Don't we look happy? Call it tired.
We had arranged to meet niece Meghan, now resident in Brooklyn, for brunch, so I asked for a recommendation from the concierge and he suggested http://www.sarabethsrestaurants.com/central-park-south/. Of course, it was peak time around noon on Sunday so we had to wait in line for half an hour, but it was worth it.
We felt it necessary to walk off some of the calories so we set off to do a full lap of Central Park - up the west side and down the east. We now know Central Park is 3 miles long so we reckon we probably walked 6.5 - 7 miles in all. We enjoyed it but not sure about Meghan - she's not a great one for exercise and we discovered afterwards that the whole park is smoke free, so she must have been gasping by the time we eventually left the park and headed for some cool beers!
Our first attempt at finding a suitable brewpub was (partially) unsuccessful but Meghan soon redeemed her direction finding ability by taking us to The Jeffrey,where we were delighted to find an inner city beer garden - and it was Happy Hour! It's a very New York setting with the fire escapes etc - think Ghostbusters etc:
In the evening, Jo and I decided to head for another brewpub, but, again, the information on the web was out of date and it was no longer there, so we trawled some more and then walked some more and ended up in the very place Jo, Kelly and I were in back in 2004 - the Heartland. Strangely, they were stopping serving food at 9pm - it felt like we were back in Banchory again! We managed to grab something before they closed and then we walked just round the corner to the huge crowds and neon lights of Times Square where everything was open 24/7 - what a bizarre difference in just a few yards.
We had some free time on Monday morning and early afternoon and we headed initially back to Central Park and Strawberry Fields where the Imagine memorial is. After that we took the chance of taking the subway downtown to the shore at Battery Park and the site of the former World Trade Center, where we had been just weeks before 9/11 - and then again in 2004 when it was just a huge hole in the ground. Another tower has been erected but there's still some fairly substantial building work going round there before the site is finished.
The shore round Battery Park is lovely and we stopped and had a bite of lunch overlooking the water and the Statue of Liberty over on Ellis Island:
I'm finishing this off at Heathrow and should close with the traditional end of holiday family photo:
