Monday 27th. May 2013
An early wake up call at 6:00am and pick up at 6:45am in the foyer of the hotel. Then a trip to Barajas Airport, Madrid to catch a 9:30am Swiss Air flight to Zurich (2hrs). The journey to the airport only took 10 minutes or so. The Swiss Air check in didn't open until 7:10am, so we had a bit of a wait. Then with some difficulty we found the Swiss Lounge before catching our flight. which took 1 3/4 hours. We arrived in Zurich. We hade to get from gate A 72 to E42 to catch the flight to New York, which left at 1:00pm. After some considerable walking , a 3 minute ride on the Skymetro and Passport control we arrived at Gate E42 just as it was boarding. This is an Airbus A330 - 300 just like the one we flew from Hong Kong.  The estimated flight time is 8½ hours. Our flight was uneventful and we landed at JFK Airport just before 4:00pm local time. We then sat in the plane while the airport authority moved an Emirates A380 which was parked in our docking stop. Once the plane door was opened there was a mad rush to get to Security and Immigration. There must have been 1,000 people trying to get through, many of whom were Jewish men in their black coats and hats and long curly hair. It took a good 45 minutes to get processed (Finger prints and eye photos). Then we waited a further 30 minutes for our luggage. We were not told that the luggage from Swiss Flight LX014 had fallen off the carousel and was stacked up over the other side where we couldn't see it. We eventually got our luggage and then joined the mad rush to hand in our Security forms that an official had just stamped... why didn't he just keep it in the first place?
We then boarded the NYC Airporter bus that drove slowly down the Van Wyck expressway, which seemed to have traffic lights ever mile or so. I found it very strange that an expressway has traffic lights!
We eventually arrived at our hotel (La Quinta Inn Manhattan) in West 32 Street at about 7:00pm. The hotel is old (as is much of NY) but the room has everything we need, including a coffee maker, free Wi-Fi, free breakfast and an air conditioner that works.
Our room looks out onto the Empire State Building, and if you lie on the floor and look out the window you can see the top of it!
We wandered around the block, had some pizza for dinner. At the shop we went to they had pre prepared the pizzas. So you could select from an array of different pizzas and they would hack off a portion and put it in the over to heat up.

Empire State Building from our hotel window	Empire State Building at night	Old escalator in Macys
Pizza for tea	ATM in little "sell everything" shop in the subway	Old escalator in Macys

West 32 Street is in the heart of the Korean part of town, and so it is infested by Koreans. I haven't heard  anyone speaking English here since we arrived. I read that one of the downsides of our hotel is the rubbish that is stacked up in the street outside it. Well there it is, neatly packed in plastic bags awaiting collection, but never the less there are huge amounts of it.
We had a quick look at Macy's. The escalator from the third floor up would make the old Harris Scarfe's shop in Adelaide look like a new age shopping centre. It is quaint with its battered timber sides and the wooden treads on the steps, that neatly pass between cast iron fingers at the top and bottom of each flight.
After a very very long day we went to bed at about 10:00pm.
First Impressions: A mix of Old and new ... Steam rising from a sewer manhole cover in East 41st. Street.

Tuesday 28th. May 2013
It was nice not to have to get up with the aid of an alarm clock as we have had to do most mornings for the last three weeks. We went downstairs and had a fairly basic breakfast that was included in our room cost. Then at about 8:30am we hit the streets. We bought a 48 hour pass to one of the hop on hop off bus groups. This gave us access to four or five different loops around New York city and an evening tour. We did the lower Manhattan loop straight away. The guide was well informed and spoke incredibly quickly so we were overloaded with information. We saw the flatiron building and worked our way south to Greenwich Village and Soho.

The Empire State Building (1931)		The Flatiron Building on Fifth Avenue (1902)
The Flatiron Building on Fifth Avenue (1902)
Iron facade buildings near Greenwich Village	Iron facade buildings near Greenwich Village	Iron facade building near Greenwich Village
	The Chrysler Building (1930)	The Woolworth Building, The Broadway (1913)
The Bronx	The Bronx	The Bronx
Yankee Stadium, Bronx	Guggenheim Museum (Frank Lloyd Wright - 1959)
Central Park	Central Park	Central Park

The reason this area became popular with the musicians and artists in the 1960's was that no one wanted to live in this area, and in fact it was due to be demolished so that a freeway could be put in. However an heritage act was passed that prevented any of the iron fronted buildings being demolished and so the whole area became preserved. It is hard to tell that some of the building facades are actually cast iron and not masonry. We saw the Woolworths Building which was the tallest building  in the world for a few months when it was built back in 1913. We passed into the financial district. Saw the sculpture of the bull (which according to our guide is so bad that the City of New York is waiting for its Italian sculpture to come and pick it up and take it away). We saw Wall Street (not very impressive) and continued on around past 9/11 site, Battery Point and back up the East River  coast.
It began raining and our guide told us this was a preliminary to the rain setting in and it would be followed by a few days  of hot weather. We decided to get off the open topped bus at the Rockefeller Centre and walk back to the hotel for our wet weather gear.
The rain was only light but heavy enough to make one very wet quite quickly. We decided to walk to the B&H store. I have bought camera gear online through them and was curious to check out the shop. First impressions. It is huge with overhead conveyors distributing the orders to the various sales points. I went into the camera section. There were 48 sale points (little wooden, open ended cubicles all numbered 1 - 48 in a long line). The customers lined up and watched a computer screen which told them which cubicle and salesman was free.  So when someone reached the front of the queue they knew which booth to go to. All the assistants were male, all Jewish and all wearing little black scull caps. Some had the long curly side burns similar to the ones we had seen yesterday at the airport. It was a blatantly Jewish shop and I had never been in one before and a little un-nerving to the uninitiated.
Next we crossed the road to Sam Ash's Music Store (West 34th. Street). There were guitars of all descriptions and probably a 100 or so different guitars on display in the acoustic section. I didn't buy anything although there were some very nice Martin and Taylor guitars there.
We had a quick lunch in a little diner/cafe on 5th Avenue before returning to the hotel to dry out and wait for the rain to stop.
As the afternoon progressed the rain got heavier and we spent an hour or so in Macy's, which is just around the corner.