New York, New York

New York, that's where our 3 weeks of  drifting across the States is beginning and I can see already in Mia's eyes that she is hooked.
New York, the city of frenetic energy, of  constant light and sound, of people and buildings reaching for the sky. A melting pot of faces and races and sound and colour, where life is fragile and the line between hopelessness and happiness is always thin.

Gazing at the Manhattan skyline from the Staten Island ferry, it is easy to understand why people started to build upwards. How else could so many hopes and dreams be fitted into such a tiny space?  How else could it continue to grow? And even after all these years, there is something about the Statue of Liberty, golden torch shining in the sun, old fashioned and incongruous against the modern skyscrapers, that makes you believe your adventure is only just beginning..


The good thing about jet lag, is that you wake up very early. In a city that never sleeps, it's perfect. by 9 o'clock on our first morning we had watched Good Morning America being filmed thkrough the studio windows on Time Square, narrowly avoided walking through brain and guts newly splattered across a road,  walked the beautifully landscaped high line that follows an old railway line above the city, and of course, eaten the mandatory McDonalds breakfast.  We had watched trendily suited men and women rushing to work past homeless people pushing shopping trollies full of reclaimable bottles. And that's New York: hot and humid, contradictory and compellingly exciting. But beneath it all there is something else, something smaller and less tangible. Because underneath the fake smiles and the " have a nice day,"  and  the trendy village scene, there is a raw tenderness that keeps the human spirit alive. It's the white rose placed in one of the names engraved around the 9/11 Memorial, the young homeless man tenderly covering an older homeless woman with a blanket in Central Park, the lone notes of a saxophone drifting across the droning sirens and constantly rumbling traffic.


And that's what makes New York special.
Because beneath the skyscrapers and the noise and the lights, beneath the 24 hour living and the hopes and dreams, it has a heart that will never stop beating or growing or caring.
I think I can understand why Mia is hooked!

On to  Rhode Island  and old friends next. And I'm hoping I might have worked out how to upload photos onto an iPad!