NEW YORK CITY

It is Tuesday morning in NY and raining quite heavily.  I was supposed to be doing the statue of liberty and Ellis Island tours today but have decided on a change of plans due to the rain.  The rain is heavy enough to cause flash flood warnings and delays on the subway.  It might be an indoors day today with a visit to some museums.  I arrived at JFK at about 4.00 pm on Sunday 9/08 and it was the usual mayhem.  There were numerous touters offering rides into the city as an alternative to taking a taxi.  The touters are now claiming to represent Uber drivers and can be quite aggressive.  The fares being offered by these guys were usually about $10 more than the fixed cab fare from JFK to Manhattan Island.


I checked into the Roosevelt Hotel on the corner of 45th Street and Madison Avenue.  This hotel was built sometime in the 1920's has now entered a period of what could kindly be called "faded elegance".  At some time in the past the Roosevelt would have been a pretty classy place to stay but is now a bit worn and tired.  But it is very clean, the rooms are a reasonable size (for NY anyway), has a great lobby bar and an interesting rooftop bar.  The location is also great as it is pretty much in the middle of Manhattan Island.  I have already made great friends with the two barmen at the lobby bar.


Some of you may have noticed that I haven't posted much since Vegas.  If I get the chance I will go back and fill in the gaps.  However if you have a look at Flashy and Lady P's blog (address previously provided) that will bring you up to date with the general thrust of the trip to date.


I am just going to throw this in about San Francisco.  We travelled a lot on the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit).  This is SF's public transport train system.  Not one, I repeat, not one train had any graffiti on it on either the inside or out.  There was also no graffiti on any of the stations.  The other thing that I noticed was that mobile phone reception was available on the entire system, even in the tunnels, including the tunnel going under the bay.  Why cant we have graffiti free trains and mobile reception in the loop in Melbourne??  Maybe instead of another committee the Vic state government just send an e-mail to the BART people and ask them how they do it.


Anyway, that off my chest, back to NY.  It looks like the US is dragging itself out of its GFC induced doldrums.  NYC is very busy with lots of building works going on, as well as new buildings going up lots of buildings have scaffolding around them indicating renovations are going on.  However there are lots of homeless around, particularly around Grand Central Station which is near my hotel.


Again I am having problems with adding photos........ so I will post this blog sans pics and try and sort this out later.