Vermont was a beautiful state to pass through. On our journey to New York state we also passed through Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. When we got off the train in New York we were delighted to meet David who has been a great help in planning and organising our journey. He was to join us the next day to show us around the city. We negotiated the subway system and made our way to Candy Hostel on 95th street. 95th Street? No, not there, went into the hotel at the number given and they sent us through some winding passages to the next street over and the hotel behind. We were given two bunk beds in a 4 bed room on the 7th floor, the hostel has been just created from a hotel and so everything is tidy and clean and new.
We stowed the laptop and electrical stuff in a locker and headed out for a walk up Broadway, it was about 9pm but New York has no time limit life is a 24 hour day. Got to bed at 11pm then found that we could hook into an unsecured network so Carol spent nearly all night uploading photos (it takes ages!).
We met David by the T Rex in the Toys-R-Us store downtown and had a days guided tour all over Manhatten. We went to Statten Island passing the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island on the way. Next we viewed Ground Zero which is surrounded by fences and it looks like something is developing there. The Empire State Building and Grand Central Park and lots of other points of interest were admired and Carol's feet nearly fell off, it was an excellent day. New York is having unseasonably hot weather at the moment, about 20 degrees farenheit above the norm. David headed back home to New Jersey and we headed back to the hostel after consuming yet another smoothie to cool down.
David had discussed with us during the day about 9/11 and one of the positive things that had happened as a result of that was that the people started to care about one another. In the past NY had been the town where if you were on the pavement near death people would step over you and move on, I remember hearing that about NY years ago. An interesting incident happened on the subway as we travelled back at the end of the day. As one man got on another bumped him in some way and he got mad, really mad. He started to mouth off at the other person who started back at him. The thing was that as soon as the altercation started other people in the carriage (lots) immediately entreated them to calm down, asked them not to argue. One woman (must have been a mother or school teacher) said - 'right, that's enough, I am going to count to three and you are going to end this... 1... 2... 3.... And it worked! Nothing was said after that. After a few minutes the first guy had calmed down then actually apologised and said he was sorry to the other guy. It was quite amazing really, a good experience.
