NY in NY

New Year's Eve is a bit of a surreal experience in New York for the uninitiated.

When you expect to see the streets full of traffic the sight of Broadway, 7th Avenue and cross streets from at least 47th to 54th devoid of cars seems very strange indeed.

We managed to catch up with a good friend who happened to be here as well and at a loose end - we are staying on Broadway between 48th and 49th - she is staying in a hotel on 58th. The walk up to her hotel to get her at about 5pm was interesting to say the least but the trip back, trying to get through the closed off streets was a bit of a challenge. The NYPD is out in force and NOBODY gets through the blockades easily once each street is closed off.

As a side note - our friend is staying at a hotel we have looked at a few times ourselves - having now experienced their reception staff first hand we can quite safely scratch it off the list of places to stay in NY. If anyone from The Hudson happens to be reading this, your reception staff (all bar one) are rude, arrogant and unhelpful to the extreme and the two 'boys' on your front desk last night, who I can only describe as "VILE QUEENS" , desperately need some retraining !!!!! ................. and for Christ's sake, buy some damn lights ! Ambiance is one thing but having to stand in your reception for 5 minutes to let your eyes adjust to the dark is a bit of overkill.

Anyway ........ we ate, drank and were merry until about 11:45 when we decided to head to the street .... not knowing if we were even going to be allowed out of the building. We were though and had a great vantage point that hundreds of thousands of people had started lining up at lunch time would have killed for !!!! :-)

A small video welcoming in the NY in NY for your viewing pleasure. The high pitched screeching is step-daughter #1 who may or may not have had one too many 'shandys' !

Hope your NYE was wonderful wherever you were and whatever you were doing !