phew! hate to say this but it's nice to be away from my beloved new york city for a few days! bit fed up with the hurricane sandy aftermath - i feel for all the new yorkers who have to deal with it, but i'm supposed to be on holiday! so, i've gone on holiday!
few more bits from the last few days:
friday - the day of the yorkville masked ball, which is a big fundraising event for search & care. all the rich types from the upper east side get properly dressed up (and i mean properly - gorgeous frocks for the gals, dinner suits for the guys - masks for both - and pay a lot of money for tickets to go down to an old-school english style gentlemen's club and get smashed at a free bar. i was there helping out but it was fun and we could take advantage of the free bar too - yes, i did have a couple of glasses of champagne - would have been rude not to! i spent most of the evening greeting people coming in and directing them to where to check-in for their tickets. so i got to see what everyone was wearing... perfect job for me! earlier in the day i had to go down to the garment district to pick up some fancy jewellery and silk scarves that had been donated for the silent auction - so it was a busy day!
saturday - late start this morning due to last night's festivities. went off to do some laundry (oh, my rock n roll lifestyle!) then went off up to target in harlem for a spot of shopping, then i had been invited to dinner at phyllis's apartment so i headed back over there and had dinner with phyllis. i took my laptop as i'd asked her if i could make a copy of a cd that she has with some of her radio shows from the 1940s, so we listened to them and now i've got them on my laptop - hurrah! she sounds so different on the shows and her singing is just lovely.
sunday - went over to williamsburg to do a bit of shopping and hang out, but it was all cut short as i found out that the subways and buses were shutting down because of the impending hurricane - boo! i didn't buy much, but did manage to get a gorgeous little blue cashmere cardy for £10 from a vintage store - nice! lots more lovely vintage shops there this year than in 2010. got home to find everything closing, including the movie theatres... double boo!!!
monday - under house arrest, sandy on it's way - very windy, a bit rainy, but not cold at all. i went out for walk around the block and nearly got blown away, was pretty scary. but the apartment where i'm staying is really sheltered so it pretty much passed me by. but the tv news went on and on - i had to end up turning it over as it was getting depressing... the day passed and i think i was mainly in a semi-coma.
tuesday - phew! sandy's passed through new york, leaving a lot of devastation in lower manhattan and new jersey. have been very lucky being up at east 88th street as there have been a few trees blown down, but we escaped the really bad stuff. everything starting to open up too - hurrah!!! robin came over and bought us some lunch and coffee - she always cheers me up! later on i ventured out as i was getting severe cabin fever being indoors... ventured out later to finally see a film - it was worth it too, saw 'seven psychopaths' which was brilliant - great cast; sam rockwell, colin farrell, christopher walken and written/directed by martin mcdonagh - he did 'in bruges'
wednesday - ok, new york is kind of back in business. i had a busy day today, went to visit lovely elona this morning - so great to see her again - we chatted for hours and i wish i could see her regularly, she's so sweet. then i dashed over to moma to see some weird little short films about noise - bizarre but great - a film taken in the streets of new york in around 1920, a cartoon based on a dr seuss book called 'gerald mcboing boing' and a film about three bands who played at cbgbs back in 1977, the film had some live footage, but also had interviews with the fans and people at the club - it was brilliant and funny and it had the ramones in it so of course i was happy! then i went an spent some money in the moma shop which is always an expensive visit for me! then headed down to the imax to finally see 'the cloud atlas' but was very annoyed to find that it was sold out... grrr! i have to see that film while i'm still here! so headed home to find that the entire city seemed to be heading uptown - it was gridlocked on the roads and that was the only option as the subway still closed. i ended up walking about 10 blocks across town to find a bus that wasn't going to be stuck for hours. got home to find out that amtrak have cancelled my train to boston - how annoying!!!! so i have to shop around to find a bus to take me to boston - amtrak are refunding me my ticket cost and the bus is way cheaper - so i've saved myself around $100.
thursday - right, i have to get pretty far downtown this morning to catch my cheapo bus to boston... but the subway is only running to 42nd street - so i get off there and i'm very lucky to get straight on a bus going further south, but that stops at 23rd street. i wander about looking for a cab when another bus stops nearby which is going further down, so i get on it and hey presto! it only takes me to one block away from where i'm catching the bus - hurrah! so there's a massive queue which i just join and stand there for about an hour before we finally get loaded onto a crappy old bus - thank god i get a double seat without someone sitting next to me! it's suppposed to take around 4.5 hours but it took over 6 hours... finally get to boston and i'm too tired to walk to my hotel and i don't really know where it is so i just get in a cab. then it pulls up at this really fancy hotel - the oldest continuously running hotel in the whole of the US - or something like that! so, i've got a huge comfy bed and i was big and brave and went down to the really fancy restaurant and had a big yummy dinner - well, i missed out on lunch, only had a yogurt for breakfast and didn't have dinner last night either, so i figured i was due a proper dinner! and i had a famous boston cream pie - which apparently was invented at this very hotel! and oddly, it's not a pie, but more of a cake - anyway, it was lovely and then i came up to my lovely room and watched tv. right, off to bed...
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