NY Diary: Day 2

Saturday 19th March

In the city that doesn't sleep, I too had my troubles sleeping overnight as I turned 40 -not for that reason, but for the incessant noise created by the pipes in the room next door from about 3am onwards. The radio (WHPC) turned on to more news of Colonel Gaddafi, to whom President Obama is laying down ultimatums, and the still horrible situation in Japan.

Breakfast consisted of some bread (or bagels), self-toasted, "Frosted Flakes" (Frosties) and some decaffeinated coffee, and I took whatever extras that I could as a bonus, while a chilly wind blew in through the lobby doors this morning, on an otherwise sunny start to the day. Checked the timetable and took the 9.42 train from Queens Village into Penn (short for Pennsylvania) and on this sunny, brisk morning I made my way first of all towards the Empire State Building, a building in every sense, and not just a tower, with some nice restaurants and shops on the ground, and though I decried yesterday the comparative merits of the art deco Chrysler building, the Empire State is also a glorious affirmation of that era, dripping with art deco in almost every corridor leading up to the Observation Towers on the 8th and 102nd floors.

Travelled on one of the fastest elevators that I'm ever likely to, which belted up the first 80 floors, and then interchanged onto another lift which took visitors up to the first of the two viewing areas: an outdoor one, and predictably full with Saturday tourists (yours truly included). My problem was not getting to the top of the Empire State Building, but rather the lengthier proposition of getting down again, through all the advancing crowds of other rising visitors.

As an afterthought, I didn't find the Empire State Building vertigo-inducing. I took a look up when I finally reached the bottom again, and had no difficulties, nor did the tiny specks of people and vehicles seen down below seem too giddying. Maybe we are becoming hardened by such spectacle nowadays. A unique experience, all the same.

Remembered that I'd wanted to visit the New York Library on the map, just a short distance away along Fifth Avenue, Steven Schwarzman's glorious building supported by J.J.Astor, which I found as impressive and palatial to visit as the Musikverein in Vienna. What I didn't realise was how beautiful the roof mosaics were in both the North and South Hall reading rooms.

If New York Library took my breath away, then so too did Grand Central Terminal, a glorious palace of a railway station, perhaps my favourite now over dear old Liverpool Street and Paddington. My plans to visit Central Park, St. Patrick's Cathedral and the Plaza Hotel had to be postponed this afternoon, so that I could go to the Louis Armstrong House way up in Corona. It was a delight, a pleasant diversion from Manhattan, and although I had already arrived after the start of the last tour of the day, the staff couldn't have been more helpful and I was given a discounted ticket half-way through. Thus I was able to see where old "Sachmo" sat with his glorious"den" of a study of gifts, articles and reel-to-reel tape recordings, and also the bedroom where he died, in the year of the moment for this occasion, 1971.


Returned to Manhattan before sunset, and found the New York Daily News, (as used in the film Superman) and almost hidden away on Roosevelt Avenue, beside the East River and stashed away like another city block, was the United Nations. Extraordinary to think that this little area governs (technically) the world police who should be the ones to decide how we intervene in Iraq, Iran - and now evidently, Libya - and yet is tucked away in the lap of America – the geographical and political metaphor is appropriate.

It's been an intense, tiring but rewarding and unique 40th birthday, but the best may still be yet to come.