sure, Times Square is pretty neat, but it’s a tourist trap ready to suck the dollar bills out of your pocket as just as soon as it can. I don’t really understand the notion of going all the way to New York to go to franchised eateries like Planet Hollywood, or movie-spinoff-moneyspinners like Bubba Gump Shrimp where you’ll eat some godawful microwaved shit served to you by a waitress that’s getting minimum wage and providing minimum effort. So, I went out on Thursday night and had a bit of a ‘recce, just to help me get my bearings.

On every street corner in Manhattan, there is, at least 1 hotdog stand – around Times Square, that number is closer to 5 or 6. Of course, I had to sample something – and I picked a beef kebab – which was served to me in a hotdog roll with barbequeue sauce. It was pretty grim. $5. Of course, I learned on Saturday, that the further you get away from the hustle and bustle, the more the price drops and the more the quality improves – certainly I proved this on Saturday, where I picked up a hot dog, with onions, relish, mustard and ketchup for $1.50 – 75 pence, from a stall nearer 30th Street.

Anyhow, Smiths caters to locals, and, I guess, to touristfolk like me, who manage to escape the neon and noise of Times Square. While I’m sure it’s hardly a hidden New York watering hole, only frequented by locals, it’s a nice little place where the staff and clientele are friendly, and the live music is pretty good. They have a number of beers on tap, nothing great – obviously – but I have to say I’m getting quiet partial to the Sam Adams lager that’s sold round these parts, even if it is weird fizzy bitter! Anyhow, I like the place, there’s something of an uneven kitsch about it – part dive-bar, part tourist hole.

American beer is funny, really funny. Of course, there’s your American staples, like Budweiser, Miller and Coors, but a lot of these bars also have stuff like ‘George Killian’s Irish Red‘, which is about as close to an Irish ale as Madonna is to English nobility (fizzy reddish-brown beer with a bittery aftertaste), and a ‘Belgian-style’ wheatbeer (the name of which I can’t recall), which leans way, way too heavily on the coriander flavourings leading to a very strange, lingering, lasting herby flavour. Maybe it’d go well with Indian food, who knows. Leffe, it ain’t, hell, it’s not even close to Hoegaarden. Of course, no one here gives a shit, because no one here knows any better!

Anyhow, I stayed in Smiths until around 2am (the covers band was really, really good!), localtime, which was – well – about 7am UK time. At over 24hrs+ uptime, it was definately time to call it a day.

On Saturday, I got up, dressed, and decided to wander as far as my legs could take me, with the general aim to do some shopping and get some bits and bobs, generally soaking up the atmosphere. So, I wandered round with my camera, and took a load of photos all throughout midtown, but mainly round Chelsea and the garment district. I walked, in a very haphazard fashion (eg, not straight down broadway or 7th avenue) from 50th st to 14th st. I stopped for a bite and a drink or three at ‘Flight 151′, a little bar on 8th avenue, by 17th St. It has a (very) loose ‘aviation’ theme, but don’t let that put you off.

The idea was to get a quick bite here, and maybe a beer or two, to cool down from the uncharacteristically warm October sunshine. That was the idea. The reality was that I got chatting to the barlady, Justine, and another drinker, Bullen (no, really, it’s even on his driving licence)- a Northern Irish ex-pat plumber, over here making a fortune fixing New York’s sewerage system – and my 30 minute stop ended up being three hours and a hatful of beers (at least half of which on-the-house), chatting away setting the world to rights – at 2 in the afternoon!

Anyhow, eventually, I did indeed leave and made my way down to the former World Trade Centre site via the subway – not really for the ‘spectacle’, but more that I’d heard about Century 21, allegedly a great place to get discount designer clothes and stuff from. My advice, don’t bother – it’s TK Maxx, but with more people and less decent gear.

The former WTC site is indeed an eerie place – there’s something hellishly crass about the fact it appears as ‘Ground Zero’ on tourist maps, and it does feel very strange indeed – seeing a whole city block just….missing, with a construction fence surrounding everything. I don’t much like it, to be honest, and I decide to head back uptown to the Rockefella Centre to view the city skyline from the ‘Top of the Rock’ observatory.

The ‘Top of the Rock’ costs $20. A lot, really, for a ride in an elevator, but the views truely are spectactular – everyone crows about the view of the Empire State Building (which does look magnificent lit up in green, red and white), but I somehow prefer the view from the back, across Central Park – it just seems an ocean of tranquility amongst all the city lights lit up in skyscrapers all over the city. It’s worth $20, certainly – and remember to look up when you get in the lift!

I ended up the night drinking and eating in Smiths, and meeting new people. You can’t not meet new people here – it seems people always want to talk to you, which I thought I’d find really, really irritating, but I didn’t – at all. In Britain, you speak to two types of people in a pub – 1) people that you already know, and 2) people you want to sleep with. This does not happen in New York, people just want to talk to you.

People like Lucy – who bumped into me at the bar, with her bags of thrift-store shopping (one purchase was a tacky, plastic baby doll – which she says she bought because she liked the pink clothes it was wearing). She was pretty well oiled, and judging from her demeanour, and smudged lipstick and sunglasses-at-night fashion-sense, this was probably a pretty regular thing – the booze had stolen quite a few years from her, she was probably no more than 25, but she looked 35. She spoke about her family, and her fall-out with her parents, and how her sister moved away to California, leaving her here alone, telling me her crazy stories – initially I thought she might be homeless, but she said she lived in the Bronx. Who knows? I hope you’re ok anyhow, Lucy.

Then there were the brother and sister from upstate New York, out for the weekend to celebrate the brother’s 21st birthday. I’m sorry that I’ve forgotten their names – the sister was older – by 15 years, and was taking the brother out to see a broadway show – Spamalot, and for a night on the town. Wish my sister would do that for me!

They were really good company, always telling stories – about her two kids, and how her brother had helped lots since her husband passed away. People always have stories here. It’s fascinating. Anyhow, I while away the wee hours and wander back to the hotel at around 1am. I decide the music tonight isn’t so good – in fact, at one point I asked the barmaid if it was Karoke night. She found that hilarious, the bar manager – who overheard – wasn’t so impressed.

This morning. Jesus H Christ, my feet are killing me. Even my blisters have blisters. I guess I walked too much! It’s seriously sore, but I don’t have time for moping around the hotel, so I have a shower and try and cool off my aching feet, before subjecting them to another day of Manhattan.

It’s another warm day – around 22 degrees, so I decide to go for the shorts I packed, instead of jeans – and that I’ll give the Brooklyn Bridge a visit. I left the hotel around 11am, and got to the Bridge at about 12:30. I got lost on the subway, like a dolt. Took the wrong train and ended up heading in the wrong direction – easily rectified, by getting off at the next stop and turning back, but still a silly fuckup. Nevermind.

The view of Manhattan from the bridge is supposed to be brilliant – and it is, kinda. If the suspension cables weren’t there, it’d be awesome, but if the suspension cables weren’t there, the bridge’d fall down! It is a good mile or so across the bridge, and it’s very busy. When you get to the other side, you’re deposited into Brooklyn, where buildings are considerably less vertical, and the hustle and bustle is virtually non-existant. I find a subway station and make my way back to Manhattan.

I was disappointed at my shopping spree yesterday, Macys is basically the same as Debenhams, or Selfridges, and – like those stores – doesn’t cater for those of us with, *ahem*, a few extra pounds. I’d heard of a specialist ‘big and tall’ place, just a few blocks from my hotel. That place is ‘Rochester Clothing‘.

Holy crap, I think I just found my Mecca! I hate going shopping for clothes. There’s never, ever, ever, anything that fits. If you’re fat, then screw you, you can wear a bin-bag, because no fat guys want to wear nice clothes. None. Really. I think that’s what clothing retailers think, anyhow. Not Rochester. It’s a very upscale, professional, place – not the ducking and diving of Century 21 at all – 3 floors of decent fat bastard clothes. The sale section was quite big, but it seemed to feature items which were, way, way bigger than me – 5X, 6X etc. I bought some jeans and couple of shirts and trundled on.

My feet were completely on fire by this point, so I decided to find somewhere to take 5 and chill out. Somewhere preferably within about 30 seconds walk. The Hilton hotel’s lobby bar was that place! Absurd pricing – $9 for a beer, but ‘only $11′ for a bloody mary. I stay for a couple and head back to the hotel, to have a shower and change into my new clothes for another night out. And, I guess, that about brings us up to date. More tomorrow!

Me: “Hello, I have a reservation for Mr Sheridan, for four days”

Snooty hotel man: “Ok”, tap-tap-tap-tap, raised eyebrow, “ah, yes, I see. Sir, your card was declined (equate my emphasis to his volume), so that booking is now gone.”

I’m sure I don’t need to give examples of some of the choice words I used here – I’m sure you can get the picture, and the long and short of it is, well, I’m on the 22nd floor looking out over Broadway , but I do need to ring my bank tomorrow – it looks like the card I ‘paid’ with is barred from international transactions, presumably as an anti-fraud measure.

The rest of the flight was fine, felt a bit tired by the end, but once we got into the last hour, it flew by (pun intended). JFK Terminal 4 deserted, and Homeland Security let me in with no qualms. Which was nice.

The AirTrain was nice – very modern, clean, and easy – a far cry from the NY Subway! I stood at Howard Beach station for nearly 20 minutes waiting for a train – if this was London, there’d be a riot in front of Parliament! The subway trains are old, rattly and noisy, full of lunatics, but they’re way more spacious than London tubes, and most importantly – air conditioned.

The subway journey is quite a ride – about 40 minutes from Howard Beach to 42nd St/Port Authority, taking in some of New York’s finest fruitcakes – like the lady wheeling on a toddler and a baby, then shouting out her pre-prepared begging script (“I’m livin’ on the streets with mah babies, please give us any food or sandwiches you might have…” – who’s gonna have a spare sandwich? No-one, it’s dollars she’s after, like everyone else) to everyone in that car. Or the little Asian lady trying to sell you pirated ‘dee-wee-dees’, or the preacher, spreading the word of the lord! At each stop, they rotate into the next carriage and move along – it was almost like a constant stream of entertainment!

The subway makes a lot of assumptions to the tourist traveller – I guess this is why a lot of people avoid it. There is precisely *one* subway map in the car, and if someone happens to be sitting in front of it, then tough shit. There are no announcements of next stops, or changeovers, it’s very much do-or-die. The stations are much the same too, and there’s precious little signage telling ‘outsiders’ where to go. It’s quite unfriendly, but maybe that’s why New Yorkers like it!

The ‘free transfer’ I mentioned the other day, from the 42nd St/Port Authority stop to the 42nd St/Times Square stop was indeed just an underpass – albeit quite a bloody long one. I emerged from the subway into Times Square at around 9.30pm local time. The word ‘busy’ doesn’t even begin to cover it. Neon lights and plasma screens as far as the eye can see. I located the hotel and checked in, and fired the netbook up – still an hour and half on the battery!

More tomorrow, folks!

Schiphol is massive, just massive. It took me a good 20 minutes walk to get from the arrival gate, in terminal C, to the departing gate in terminal F. Thing is, there isn’t actually any seperate terminal buildings, it’s just one long, long, long concourse of departure gates and ‘retail opportunities’. It’s certainly a different approach – there’s no ‘airside’ and ‘landside’ as in most airports, security and baggage scan is all done at each individual gate. Seems a bit daft to me – especially as there’s no prior warning of this for a transiting passenger – and juding by the number of ‘Vee are in zee process of unloading jour baggage’ announcements over the tannoy, I’m not the only one with that opinion.

Comedy moment of the day – and the one I wish I’d caught on camera – the campest Dutch policeman in the entire world, zipping around Schiphol on a Segway, patrolling the endless corridors of the concourse.

The 747 to JFK departed on time, and is packed to the gills. It is a ‘combo’ 747, which means that its half-passenger, half-cargo – the entire rear of the plane is for cargo. This means that the galley, which would usually be at the back, is up at the front, taking up a large chunk of the right-hand side of the plane. I knew this in advance, thanks to Seatguru.net, and knew to book a seat near the front of the plane, opposite the galley. This little section exists inbetween Business at the front, and the 3/4/3 of economy in the back. More space, and a quieter cabin. Winner. Seat 16D is a good ‘un, bargain hunters.

I’m sitting next to a pleasant Dutch chap – we’re forming quite the relationship – he asks me to move so he can go to the toilet, I ask to borrow his pen to fill in the US immigration papers. It’s a laugh a minute, really.

One tip I had to help combat jetlag, was to set your watch to the time at your destination as soon as you get on the plane, so, right now as I type this, it’s 16:41 Eastern Standard time, or – 21:41 UK time. I’ve been travelling now for nearly 15 hours. But, I’m, not supposed to think about that now, so, sssh.

I watched ‘Be Kind Rewind’ on the One, choosing to avoid KLM’s offering of ‘Get Smart’ – basically because the tiny TV screen is way too far away for my short-sighed eyes. Mos Def and Jack Black are very good, and Danny Glover is very likable in Michel Gondry’s second (I think) flick – it shares a few of the same quirky elements that were present in ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’, where you have to suspend your disbelief for a little while, just so that you can let the story unfold around you. It’s a neat little film, and has a heartwarming ending. Check it out, if you haven’t already.

KLM have been nice hosts, thusfar – I think they have to try a little harder what with their aircraft being a little older than their competitors, and missing some of the modern amenities of newer craft – like seat-back TVs, video on demand, games and so on. And, as if on queue – I’ve just had to stop typing, because the stewardess just came round with little pots of ice cream for everyone! The food was good – it’s the age-old airline food choice, ‘chicken or beef?’, and I plumped for the latter. Indonesian Beef something-or-other, with plenty of rice and green beans – pretty good for airline food. I was also quietly stunned when unwrapping my knife and fork to find, for the first time for me in many, many years, metal cutlery. Crikey! I’m easily pleased!

I figure too many complimentary liqeuers (Baileys, Cointreau, Drambuie, Cognac, etc) will do me no good, and am sticking, somewhat reluctantly to soft drinks and tea – more anti-jetlag advice. Another 2 and a half hours, or so, to go, and the One is still reporting 3 hours of battery. Pity there’s no magical interwebby goodness on the plane!

I stepped off the tube at the T4 station (though in my eagerness at Kings Cross/St Pancras, I have to confess that I may have accidentally boarded a Piccadilly train bound for Uxbridge, and it wasn’t until Holborn until I realised my faux-pas) and no more than 3 minutes later, I was airside, thru security and in a largely deserted departure lounge.

I realise I must be epically late to the game on this whole ‘online check-in’ malarky, but, jesus h christ, it doesn’t half save some fucking around. Print off your boarding pass. Walk to security. Hand over pass and passport, nice man scans boarding pass, says “Thankyou very much Mr Sheridan, have a good flight” and you walk through to the X-ray scanners. No queueing, no fannying, no fuss.

Once at security control, there are signs to instruct you to put all of your small items in your hand luggage, and to remove shoes and belts, and to have your liquids ready to inspect in the essential sealable bag. There is a small, 3-4 person queue, which is just enough time to remove your shoes, belt and to retrieve your bag of explosive potions from your hand luggage. Once at the head of the queue, you offload the lot into a tray, and it goes through the X-ray machine.

I always go ‘bing!’ when I walk through a metal detector. It’s happened for so long that I’ve convinced the security people at work that I have a metal plate in my head. So, I go through the scanner and fully expect it to ‘bing!’ and for me to get a pat-down from a surly BAA security guy. There is no ‘bing!’ – crikey! I collect up my stuff and wander into the departure lounge. I look at my watch – 3 minutes since I got off the tube. Amazing.

The lounge is very quiet, with a few people milling around, but not the vast throngs of people you sometimes see at airports. I’m so pleased with my security experience that I spot the airside Wetherspoons and have a pint of Bishops Finger, the only ale they’ve got on. So far, so good.

The 6600mAh extended battery for the Aspire One arrived yesterday, and I gave it a little dry-run at work to see how the battery life held up. The battery reached 100% charged at around 11am, so I disconnected it and gave it some light use throughout the day – with the wifi on, and a number of sizable data transfers, and a USB flash card attached – by the time it got to 5pm, it still claimed to have over 2 hours life left and about 25% capacity. Very promising.

Presently, as I write this, I’m hurtling through the countryside on a knackered old East Midlands Trains Intercity125, playing FreeCiv on the One. I had planned on loading up the machine with as many films and stuff as I could muster, but not one of my torrents finished on time. Which was disappointing. I did have ‘Be Kind Rewind’ and the first two episodes of ‘Fringe’ from a previous haul, and I guess they’ll have to do me.

Last night, KLM’s online check-in system finally allowed me to check-in, so I have my self-printed boarding-pass. This should allow me to bypass the check-in desks (and the stupid “Has anyone asked you to carry anything for them in your luggage?” questions – which I’m *sure* that any terrorist or drug smuggler will answer affermatively!) and go straight through to security with my rucksack.

This will be the second time I’ve flown since the whole ‘liquids restrictions’, and this time I’m prepared – I have my toiletries (all under 100ml!) in a sealed plastic bag obtained from East Midlands Airport the last time I travelled. This bag is in a compartment at the top of the rucksack and is very easily accessible for their inspection. Now, if I get any grief from Heathrow security staff, I will be very, very annoyed!

I’m not sure what it is about the whole airport security process that bugs me. I realise it is, largely, for our own protection, but it just irks me the way you’re handled. Of course, the attitude of the staff also plays a large part – we’ll see how much it winds me up today, I guess.

Anyhow, the train is pulling into Derby, and my FreeCiv game is awaiting my input, so I will sign off now until airside at Heathrow – where, with luck, I might be able to actually post this on the blog.

I have a fairly mammoth journey ahead of me, starting at 7am when (hopefully) my local taxi co should be picking me up to take me to the station. From there, it’s a couple of hours on one of East Midland Trains’ finest (bwah!), then a long jaunt along the Piccadilly line from St Pancras to Terminal 4. Then, a 1.5 hr hop over to Amsterdam Schiphol airport, and then the nasty transatlantic leg across the pond to John F. Kennedy International.

Of course, that just gets me to the airport at the other end. There’s no point whatsoever in hiring a car in NY, so you have to rely on public transport to get you from the arrivals hall to your hotel. Assuming you don’t want to be stung by the ridiculous $45+tolls+tip taxi fare (so, in reality, more like $60), this isn’t as straightforward as it might first seem.

In the UK, this is a doddle – at Heathrow, you either get on the Piccadilly line and make your way into the city and get to your hotel. Or, you take one of the ‘Heathrow/Gatwick/Luton/Stanstead Express’ trains which run directly from the airports to a main station in the city (Paddington, Victoria, St Pancras, Liverpool St, respectively (I think!)) and proceed from there. It’s easy, and the Underground maps are absurdly well designed so that even the most nervous of travellers can understand things.

Compare and contrast:

London Underground

New York Subway

The New York subway map makes it look terrifyingly complicated. I suspect, and hope, that it isn’t all that bad and I guess I’ll find out when I get there. Why there’s not a less convoluted and complicated map, I don’t know, but I guess locals are completely familiar to the map, just as Londoners are to theirs, and any change would be met with much disdain.

At JFK, it’s a different kettle of fish. JFK isn’t actually on the NY Metro. Well, it is, but it’s not – there’s a couple of stations for the airport, but to get to those stations from the airport themselves, you’ve got to ride an entirely separate light rail system (called the AirTrain) which visits the terminals of the airport itself. This is, of course, chargeable, and isn’t covered by any Metro ticket you might have already bought.

Now, from looking at the map, I figure I need to get the AirTrain to ‘Howard Beach’ station, and then get an ‘A’ train (the blue line) from there to ’42nd St & Port Authority’ (my hotel is near Times Square), whereby I utilise something called a ‘free transfer’ to ’42nd St & Times Square’. I suspect that a ‘free transfer’ actually means a glorified underpass, which I walk through to emerge at the Times Square station? A bit like Bank and Monument on the London Underground?

Anyhoo, assuming that I manage that, I should end up at my hotel at around 9pm-ish, New York time, tomorrow night. This will, however be around 3-4am James-time from all the travelling! I need to adjust my body clock and combat jetlag ASAP.

I will try and write some stuff throughout the journey, if possible – no guarantees of updates at 35000ft though!

I’ve never been to New York, though I’ve always wanted to go, and – truth be told – I’m more excited about this trip than pretty much any other holiday I’ve been on. I can’t recall being more excited about going away since my honeymoon. I think mainly, it’s because I’ll be travelling alone, and I’ve never been on holiday on my own before.

I’m staying for four nights, between the 9th and 13th of October. Though my return flight on the 13th departs at 8:50am, so I guess there won’t be any late night boozing on the 12th!

Going it alone also means making all the associated arrangements on my own too. I relied on others too much in the past for this kind of thing, and it’s quite exciting in itself to have so many little things to organise pre-trip. It took me half a day, for example, to work out that it would be cheaper for me to pre-book train tickets (even 1st class ones!) down to Heathrow and back than to drive down and park my car – plus I got the added benefit of not having to negotiate the M25 and M1 on my return, after a 7.5hr flight and all the associated jet-lag.

I’ve never been so organised about a trip before! I’ve even sorted out travel insurance!

I’ve also decided to try and ‘travel light’ (at least, for the outbound leg!), and am going to stick to just one carry-on bag, rather than checking luggage. I figure I’m only going to need 4 days worth of clothes, which to me amounts to four pairs of socks and pants, a couple of t-shirts, a couple of shirts and a pair of trousers, plus a washbag. I picked up a cheap small rucksack which ought to do the job.

I’ll also be taking my Nikon D50, and my Sigma 18-200 – I figure there is no excuse to not take my ‘good’ camera when there are all the sights of New York to take in. To carry the camera around, I’ve picked up a Crumpler ‘Pretty Boy’ Medium (no, really!) shoulder bag, as it a) doesn’t look immediately like a SLR camera bag, and b) is lighter and smaller than my current Lowepro bag which carries all my SLR gubbins.

Finally, because I just can’t leave home without a computer, I’ll take a laptop with me. But not my Macbook Pro. I’ll take a netbook.

I’ve toyed with the idea of getting a ‘small cheap computer’ (aka. a netbook) for a little while, ever since seeing the original EeePC in work a year or more ago – but i’d dismissed the idea as it seemed like a terrible false economy to me. You got a tiny laptop, sure, but it was at the expense of a decent processor, a barely-usable 7″ screen, and – crucially for sausage-fingers me – a crummy keyboard with which to type. I actually tried out a EeePC 900 for a day or two a few months ago, and I got very frustrated with how poor the keyboard was and ended up returning it.

Since then, we’ve had some HP 2133 ‘Mini-note’ netbooks at work. These are HP’s entry into the netbook market, and they are nothing short of lovely. They’re far more sturdily constructed and certainly look much more business-like than the Fisher Price-esque contruction of the original EeePC’s. It also has a virtually-full-size laptop keyboard, and is a doddle to type on. However, it fails on two crucial points – a) The CPU is an ancient Via C7, which struggles even on the bundled SuSE-based Linux, and b) the price. It’s £350 quid – and nudging £400 if you want the decent capacity battery version.

So, what I was searching for was a netbook which had a decent keyboard, and enough ‘ummph’ under the bonnet to make it actually usable. Enter the Acer Aspire One.

£220 bought me a blue Aspire One with a 120GB hard disk, and 1.6Ghz Intel Atom processor. It has a far, far, far better keyboard than any EeePC I’ve played with (701,900,901 – not played with the 1000 yet) though still nowhere near the HP, but the price-point made it too good not to buy. The 3-cell battery gives around 2.5hrs life, which isn’t fantastic, but a 6-cell battery is arriving any day soon, and this promises to push the battery life up to around 6-7 hours. If I can source one of these batteries before I go away, I will buy one.

So, in the rucksack will be some clothes, washbag, camera bag containing camera, netbook, power chargers for phone, camera and netbook, and a couple of UK->US socket adaptors and that ought to be it. From my investigations, the bag should pass as hand-luggage according to KLM’s baggage policy. This should save me a lot of time at JFK, with no baggage carousel lottery to be played, and no worry of the bag going astray at Schipol on the outward leg.

The return leg is a straight JFK->LHR flight, with no connections, and as I understand New York is the shopping capital of the world, so I plan to buy a holdall or case out there, and fill it with goodies (for myself, for Aimee, Christmas presents, etc) to bring back. I will, at this juncture, also point out that I will of course pay any UK Customs and Import Duty required on any purchases over the given limits, of course. Ahem.

So – world – I ask thee – what should I go see, other than the usual tourist things? A number of people have told me that rather than going up the Empire State Building, it’s far better to go up the Rockefeller Building and view the city skyline from there – taking in the Empire State Building itself – and to go up at just before dusk, so you get daytime and nighttime perspectives on the city, and I’ll very likely do this. Plus there’s a tip to take the Staten Island ferry, rather than taking a trip to see the Statue of Liberty, as you can’t actually go all the way up the statue anymore, anyhow, and the ferry is a freebie – what other tips can travellers offer?

I realise there’s the whole Broadway and theatre aspect of things – but if I want theatre (and I rarely do) – then London’s got plenty of it, and I can’t imagine a performance of Spamalot (or whatever musical is de rigeuer) is any different on Broadway as it is in the West End, so I’m not really looking for recommendations to take in a show.

I really am terribly excited – can you tell?