BW in NY

Weehee. I can still remember how to blog. I was starting to wonder, and I guess so were any others who happen to stop by this blog. Anyway, finally, I'm going to manage a post, but only really for the most trivial of reasons, namely to blog some photographs. I am, as the photos show and the title of the post reveals, in New York, and in fact this is a first for me. I spent six months in Boston in 1998, but never managed the short trip down to New York to see the Big Apple, as they call it. So when I got an opportunity to come to a conference here (they flew me across the Atlantic for an eight minute contribution...), I took it. The conference has been interesting, and the trip overall worthwhile, although it will mean I am a bit wrecked next week, and I also had to rearrange some teaching to accommodate this. C'est la vie. Everyone has to suffer for their vocation.

I got here on Thursday afternoon, and 'enjoyed' a rather nightmarish journey in from Newark Airport, which at least has direct flights from Edinburgh. There was vast quantities of traffic, and I found it deeply unpleasant coming through the Lincoln Tunnel onto Manhattan Island from New Jersey in an overfull overhot Super Shuttle van with the windows open. I have now worked out how I can back to the airport by train tomorrow and I shall be taking that option, to be sure. Unfortunately, no one told me about it in advance.

I haven't really had an opportunity to take photographs until this afternoon, when the conference had ended, and sadly this afternoon did not display the bright blue skies which were in evidence this morning when I walked from the hotel to the conference. Undeterred, I found my way across Central Park to Fifth Avenue and walked all the way down there (passing a well known landmark - see above, BB!) to the Empire State Building.

I then did something I would never do if I had been with BB. I went up the Empire State Building. I know, very sad, but it fits well with my obsession with maps and stuff like that that I really like viewing cities from high points. When in Boston, I used to inflict a trip up the Hancock Tower on all visitors from the UK, to the point where even Junior Bond was heard to reflect that there must be other sights in Boston that we could go to with our visitors. Anyway, BB wouldn't have tolerated the queues (I did Kakuro whilst waiting), the lifts, or probably the vertiginous sights. I loved it.

And when I came down (much quicker than going up, which is curious because the same number of people have to come down as go up, in the same number of lifts...) I took another picture of the Empire State Building just to remind me.

Perhaps more serious service here, and on the EU Law and Politics Blog, might be resumed soon. You never know.



o