State hopping

If it hadn’t been for local knowledge, we’d never have scored a passage on the ferry at all. As it was, we have to take the 3.30 voyage rather than the midday one we’d hoped for. And we are lucky to get tickets for that. These Cape May/Lewes ferries ply the waters to and fro all day long and still there are massive queues. This is a very busy country. People are on the move all the time.

But the Americans are pretty good at it.

For instance, this ferry terminal is a destination in itself. It has a great big swanky waterside restaurant with a classy live music performance going on. It seems to be a thing for families to swan over to the terminal for lunch watching the big ferries chug in and out. It’s like the old days when people went to the airports just to

watch the planes. But, in this case, there is a purpose-built lounge, bar, restaurant, and shops to make it all into a big commercial happening thing with a party atmosphere.

The partying goes on among the ferry passengers, we soon discover. There are bars on the ferry. They are enthusiastically patronised. Bunches of passengers are getting rather happy and very noisy.

Not everyone.

We are the sort who like to watch the sea, the passing boats, the disappearing land, and the birds.

Seagulls follow the ferry excitedly feeding in the wake. Some like to fly beside or aloft over the ferry, seemingly suspended in the air. Riding on the upper deck, we are sometimes at eye level with them. Great big Atlantic gulls. Wonderful. Jonathan Livingston seagulls.

There are a lot of dogs on the ferry. There are a lot of dogs everywhere, as it happens. Dogs are accepted family travellers. They are in all the hotels. It is the era of the four-star hotel dog. Just $15 a night, I'm told. Some hotels offer designer dog beds and treats to encourage the canine custom. True story.

So, I suppose I am not surprised to see so many

dogs on the ferry.

I am surprised to see Mennonites, though. I am always surprised to see Mennonites - gentle, quiet, homely souls in their buttonless frocks and little headpieces.

It is a glorious 90-minute voyage across the pea green Delaware River estuary and then we are in Delaware.

Oh, bliss. Look. Corn fields. Tall, feathery-topped corn. I have seen cornfields right across this mighty country. I have seen them from little, bitty plants across the vast expanses of Wyoming and South Dakota. I have seen them getting bigger as we travelled east. I have become attached to the sight of them. They are not quite so lush here but I am so glad to see them again. I break out the Chex Mix in celebration.

Here in Delaware we are driving past settlements with mown verges and flower beds. There seems to be a lighthouse motif repeated along the roads. There are rental shops for almost everything: chairs, umbrellas, scooters, bait. You can rent bait?

More corn crops. Fields of soy. Corn. Lovely neat, sleek crops.

Delaware is Vice President Joe Biden's territory, says Bruce. Politics seems prominent with election signs of all sorts dotted along the roadside:

I.G. Burton for District Governor, Fred Shade for County Council, Kathy McGuinness for Lieutenant Governor, Max Schaff, Sam Wilson, Mike Miller for Congress. They flash past too fast to photograph.

Where it is not rural, it seems to be full of new developments. Aha, that one looks like the template the Sims computer game creators used. I used to build virtual houses like that back in the days when I played The Sims. I drift into nostalgia for that favourite computer game. Such are the indulgences of the eternal car passenger. This Alamo Nissan Rogue of the mysterious deep green hue has been a sort of home base for at least 10 weeks now.

We pass through Georgetown, very neat, a classic little American darling town with lots of restaurants.

Bruce is looking for chicken BBQ stands. Delaware is famous for chicken and he remembers its roadside BBQ chicken as one of the great yummies of this world. No sign of chicken. There are farm stands, instead. This one touts Candy-Lopes as well as peaches and cherries.

Fields of corn and soy. Woodlands, Open pasture. Farm stand selling corn and watermelon.

A massive billboard looms. Bridgeville - If you lived here, you would be home.

Hmm. What smarmy idiot thought of that?

Bridgeville seems to be a sprawling, flat town. It seems to be mad on billboards. I wouldn’t want to live there.

Back into countryside and it is more diversified agriculture. As well as corn there are crops of sunflowers and apple orchards. Did I mention corn?

Sign: Don’t Reach For Just Any Peach.

Corn.

Ma & Pa’s Farmstand - corn and cantaloupes.

Delaware is certainly a fecund little agricultural state. There is charm to this intensity of small home-grown enterprise. The farms themselves are becoming prominent. Huge handsome farms they are, too. And more produce stands. We grown our own corn, brags one. You don’t say. Another farm stand advertises Lopes. This one’s a fruit market. It has peaches and lima beans.

We don’t stop at any of them since we are looking for the remembered chicken BBQ stands.

It turns out they have not vanished. They simply are shut. They’re a lunch thing and it is getting late now.

Bruce swallows his disappointment and promises me curry for dinner.

We drive past a massive dairy farm and suddenly we are in Maryland.

Altered State, I trumpet brilliantly.

Bruce flicks me a sideways look.

Sign: State Law. No Texting. No hand-held phones.

More corn fields. Now the farm stands are replaced by acres of mini storage compartments.

The sky is lowering. Clouds are massing. We are coming in to Denton. Car yards and strip malls. Walmart, Dunkin’ Donuts, Subway. We cross the Choptank River and marvel at its name. The sun is casting elliptical rays through the cloud layers. It is like a religious painting. Co-incidentally, there’s a huge solar panel farm. It extends for many acres. We wonder what it powers.

Oh, look, an outlet mall. A glossy, crowded hub of joyful consumerism. I look longingly.

Onwards we drive. Rivers, waterways and trucks, lots of trucks. Here comes the famous Chesapeake Bay bridge, a cable suspension bridge across the glorious, great bay.

That is one mighty view. The water is dotted with boats, barges and jet skis. People are playing on little beaches on the bay shore. Some are fishing off rocky groynes. It is the end of a hot day.

Now we humming along the road to Baltimore between walls of trees. And Bruce has a conniption.

What! Signs to the National Security Agency!

In my time working in the intel community it was completely secret, dark secret, he gasps. It used to be you couldn’t even mention the acronym NSA.

As if just to annoy him, there are more signs. NSA employees only. NSA deliveries here. There’s a stern cyclone wire fence but Bruce is still scandalised.

He points out the mass of power lines going in. They’re processing the world’s communications with huge supercomputers in there, he says.

But we’re on home turf now. This is Bruce’s old stamping ground. This is where I came 20 odd years ago when first we met. We’re nostalgic.

Soon we are unpacking in the Columbia Homewood Suites by Hilton.

Our destination for family reunions.

And what is that I spy across the way?

It is the Royal Taj Indian Restaurant - and the promised curry becomes delicious reality.

At play in Cape May

New York was swarming with Aussies. Here, I’ve seen not a one. No internationals at all to speak of. Just Americans.

This is the secret underbelly of Americans at play. This is their place. It is their idiom. Their culture. Their history.

It is a traditional East Coast family seaside holiday destination, glorious strands of long, sandy New Jersey beaches, low

dunes, marshland…lapped by the Atlantic Ocean.

Most of the people around us are from nearby Philadelphia.

I suppose that is why there are not too many choices of postcards sold here.

We’re staying in the Grand Hotel which is a funny old thing. It used to be very grand, I think. It was

probably once at the cutting edge of seaside resorts with its vast stretches of covered balconies surrounding a big central outdoor pool complete with bar and food service.

Our friends, Jim and Irene, are in the next room thanks to the friendly consideration of the hotel Reception as we were booking in. Hotels win or lose on the attitude of Reception staff. In some hotels, they are mean

with the power they wield and have mysterious little agendas. In others, they are the soul of hospitality which set one’s stay off on a really positive footing. Here, I’d been warned on booking that the best sea view rooms were already booked and I’d requested they list me if there was a cancellation. On arrival, I am greeted with the sweet news that they not only have an ocean view room for us but would I like our friends to be beside us?

Checking in a the Grand Hotel is complicated, though. One is fitted with a blue rubber bracelet which is official entry to the pools. And one is briefed about the trolley bus which comes past the hotel to take guests into and out of the little township down the beach. Oh, and breakfast which is a vast buffet but, for the same price, any added a la carte breakfast one might desire.

The grand of the Grand sort of ends there. No pushy valets. They supply wonderful luggage carts and free parking. Bruce loves a luggage cart. He arranges our mountain of road trip world upon it, ever more artfully. There are cases and bags, pillows, grocery bags and, of course, the all-important cooler basket which carries our chilled wine, Bloody Mary makings, and perishables.

Our room is on the first floor which the Americans call the second floor. It is very beachy and practical with a smooth pseudo wooden floor and a little bay window looking seawards. The utter joy is that there also are back windows which look out onto Cape May suburbia - huge, handsome three-storey wooden homes with flags and lawns and big, shady verandahs. Two views! Two worlds! I am silly with happiness.

Bruce, too. But it’s not the view that has him excited. It’s the wee kitchen. Spag bol, he exclaims. He starts making a shopping list immediately. In two seconds flat, he has Googled up the address of the supermarket.

Nah, we don’t need the free trolley. We need the walk. We can enjoy our surroundings. We do. Except that it is about a million degrees Centigrade and the humidity is a few million more. The heat wave goes on.

So, yes, it is an interesting walk. The architecture at Cape May is almost fairy book.There are spectacular, lavish Captain’s Houses and mad turreted mansions with widow’s walks and ornate layered balconies, all made of clapboard, of course. There are age-old guest houses and

seaside hotels. And they are painted in lovely bright colours, cheerful and pretty. It is a joy of architectural diversity.

And they are alive with holidaymakers.

The Americans work as hard at leisure as they do at jobs. They come for a seaside vacation heavily

loaded with necessities: beach umbrellas, huge cooler boxes, rugs, chairs, balls. The cooler boxes have wheels and handles and can be towed. The chairs and carry bags hitch over the shoulders, backpack style, so there are all these very chair-broad people waddling to and from the beach.

They are, of course, all around us at the hotel. The cars roll up and disgorge all this amazing beach gear. Lots of chairs. Lots. No one

wants to sit on the sand, it seems. Not even the kids. And no one minds paying to go onto the beach. It is $6 a day. What? I can't come at that. I just can't do it. It is great that they have lifeguards perched up on those sturdy high chairs. But we Aussies believe the beach belongs to us all. They stop charging at 4pm so we make it our rule to only go on the sands late in the day.

And I’m a pool-lover, anyway. The pool is gorgeous. And there is a second pool, a huge and very glamorous indoor pool. It has murals on the walls and sumptuous

armchairs and chaise lounges. It makes me feel as if I am stepping into a Scott Fitzgerald novel.

The hotel has a terrific dining room which is handy since the extreme heat has us enervated. We find a lovely big balcony at the end of the hotel where we can look at the sea and loll on rocking chairs. That’s where we take our evening drinks. We’re on dirty martinis now. With vodka at $11 a half gallon, they cost 22 cents a piece.

So, Bruce makes his famous spaghetti Bolognese for a dinner party, this time with high protein, high fibre pasta. We have pineapple for dessert. We talk and laugh and reminisce.

Irene and I have no issue in catching the $1

trolley in the drenching heat. Who knew it came with a travel commentary from Barry, the driver. We go shopping in the darling little Cape May mall, just so quaint and sweet and be-dangled with pots of petunias. The fudge shop is a downfall. We buy too much and get a free box of salt water taffy for our excess.

Over our days in Cape May, we

discover the famous Lobster House which is a complex of huge restaurants along with a restaurant on a boat, an extensive take-away shop, a great big raw bar, and a mass of tables stretching down the length of a dock. Fishing boats are moored at the dock and, also on the dock, is the big fish processing shed providing all the seafood being consumed all around us - and then some. It is a prodigious operation. Our waitress is a very fit mature blonde in a cutie-pie sailorgirl costume. She bounds to the table announcing in one of those voices which could cut glass that “My name is Cathy and I will be your server”. Then, in a dramatic move, she thrusts out her chest to display an extremely ample bust. We don’t quite know which way to look.

The food is fabulous. Oh, the freshness. Oh, oh,

oh. Clams, scallops, oh the flounder!

There are assorted things to do in Cape May. We check out the lighthouse and look at the birdwatchers’ boardwalks over the swamps. But, frankly, it is too hot and humid for anything except lolling about in pools. A huge electrical storm moves through, strobing the night sky and whip-cracking over the sea. It dumps a bucket of nocturnal rain and the humidity multiplies. Argh. Annoyingly, the Grand Hotel has the world’s worst Internet service and, after a few days of frustration, we just give up and read books and watch the Olympics on television.

Of course we return to the supermarket a few times for fruit and those wonderful sugare-free

Polar drinks. On one occasion in the little mall we hear someone playing the street piano. It is no ordinary tinkles. This man is a serious pianist. Wow. We are stopped in our tracks. We seize the moment. We sit on a shady bench. We marvel and revel. The man is playing a Chopin Prelude. It is superb. We clap. Then he plays a Nocturne. Aaaah. When he finishes, we call for more. Sorry, he responds. My lunch is ready. And he disappears into restaurant.

I am studying the people around me, the Americans at play. I watch some

wholesome families with kids with names such as Madison and Tyler. I watch just how much poolside food some Latino families seem able to consume. I watch dads at play with their kids and the unadulterated ecstasy kids have at that rare thing called the undivided attention of dad. There are families with five or six very well behaved children. They seem mostly to be very religious. Home schoolers, I wonder? People seem to be very conservative. One woman regales us with tales of evil Obama closing coal mines. She loves Donald Trump, of course. I become alarmed at how strong is that sentiment.

This is naked Americana - a cross section of the middle class. These are the voters.

I can’t say I’m not worried.

Chancing upon the Trump legacy in Atlantic City.

We’re so sad to leave New York City that we leave it one day early.

Doh.

We're suffering our first disaster on this epic road trip. It is the great peril of retirement. We often don’t know what day it is.

In this case, we have juggled dates and moved from our original schedule - and then forgotten that we have done it.

Doh, again.

We do not discover our error until lunchtime - following a lovely swim at

the Gansevoort’s gorgeous rooftop pool and a pleasant drive through the Sopranos' territory of New Jersey, marshes, and oil refineries.

It’s very flat land.

As we drive past Newark Airport, planes seem to be landing on roads right beside us. Well, they are. It is just that their roads are called runways.

South West planes are painted purple, red and orange. Aerial chic or aviation garish? Such are the profundities one ponders on the road.

As we rumble through a landscape of heavy industry, the NJ motto of The Garden State seems odd. But the marshes are green and pretty and when we get onto the seven-lane Garden State Parkway, well, this is the best road in the world. If it is not, it is my favourite road in the world. It is so smooth and leafy, sleek and forest-lined. Superbly maintained. It has no trucks.

We stop at one of those massive service areas for lunch. This is not a nice one. It has burgers and hot dogs and fried chicken, junk food rampant in confusing queues. We pick up cheap and nasty hamburgers and Bruce rings his old Yale roommate, Jim in Philadelphia, to liaise our imminent meeting in Cape May.

Except that, as Jim points out, it is not imminent. It is tomorrow.

We go into a flurry of damage control.

That’s why the room staff at the Gansevoort were cleaning the room when we came down from the pool. We were not on the departure list for another day. Oh, that lovely room is still ours. Is it too far to go back?

No going back, says Bruce.

Let’s have an adventure instead.

Let’s go to Atlantic City.

I whiz into my Expedia App and see what I can find for tonight.

Look, Bruce, this old golf resort looks romantic. Shall we? Two seconds later, Expedia whizzes a confirmation into my phone and off we go.

Sucking Strepsils as we drive. We’ve managed to bring that ubiquitous New York cough with us as a souvenir.

We pay tolls to very cheerful cashiers. It would seem to be an awful job yet they are so perky. We ponder this as we drive through fascinating pine forests. They are the Pine Barrens of New Jersey.

We remember scenes of them in The Sopranos.

Swamps and ponds. A sign to Little Egg Harbor.

Flat open land and a big horizon. A vast expanse. Yellow and green marshland. I love it.

We turn off to Galloway and find ourselves in big, green burbs.

And then we are at the Stockton Seaview Hotel which is set beside a golf course amid the marshes. It has a sweeping drive. It is very old-time resort grand.

Middle aged valets fall on us as we drive up and insist on unloading the luggage even when I am saying I’d rather wait until we’ve checked in. Prescient, as it turns out.

Across a vast expanse of lavish olde world lobby, I find the Reception desk and Heather who gives me the bad news. They don’t have the booking. It has not come through. I give them the Expedia reservation confirmation number.

Heather, the receptionist, says that Expedia has not sent it. No. It is not there. No, there is nothing she can do. And she won’t give us a different room because Expedia is pre-paid. Hmm. After much humming around, she promises to phone as soon as they have the room.

We have to leave the luggage with the valets.

We head off to kill time waiting for the call. We take a road to see the sea.

It turns into a rough, pot-holed dirt road through reeds to a little marshy boat ramp and a nice view of Atlantic City across the water. I get out of the car to take a photo. A couple of desultory seagulls are hanging out there, along with a lot of vicious biting flies. I get back in the car.

We decide to take the plunge and drive into Atlantic City itself.

The road is appalling. There are

great windmills and several spectacular buildings, a glorious golden round one called Bongok. Billboards all along the road proclaim the Trump Taj Mahal. Lucie Arnaz is promoted in concert. Lucille Ball’s daughter. How interesting.

There’s a huge white elephant on the road into Atlantic City. Another promotion for the Trump joint. It towers on the horizon.

We drive through some scruffy backstreets looking for the famous boardwalk.

Now we’re passing the entrance to the Taj Mahal. And, what’s this? Industrial action? It is surrounded by strikers, all in red shirts and waving placards declaring that they are being denied their proper work conditions.

Well, this is a big red flag to an old journo bull.

Finding a street carpark, we head off the meet the strikers.

It is meltingly hot.

Many of them are sitting on a low wall while others take turns at the active picketing. I sit

down with the most articulate of them. A lovely African American fellow who worked in one of the casino’s restaurants as a baker. He told of cut hours, no holidays, overwork, underpay, insecure conditions with no contracts. The casino does not belong to Trump any more. It was sold off after bankruptcy. But he did give contracts to his workers.

The strikers ask us to report on what things are like inside the casino. Since we are going in there for a snoop anyway, we agree.

It is fairly quiet inside. But, oh, so huge and glittering. I never saw so many chandeliers. I never saw such big chandeliers.

A few croupiers are at tables. But there are scores and scores of tables. So much gambling real estate. And, oh, the slot machines!

Pokies….acres of them. I mean acres. Very few people playing them. It is like a winking, blinking, bright electric wilderness.

We walk seemingly for miles inside the casino, exploring the upstairs arcades and the restaurants. The upstairs corridor is like a long, carpeted street, so long and hollow that a lonely security guard is patrolling it by Segway.

There are restaurants with big Closed signs. There's a theatre. Of course, that is where Lucie Arnaz will perform. Dark now, of course. She is not billed for months yet. Finally, we potter out and report in to the strikers. They say Tuesdays are usually slow, anyway.

And we move on to take a walk on the famous Atlantic City boardwalk.

It is ghastly hot.

It is not too busy. There are lots of ticky tack shops. One after another, packed side by side.

Usually, I love ticky tack. I am a sucker for kitsch and seaside souvenirs. I am looking for a tank top.

I find not a solitary thing I would want to buy. Bruce sits in the sun while I make little forays. There are surly Indian shopkeepers at the rear

of each store. Their prices are very high and their stock is very inferior. I see a plaintive sign above one shop “American owned” and I realise that these miles of commerce are the new face of the Atlantic City boardwalk.

We return to the car and drive through the Atlantic City suburbs, which are fascinating. They extend out into another township called Ventnor. Flowering trees. Topiary.

Flags. They’re lavish homes and holiday houses reaching beyond opulence into the realms of palatial. Grotesquely fanciful. Over some immeasurable top. Oh, look into that one with the vast bay window. There’s a grand piano. The furniture is all gilded. Move over Louis XIV.

We drive down some side streets to the water and find that the marvellous boardwalk is still going. It goes all the way from Atlantic City along the coast. How superb. The beach is all swept and smooth. The sand it coarse and dirty and very, very hot. People are down near the water’s edge. I have to feel the water. Bruce does not.

The hotel still has not called. Hours have passed. We are tired and a big woggy. We really want home comforts. I call the hotel. No, no news. Nothing from Expedia. They are supposed to be sending a fax but they don’t have it. Perhaps I would like to call Expedia. This is all very odd. Expedia has been very efficient in the past. On a number of occasions I have had the impression that hotels do not like it very much and do not give its customers the best treatment, but Expedia, along with booking.com, have been exemplary. A fine service for the traveller.

I try to call. I get through to an Australian number and am presented with a lot of options to key in. I realise that the confirmation number is in the phone and I am on the phone. I hang up to access the number. Then I ring the hotel number by mistake and speak to a man who says Heather has gone home and, yes, he has the booking and the room is ready.

Relief.

We hurtle back to the hotel.

It is a very faded grandeur old thing. The lobbies are expansive and one has to cross several to reach the reception desk. We check in and the valet brings our luggage and escorts us to the room - which is a long way. This place is immense.

No, he can’t take the loaded luggage trolley into the room. He has to unload in the hall and bring everything in piece by piece. There is a lot of it, since the overkeen valets had zealously unloaded everything from the car.

This is quite a performance. I note that the room smells very musty and that the beds are a bit dishevelled.

Looks like someone was sitting there, says the valet as he disappears down the hall. Er, yes. And there is stuff in the bins. And the soap is unwrapped.

I call reception.

We’ll send the maid. Do you want to swap.

Look at all the luggage, mutters Bruce. Too hard. The maid arrives and flurries around sprucing the room.

The room otherwise is OK. It is a decent two double bed room. Not much of a view.

But it is just one night.

We make the most of it.

It does smell musty, though. I spray with Fabreeze and Lysol airfresh.

I travel with an armoury of fragrances since I have an annoyingly sensitive sense of smell. It runs in my mother’s bloodline with our super-smeller schnozzles affectionately known from her family name as “Hutton buttons”.

We have booked a table downstairs, thinking with all the sporty seniors we see going to and fro in the lobbies that we will need a reservation. When we get down, the grand dining room is a sea of beautifully-set tables, but it is not in use. We are directed to the bar grill where an older wait person is loudly apologising to a diner for serving him an undercooked burger. Hmm.

A beautiful young African American girl shows us to a corner table where we have a good view of the room. I order a dry martini. It has been a jangling day.

We watch the older waiter thundering about the place. Shades of Fawlty Towers. He was not born for this job. He is loud and anxious. Our lovely laid-back girl, on the other hand, might well have another job. She tends to us in sporadic cheerful visits from somewhere behind the scenes. The food is pretty good and we are enjoying the theatre of this high-ceilinged wood-pannelled room. There are wonderful old 1940s menus from the hotel’s heydays on the wall. Grand old days when a lobster thermidor cost $4 and Eastern Diamondback turtle was featured on the menu. We imagine the elegant New Yorkers converging here on rich and chic sporting vacations, dressing expensively for every activity. The downstairs dining rooms, lobbies, parlours seem drenched in redolent spirit.

We go naughty and order the chef’s dessert assortment and swoon for a while. Lovely. The waitress has vanished again. The old chap is thumping dangerously about with trays and serving tables, a teatowel over his shoulder.

It has been such a pleasant sojourn that I am quite taken-aback in rediscovering the musty smell of our room.

Bruce is not worried by it. It’s not dangerous, Sa. It is just damp. It is not mould. You’ll get used to it. It is way too hard to change rooms now.

He just wants to hit the pit. He is out like a light in minutes.

I do more air spraying and stay up watching TV and writing. Ugh, that smell.

I get into the bed and try to snuggle up. Something is wrong. I can’t warm the feet. They feel clammy. Damp? Oh, this bed is somehow just cold and strangely moist. The musty smell seems to be coming from under it. I get my travel quilt and sarong and make myself a bed on top of the bed. Ugh, that smell. The New York cough stirs up to meet it.

It is the night from hell. At about 3am, in desperation I take an emergency sleeping pill.

Thank heavens the morning is sunny and the hotel has a wonderful old swimming pool.

Sun and swim cures all things, raises the spirits. We enjoy the faded grandeur of the hotel once again and loll about for as long as we can before succumbing to the compulsory services of the hotel’s pushy old valet. It is a full service hotel, he explains. We do everything for you.

I tell the reception desk that the room they allocated to us is uninhabitable and they need to strip it and renovate. They seem indifferent.

Well, says Bruce, you can’t say it wasn’t an adventure.

The Big Applelicious

The moment I see the little welcome goose toy on the bed, I am in love with the Gansevoort Hotel. Its rooftop pool where I swim while gazing at the Empire State building doesn’t do any harm, either. This is going to be a fabulous New York City base.

I am gazing down from the 15th floor at the traffic-tooting hubbub in Park Avenue and, what are they doing in the rooms opposite? It is some sort of clothing design house. Fascinating. Where did you put the binoculars, Bruce?

Things we learn.

We are within a stone’s throw of New York’s Curry Hill - headquarters of magnificent modern Indian restaurants.

Instantly, we learn a lot about them, walking past and looking in, checking menus, NY Times reviews, Yelp recommendations… Oh, where to go? The bounty is overwhelming and I was ever a ditherer.

Finally, a choice. We ring to book. No problem.

It is not until we get there that we realise how lucky we are. It is the last table in a restaurant rocking with a very high class of foodies and regulars. Lots of Indians.

The menu is thrilling. I am in a delirium of delight which only grows when the food is tasted. Beetroot patties as starter, unlike anything ever tried. A beautiful coronation chicken dish. Its delicacy dances on the tongue. A masala dish which zings and sings and feels new and different. These are adventures in freshness and harmonies of spices which take our taste buds to new

frontiers. We gaze at each other sharing the intensity of foodie love. Oh, my. This is New York.

We learn our way around our corner of NYC. We find our local supermarket, quite a hoof away, actually. It looks like a cake shop from the street but down an escalator is an expansive and very interesting food store. Of course, it also sells shower heads. Just in case. Don’t all groceries? The cut fruit is a boon for us. We occasionally buy salad packs. We stock up on seltzer drinks, my favourite black cherry, red grapefruit, mandarin, vanilla. These are unsweetened sparkling water drinks. Polar is the favourite label.

Sometimes it is hard to find places. Four days had passed before we recognised the fabulous breakfast joint around the corner. It was in dark shadow, its signage obscured by heavy scaffolding. Scaffolding masks a lot of buildings. A LOT of buildings. The city’s architecture is swathed in scaffolds of all varieties. At first, we are impressed. What a massive amount of building and renovation is going on, we say. But isn’t it annoying to have so many

wonderful buildings obscured! Are they scaffolded for window-cleaners to land their trays? We start becoming obsessed by the scaffolds. It is weird. This beautiful, towering city has vandalised its aesthetic with all these poles and platforms and rigs. Where is the work going on upon them? Where are the workmen? Where are the signs of the improvements?

The new uglification of New York City has a sad explanation.

Following the death of a woman from something falling from a highrise facade some 30 years ago, it was ruled that facades must be checked every five years on all buildings over five storeys tall - almost all of NYC. Throughout inspection,

pedestrians must be protected from falling debris. Scaffolding. Putting up and taking down scaffolding every five years is a massive job. So they leave them there for next time. Now proud and elegant old New York buildings have solid scaffolding aprons. They facilitate regular inspections, protect pedestrians and entirely destroy the famous canyon aesthetic of NYC.

Over the days, we have quite a range of weather conditions, including plenty of electrical storms and torrential rains. We scuttle about with umbrellas. On one day, the heat is so extreme, we simply hide in the hotel. This is no hardship.

The persistence of the heat in the cement jungle is tiresome, however. The media is full of

warnings about how dangerous the heat levels are.

On the day we go to Times Square it is drenchingly hot and humid. This has discouraged no one. The world jostles there en masse. Every language is spoken. Cameras relentlessly capture a massive minutiae of memories and moments. Selfie sticks rampant!

The great walls of neons and moving images roll and dazzle all around. Street entertainers spruik and busk and try to lure dollars from passers-by. Body-painted nude girls gyrate provocatively.

People in Batman, Minnie Mouse, and Minion costumes pose for pictures with kids. The crowds move in close currents in both directions. People sit

on bleachers watching other people.

It is just a colossal cram of people looking for the spirit of the Big Apple. It is the spirit of the Big Apple. It is impossible not to flow with this throng and love its great crush of happiness.

We find a decent meal against the odds of the crowds. Reuben sandwiches three inches deep in corned beef.

We get fabulous D-row seats to a Broadway show in the Booth Theater - An Act of God with Sean Hayes, a skilful, no-holds-barred satire on Christianity. Brilliantly written. Vivid. Expert. Slick. Snazzy. Incisive. Desperately funny. We love every second of it and become instant Hayes fans.

We also get fabulous seats to an Off Broadway show - Cagney. The theatre reminds us of the Odeon. It’s an older crowd. Youngies have no idea who James Cagney was and why he merits a bio musical. It is a very long show, well constructed, beautifully executed. The live orchestra is up there tucked at the back of the small stage - which also takes some big song and dance numbers and spectacular tap routines. Most satisfying nostalgic theatre. A perfect showcase of New York talent.

On one day, we shelter under a restaurant awning watching a storm become so torrential that we go no further for dinner - and discover one of the most wonderful Italian restaurants in the city.

We discover another marvellous old Italian restaurant by design, following Yelp and Tripadvisor reviews. I respect these sources and contribute my own reviews to them when I can find the time. Thus we find a very old and very trad Italian restaurant, its decor classic, albeit with an overkill of gladioli, and its menu, well, very quirky. The written menu was just medium in size but the specials rattled off by the very formal young waiter just go on and on and on and

on… Ironically, in the end he brings me two dishes which are off the menu - a buffalo mozzarella and tomato starter and a pasta vongole. Both beautiful. The kitchen door swings to and fro. Service is remarkably swift. People come and go. Interesting people. Much Italian is spoken. Much familiarity, jocularity.

An immensely fat man sits in the corner eating alone. A loud and brash fellow joins a couple dining at the next table and stridently goes into elaborate details about the greed and infamy of his ex-wife and the treachery of an accountant who has bankrupted him. Talk about live entertainment.

We don’t do everything we planned to do in NYC. The heat wave knocks us around a bit.

We do manage our afternoon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is swarming with people and yet it is a comfortable experience, marvelling over some of the world’s great art. It is nice to share it with so many others who also are relishing seeing the real thing after lifetimes of looking at prints. Such a diversity of people gather in this common thrill.

No one knew there was a Museum of Mathematics so we have to go. It is full of kids. It is very interactive. It pleases Bruce. Innumerate me? It sells nice tote bags.

It is not walking weather but we are walkers and we crave immersion in the life and scale of the city. We stroll Madison Avenue, Madison Park, the old Flatiron Building. We are complete rubber-neckers, shameless out-of-towners. We look at New Yorkers doing their things. A lot of them are walking dogs. Oh, my, there are a lot of dogs in this city. They are trotting along the pavements, being pushed in little dog carts... They are on bikes zig-zagging through the wild ad noisy traffic. There are special dog parks within the parks allowing dogs to socialise. We watch for a while but are a bit deterred by the pong.

Ah, but there is a lot of pong in NYC. Especially in this heat wave. Whiffs of rotten drain arise reminding one of the old days in Kuala Lumpur. How ironic. This great first world city has a third world aroma.

My friends Mia and Ella take us out for a magnificent treat of a lunch at the gorgeous Loeb Boat House in Central Park. It is just lovely, olde worlde picturesque with people drifting about in rowboats on the pea green water outside. Mia has secured the best window table in the house and VIP treatment for her Aussie pal. She, in her wheelchair with service dog Zeus beside her, regales us with stories of life, the universe and everything. Ella adds grace and backup. They’re a rare team and they have gone the extra nine yards to make our experience special. I feel blessed.

I don’t feel blessed on the day we go to visit my friend Blanca in a rehab town at the far end of the city. The heat is at its most malevolent. The pavements sear. And, because it is so far, we are travelling by underground. It ain’t cooler down there. No, siree. It is Lucifer’s own inferno. Gusting hot, gritty winds whip along with the trains. The tunnels are dank and dirty and they stink. People are hot and depressed. A lot of them are downright weird. Some are not too clean. There is a lot of coughing. To say I am uncomfortable is an understatement. I am appalled. This is my idea of utter nightmare.

If an airport transit lounge is purgatory, as my father always said, these subways are hell itself. It is crowded. When I get a seat it is beside a woman bent over her knees, sweating and looking decidedly unwell. When we disembark at our destination, there is worse to come. There is a massive squalid tunnel along which we have to walk to get to the daylight. It is wet and foul. Even Bruce is disgusted. We try to hasten. But we are so hot.

Once in the fresher air, we have to find our way to the rehab home and this requires a very long walk - up hill. By the time we reach our destination, we are sodden with sweat.

And that is how my friend Blanka gets to meet me in the flesh for the first time, my hair drenched in dripping strings… Not that she cares. She is thrilled to get the visit. I think she knows who I am. The stroke has destroyed her communication skills as well as her mobility. She was such a vivid, clever, funny, erudite and accomplished soul. A holocaust survivor into the bargain. This is no life for her.

Heartbreaking.

She takes a shine to Bruce and gazes at him almost lustfully. It makes him uncomfortable. All the things I had planned to tell her go out the window when she indicates that she can’t really remember or doesn’t want to hear about the outside world. She wolfs down the chocolates I have brought. She holds my hand, strokes my cheek, smooths my wet hair… I try to understand her. When the hospital brings ice cream, it is our cue to go. It is clear she wants to concentrate on the ice cream.

It is still meltingly hot outside but the walk back to the subway is at least now downhill. The evil tunnel is still there. The filthy trains are still filthy but a little less crowded to begin with. The tattooed person who sits beside me seems quite normal until he starts the scratching.

Our beautiful, Gansevoort Hotel is a delicious sanctuary.

Oh, the bed. I fall in love with it. I fall into it. I fall asleep in it. And I connect with the city through our immense, dirty windows - watching the sky and the rooftops, the life in the windows of the buildings across the road, the man playing guitar over there, the couple having a little friction over there, the students drinking wine in that room, the fashion house workers across the road, the window-cleaners dangling in their trays over there… The honking and hooting of the traffic, Even at 3 am, horns tooting. Sirens, horns, sounds of New York. It’s a noisy city all night long. And down there on the street directly below, at his little sidewalk food stall selling yiros, the worker comes out, spreads a prayer mat on the footpath beside the stall, removes shoes, and prostrates himself in age-old Islamic tradition. A massive African American man sitting on a building ledge eating a falafel idly watches him as he chews.

Ah, the cultural soup of New York.

This is my sixth visit to New York - and yet I have never seen the Statue of Liberty. This is a “must” on this trip so we take an old-fashioned city tour. Of course it is hot. Very hot. The bus is air-conditioned. Oh, bless. Bernice is our colourful tour guide and Floyd is the driver. It is a good way to get a potted view of the city complete with facts and anecdotes. We go walkabout at a few places, most significantly at the

9/11 memorial. I am blown away by it. There, beside the super high rise of sheeny blue Peace Tower, it is one of those creations which defy description. The great chasms with their walls of falling water and the great hole in the centre which lets the water fall yet further into what seems to be a bottomless pit. This is a profound and magnificent piece of design. And there are the details, the names of all the lost lives, the identification of the rescue workers, the little flags marking birthdays… The crowds are dense. They are respectful. Sad. Awed.

There is a lot of security.

It is a water taxi we take to the Statue of Liberty. Oh, my, it is hot out there. The water taxi is

crowded. Everyone is coughing. All of New York has been coughing. We choose to ride on the top in the blazing sun. The water taxi bumps through the waters. We all take photos of the fabulous skylines. Oh, that is New Jersey over there. Do you know the best thing about New Jersey? You can see the New York skyline from there. hahaha.

We stop at the statue and there is an orgy of photography. I’m in the middle of it.

Everyone is gasping and exclaiming about the heat. But we are happy. We all wanted to see this very lovely national icon. She is grand, indeed.

Oddly, in all our time in NYC, one thing we have not done is the ritual retail thing. Our shopping has been exclusively at the supermarket which we know very well by the end of our stay. But, if only to honour my late mother, one of the great and expert Fifth Avenue shoppers of the world, I insist on at least popping in on Saks.

So we do. But it is so hot. I am so hot. I am wet hair drowned rat all over again. Inside Saks I behold sleek matrons and Arab princesses with servile entourages. I am letting Mother down. She was ever strutting in high heels, a designer collection from head to toe. Shop assistants would rush to pay attention to her. I slink around trying to be invisible.

I’m sorry, Mum. I’m still your BoHo daughter.

This five-star retail game is not my scene.

My scene is the Gansevoort Hotel and that luscious rooftop swimming pool.

Ah, yes. My beautiful New York is right up there on the skyline itself.