New York

Alice in Wonderland sculpture in Central Park

Central Park Reservoir looking east to Manhattan

View from the Staten Island Ferry

World Trade Center

Memorial Plaza at the World Trade Center

High Line Apartments

Scaffolding Art

Brooklyn Bridge

UN building from the Empire State Building

Chrysler Building

Cezanne cut-outs

Bryant Park

Times Square

These two were arrested shortly afterwards

Central Sation

After three weeks on the road, New York was to be our time to relax before the flight home but that is not easily done in New York. Even getting from Newark Airport to the hotel took two and a half hours on the hotel bus, which was a travesty of integrated transport. Then the perfectly located hotel on Sixth Avenue charged prices that we would have expected to include the internet and a decent breakfast but these were additional items.

There is no sense in describing all our activities in New York, we charged around places we had not visited previously and doubled up on the Museum of Modern Art and the Empire State Building. The highlights were the free ferry to Staten Island with its superb views of the Manhattan skyline, the community-managed High Line walkway through the former meatpacking district on the Lower West Side, and the Jeff Koons Retrospective exhibition at the Whitney Museum of Modern Art. We had walks and I had morning runs around Central Park and breakfast at a local Greek diner on Sixth Avenue. We admired the rectangular solidity of Central Station and visited Lower Manhattan. The scene of the 9/11 tragedy was overpowering.

We had a long conversation about the pending Scottish Independence referendum with an Italian/Brazilian who was now resident in New York. He couldn't understand the purpose of the vote as Scotland and the UK were perceived as mutually integrated by the rest of the world. He admonished us for defending the right to a ballot and said it would be hugely damaging for Scotland, the UK and the world if there were to be a Yes vote. This opinion was echoed by several other Americans we spoke to during our trip.

Like everyone else who visits New York, we found the prices high and relaxation difficult. The magic of the first visit in 1996 with our children was no longer there. We walked miles, as the taxis were slower than walking as they were the reason for and the victims of gridlock. They had to do twice the distance to stand still as Alice might have told them owing to the one-way systems. New York is a game designed to make everything seem bigger, slower and more expensive than it really is, no wonder Donald Trump has his tower there.

I calculated based on our trip that you could get two weeks in Wyoming, and that included the hire of a car and 1500 miles, for the price of 4 days in New York. The guy in the Apple Store who sold me an iPad agreed but he was waiting for his wife to retire before they decamped to Wyoming. He reckoned that he could get all the entertainment stuff he wanted online or from the memories of a life spent in the city and what he really wanted was the physical and mental stimulation of the great outdoors. We agreed and he managed to save me $100 on the iPad that I was going to buy. It was 8:30am on a Sunday morning and he said it would buy us lunch and he was just about right.

Much as I enjoy visiting cities, the numbing effect of New York airports and transport systems, the lack of courtesy in diners and public attractions like the Guggenheim museum together with the high tariffs for everything would not persuade me to rush back to New York. This even though we never managed to visit the superb Metropolitan Museum or obtain tickets for any of the shows we had wanted to see.