Odd

This article was written 18 years ago in 2005 when I was 20, so I ask you not to judge the writing too harshly! The text is as it was originally published.

Today didn't quite go as planned. Although we had great plans absolutely nothing we had expected occurred and everything we did, didn't; if you know what I mean.

We had thought that an early rise might have taken us back to Time Sq. for some tickets to go and see Spamalot (the Monty Python Musical) but upon arrival discovered that the queue earlier in the day is much longer than in the evenings and the tickets for the main Broadway shows as extortionate as we thought they would be before we went to STOMP.

Instead we rounded on a few touristy shops along the street and was approached by a woman to join up with the Scientologists. We kindly refused her attempts to lure us in to watch the video, and I have Tom Roberts to thank for the information regarding ignoring these people; after all, who wants to end up like John Travolta or Tom Cruise..?

We then made our way to several other big NY attractions on our list and our plans had to be changed at every stop. We grabbed lunch from Grand Central station, and although we had then thought we would stop off at the UN building for a tour, we soon found most of 42nd-47th St. cordoned off with massive security. It turns out that we hadn't been the only people to pick today to make a visit - there was a full blown meeting of the General Assembly starting (a three day event) and with a full scale protest outside to match. In our adventurous spirited nature, we moved through the ranks of anti-Iranian Presidency protesters and the police to see what exactly was going on, but soon decided eventually that penetrating the assembled throng wasn't actually that easy and so headed back.

We were overwhelmed with vast numbers of black, blacked-out limos heading in all directions, many with police escorts and it was all amusing to watch. A heavy police presence allowed us to poke fun at the 'Secret Service' who clearly haven't come to terms with the first part of their division name. Maybe more appropriate would be the 'Slightly Obvious Service' or 'Quite Easy to Spot Service' with their big black flak jackets, branded in the boldest typefont 'Secret Service'.

We headed back in the direction we had come from and ended up at the NY Public Library. As we had nothing else to do we took an hour long tour of the library (with the epitome of the perfect 60 year old librarian stereotype) and got a rare glimpse at a Guttenberg bible (if that means anything to anyone else - its rare and significant in the story of print).

This cut another chunk out of the day and so we made a beeline to our next proposed stop - a renowned photography exhibit. Turns out that was closed for renovation of the exhibit, so we sat in Starbucks and watched the world go by until James suggested a round trip on the Staten Island Ferry.

We returned later to a very humid Manhattan - apparently hurricanes in North Carolina are giving us some poor (very sticky) and misty views. It's very good luck that we did all the sight seeing we wanted to do in the past two days.

And so we spent our last remaining money on a big meal out just down the road. Our last night in NYC and we have decided to relax as its been busy all this week. Need to take a breather before the big flight.

DDS has finally sent me a photo of our first production run. Looking good. Dandy is nearly set for launch...

This post was first published on Thu Sep 15 2005

The author

My name is Andy Higgs and I am a founder, designer, occassional surfer and travel enthusiast based in the UK.

More of my travel and business writing can be found here, or you can subscribe to the feed for these posts here.