{"id":2261,"date":"2021-04-08T18:30:46","date_gmt":"2021-04-08T17:30:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/simonsdiary.co.uk\/wordpress\/?page_id=2261"},"modified":"2021-04-08T19:01:20","modified_gmt":"2021-04-08T18:01:20","slug":"new-york-2001-travel-diary-page-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/simonsdiary.co.uk\/wordpress\/new-york-2001-travel-diary-page-2\/","title":{"rendered":"New York 2001 Travel Diary Page 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"center\">Lee and I spent today in Manhattan. We played at being tourists, the main object of which is to be able to say &#8220;I&#8217;ve been there&#8221; to as many sights as possible. So today was Times Square, The Empire State building and Central Park.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">\u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.simonsdiary.co.uk\/written%20work\/Traveldiaries\/newyorkdiary2001\/diaryofvisittonewyorkpage2_files\/leeintimessquare.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"401\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">\u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.simonsdiary.co.uk\/written%20work\/Traveldiaries\/newyorkdiary2001\/diaryofvisittonewyorkpage2_files\/simonintimessquare.jpg\" width=\"423\" height=\"565\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">\u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.simonsdiary.co.uk\/written%20work\/Traveldiaries\/newyorkdiary2001\/diaryofvisittonewyorkpage2_files\/mobilephonesintimessquare.jpg\" width=\"565\" height=\"423\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">Of course, while they were of some interest to us, what we found much more entertaining was riding the subway, eating in a cafe in The Empire State Building,<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.simonsdiary.co.uk\/written%20work\/Traveldiaries\/newyorkdiary2001\/diaryofvisittonewyorkpage2_files\/leeindelinearcentralpark.jpg\" width=\"555\" height=\"416\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">speaking to a coachman who takes people for a ride around Central Park, watching a tramp try to chat up a woman (Christine) in Central Park &#8211;He asked us to watch his cart of bin liners and tin cans while he did so&#8211; and sitting opposite a rather butch transvestite \/ transsexual on the way back to Larry&#8217;s, after she got off, a Bruce Springsteen look-a-like guy sitting near us remarked that he didn&#8217;t think she pulled it off. I wondered if she had.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">\n<p align=\"center\">Once at Larry&#8217;s, exhaustion set in and I realized I was headed for a night of nausea. I kept thinking of towers and going round in circles, wondering in which order they should be built. Waking at 4:30 am, and then every half hour, racked with aches and pains, I wondered if I&#8217;d been exposed to Anthrax spores and so, in the early hours of day 4, I realized that I really had got into the present American mindset.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">\n<p align=\"center\">\u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.simonsdiary.co.uk\/written%20work\/Traveldiaries\/newyorkdiary2001\/diaryofvisittonewyorkpage2_files\/yellowtaxi.jpg\" width=\"442\" height=\"509\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">Day 4<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">Recovering still took up most of the day, lying on the bed listening to the radio and a automatic handgun magazine being emptied nearby. Later on in the afternoon, we went out with Larry while he got his new second hand car checked over.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.simonsdiary.co.uk\/written%20work\/Traveldiaries\/newyorkdiary2001\/diaryofvisittonewyorkpage2_files\/simonyellowtaxi.jpg\" width=\"426\" height=\"274\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">\u00a0We tried out a McDonalds which was just as &#8220;good&#8221; as normal (in UK I mean) but for a third of the price.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.simonsdiary.co.uk\/written%20work\/Traveldiaries\/newyorkdiary2001\/diaryofvisittonewyorkpage2_files\/simoninmcdonalds.jpg\" width=\"495\" height=\"371\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">\n<p align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.simonsdiary.co.uk\/written%20work\/Traveldiaries\/newyorkdiary2001\/diaryofvisittonewyorkpage2_files\/larryandleeinmcdonalds.jpg\" width=\"462\" height=\"617\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">Larry drove us down to Brighton Beach and Coney Island, where two fat black men were speaking as strangers do. &#8220;Have you ever been to Florida?&#8221;&#8230;&#8221;Just once&#8230;but only briefly&#8221;. I felt as if I&#8217;d walked on to the set of &#8220;Waiting For Godot&#8221;. Once again Lee and I took the pictures to prove we had been there for any future need of evidence.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.simonsdiary.co.uk\/written%20work\/Traveldiaries\/newyorkdiary2001\/diaryofvisittonewyorkpage2_files\/simonsittingonboardwalk.jpg\" width=\"531\" height=\"398\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">\n<p align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.simonsdiary.co.uk\/written%20work\/Traveldiaries\/newyorkdiary2001\/diaryofvisittonewyorkpage2_files\/leebrightonbeachny.jpg\" width=\"590\" height=\"441\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">Once back indoors Lee tuned in to a UK radio station over the net which proceeded to interview people from New York for the next two hours.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><a href=\"https:\/\/simonsdiary.co.uk\/wordpress\/new-york-2001-travel-diary-page-3\/\">To go to the next page click here<\/a><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><a href=\"https:\/\/simonsdiary.co.uk\/wordpress\/new-york-2001-travel-diary-page-1\/\">To go to the previous page click here<\/a><\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lee and I spent today in Manhattan. We played at being tourists, the main object of which is to be able to say &#8220;I&#8217;ve been there&#8221; to as many sights as possible. So today was Times Square, The Empire State building and Central Park. \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Of course, while they were of some interest&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2261","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonsdiary.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonsdiary.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonsdiary.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonsdiary.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonsdiary.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2261"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/simonsdiary.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2280,"href":"https:\/\/simonsdiary.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2261\/revisions\/2280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonsdiary.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}