The Largesse Apple

Pics of Toronto and New York - also a couple of Oliver pics in the Seattle gallery

Everyone in New York looks down towards your feet, though not from shyness. It is a familiar phenomenon that I've experienced in London, though less frequent. It took me a while to recall why so many people, instead of looking you up and down, as the less subtle people watchers are prone to doing, they just glance straight down at your feet before moving on. I'm not wearing bright pink clown boots so it is of course a shoe obsession - everyone gets judged by their shoes. Primarily a female obsession that has inevitably crossed over to the male realm as a result of the biological drive to reproduce. Men now wear their status on their feet (everywhere else too of course, but they finally figured out shoes were the surest method of seduction).

That observation alone could usually sum up a smaller city (like large swathes of Sydney perhaps - image conscious, materialistic and money-centric. But NYC has vastly more layers, in fact, when you arrive in NYC you leave the USA and enter what feels like the sovereign nation of New York. Perhaps its the size of the buildings in lower Manhattan, that makes you feel like Manhattan is one state in the nation of New York. The skyline of Manhattan is indeed astounding - even for a anti-big city cynic such as me. Even more gob smacking is the enormity of the old buildings - with Gothic architecture they rival the heights of many of the new skyscrapers - now the Twin Towers are missing. The phrase 'concrete jungle' must have been coined in NYC for it is indeed like walking through a forest of massive buildings.

Walking through Lower Manhattan however is also like going to Disneyland, everyone seems to be a tourist, the New Yorkers are probably hiding in the tall buildings waiting for dark so they can scurry home without bumping into fools like me standing still staring upwards.

To quickly recap the past week - Lukas and Oliver dropped us at Seattle airport and we bade them farewell after a much needed relaxing week with them. It was great to spend time with Lukas and to really consolidate in Oliver's mind that we're his Aussie family who love him too. On arrival to Toronto we were met by Lucas and Farah (refer to the first couple of hundred posts for details of our escapades) and were whisked off to Niagara Falls - a spectacular must see that also kept us from falling asleep after not getting a wink on our overnight flight. We were spoiled rotten with rooftop BBQs, cooked breakfasts, a swim in Lake Ontario at 'The Beach' on a glorious summer day, and a thorough guided tour of Toronto. But Sunday evening was time yet again for a sad farewell and we boarded our overnight bus to NYC - not before I caught an emergency taxi back to Lucas and Farahs apartment to get my wallet!

After a couple of days of intensive sight seeing in NYC I come away with mixed feelings, Times Square and the Empire State Building were monumental let downs - some bright lights and big screens - woo. hoo. But the buzz of kids on summer holiday programs and the community service advertising further redeems the US, probably local governments mostly, in terms of their approach to educating and guiding those who need support.

Also 9/11 ground zero, the size of the buildings and imagining their collapse was mind boggling, just beyond words. I also found the general architecture of the apartment blocks here in Harlem where our hostel is, and around the outskirts of central park, to be constantly lovely and half makes me wish I could live here for a little while - but I get over that pretty quickly the next time someone looks at my feet.