So much to write, so little time. We left London on Thursday afternoon on an uneventful, quiet flight, where we watched the beautiful sunset disappearing over the course of several hours as we were flying into it. Alas, the queues in John F Kennedy International Airport were not so beautiful; I’m sorry to say that this place deservedly had a reputation of being one of the worst airports in the world. Vicky took the better queue, and was able to find the bag whilst I waited in line watching two people just arriving from India trying to convince the officer that their planned six-month stay was “just a vacation”.
Now late on Thursday night, we took a yellow cab into Manhattan and our hotel, the Eastgate Tower Hotel, located in mid-town on the East side. Formerly a residential tower block converted into a hotel, the facilities are basic (no restaurant, no fountains in reception) but the rooms are huge, with sofas and a kitchen. Immediate requirements for food took us to Scotty’s Diner nearby; open all night, the food was hardly amazing but it served its purpose. Happier once we’d worked out how to turn off the air conditioning (learning from our San Francisco experience), we slept well and my first experience with sleeping tablets made sure that I slept through until Friday.
Friday morning took us out to a proper deli for breakfast. Bloom’s Delicatessen certainly gave us our money’s worth; Vicky had piles and piles of griddle cakes, and I took the steak & eggs, always my favourite here in New York. We decided to brave the queues of the Empire State Building, but were pleasantly surprised by how quickly we passed through the multiple security checks, and how unpleasantly surprised we were by the numerous attempts to sell us ridiculous merchandise through the whole experience. Against the odds, we fought through and made it to the top in very strong winds; a brief visit, but worth it for the views on what looks to be the only sunshine of our weekend here. Here we can see Vicky looking over the city; quite how she has her eyes closed in so many pictures, I’ll never know.
Afterwards, we headed down to the site of the World Trade Center, now in the middle of rebuilding as the Freedom Tower. Surprisingly little see here, since most of the work to date has gone on below ground level, it was still busy with tourists and a newly opened visitor centre, which left me wondering if I was the only one who thought it a little strange to have an attraction dedicated to a terrorist attack? Still, light relief was available on the subway, where the reason for the service alterations tickled me for hours.
By now totally exhausted, despite it only being 2pm in the afternoon, we headed back to the hotel for a rest in order to be ready before that evening’s Tom Jones concert. Contrary to what everyone appears to think, we didn’t make the trip to New York just to see Tom; the boring truth is that we saw him on Jonathan Ross’ show after we’d booked the flights and, when Vicky said how much she liked him, I did some research and found out that he’d be in New York during our stay.
Well, when I saw in “New York”, I actually mean “New Jersey”, and despite them looking nearby on any map, it’s actually quite a trip. But before we headed out, we stopped by another local deli which had a wonderful, huge spread of hot and cold food and we dutifully took trays and filled them to capacity. The trays were, as it goes, substantially larger than our appetites and the “pay by the ounce” system, whilst fair, left us feeling embarrassed at paying $30 for food that we only half-finished.
We left New York Penn station on the New Jersey Transit and took the near two-hour journey to Asbury Park, a small town on the coast. The train seemed to stop at the most remote places, and despite having ten carriages, only seemed to carry a few people, even on our peak hour journey. Worried that we wouldn’t make the walk to the shore in time, we took a taxi from the station to the Paramount Theatre (note the English spelling of ‘theatre’) which seemed deserted. We needn’t have worried; inside the small venue (so small that we wondered whether it would ever be profitable to have a Tom Jones concert there) were hundreds of passionate Tom Jones fans.
It’s hard to speak of how captivating his performance was. We’ve seen quite a lot of music live (most recently, The Killers and Keane) but Tom surpassed them all, somehow keeping everyone totally engaged from start to finish. He was on stage for two hours, but it felt like just a few minutes; we realised in the end why he hadn’t had, nor needed, any support acts.
And so to the rush back to Asbury Park station; no chance of taxi this time, of course. Despite our best efforts, the 20 minute walk was 2 minutes too long to meet the train, and there was an hour wait for the next one. Not to worry; we headed over the road to Carmine’s, which looked closed at first but was actually quite lively. We sat at the bar with the regulars, ate jumbo shrimps and drank beer; in the end, we met Dave (pictured below) who, despite sitting with us at the bar, actually worked there and he introduced Vicky to a drink of Grand Marnier with a strawberry dropped into it. The smell was enough to put me off, but not Vicky; by the time we took that later train back, her face was a little bit redder.
A long journey back at another New York taxi got us back to the hotel for around 1.30am. A long night was made worth it by Tom, and later Dave and his colleague Vicky; Saturday would start a little later for their efforts.
