There’s something wonderfully chaotic about Katz’s Delicatessen. There were queues everywhere. I don’t know how many waiters there were for how many customers. As soon as someone stood up, there was someone to take their place. Their daily turnover must be huge. And yet in the midst of the apparent chaos, people came in, found a seat, and were fed efficiently. While Michaela joined a queue, I scouted for a table and found four empty…
The view from the upper “viewing” levels of New York’s Grand Central Station is remarkable. The scale of the place is enormous. The marble floors and walls are almost overwhelming in their beauty. Below you, you look down to see thousands of people going about their daily commute. And then you look around you, and you see lots of people who, just like you, are tourists taking photographs. And then you realise you’re standing in…
“I was about to send out a search party…” I said to Michaela, remarking on the amount of time I had to wait for her at a restaurant/bar at Coney Island. As the day was warm, and there was a lengthy queue for tables, she suggested I went inside to grab a table while she waited for our orders. “The waitress dropped them, and they had to start all over again”, was the explanation offered…
“Oh My God, is that Salman Rushdie?”, I asked Michaela, pointing the older man taking a seat, as we waited only briefly in line for dinner at Balthazar’s Restaurant. As she looked over to confirm, I remembered that moment from “Bridget Jones Diary” where Bridget met Mr Rushdie at a book launch, and as she had no idea what to talk to him about, asked him where the toilet was. This could have been my…
“Honey, you’ve come at just the right time…” we were told by an fantastic looking older woman. “This is Harlem Week” she said with a great deal of passion and enthusiasm. Even though she no longer lives in Harlem, she came back especially for this, she told us. Though we had no idea it was on, it was a wonderful discovery. “If we’d gotten off at 125th street as most people do, we would have…