Wednesday: becoming a 'Yalie'

I'm now, apparently, a 'Yalie' - having gone through the bureaucratic process of becoming an employee of Yale University- albeit temporarily. The day started early: the house where I'm living is on a nice quiet side street. But next door there's an old school-building being gutted and its metal fixtures are being crushed on site, starting at 7am, possibly every morning. This will guarantee I'll be up and ready to work on time. Breakfast: granola mixed with Scots porridge oats plus fruit. Then outside, where the rain has, finally stopped (last night the local TV channels were whipping themselves up into a frenzy of excitement about the floods - heaviest rain in NYC and Connecticut for over 50 years in the past few days, which I can believe). A walk through the main campus area of Yale to get to the Beinecke Rare Book Library, a massive modernist cube sited bang in the middle of the campus. It looks amazing on the outside, but even more stunning on the inside, because its marble walls are very thin and translucent, giving off a golden glow of natural light. Its million or more books and manuscripts are stored in a giant glass inner cube several stories tall. There's a Gutenberg Bible on display. If you look at the photograph you'll just notice that the reading room, where I'll be spending my time, is actually below ground-level in a sunken courtyard. All pretty swish. I attended an 'orientation meeting', which involved lots of form-filling and very friendly guidance, and then a tour of the facilities I'll be using during the next month - the lockers, coffee-makign facilities, etc. After that, off to the Office of International Students and Scholars, to go through more processing - my health cover checked, visa checked, social security number processing initiated, etc. This left just enough time for two more activities: first, a scurry up Orange Street to a grocery store to get some food supplies in, then, a quick scurry back downtown to have 45-minutes in the Yale Center for British Art before it shut for the day. Amazing collection of paintings, mostly from the 'long eighteenth century'. Not my own favourite period - too many pictures of twerps with their hunting dogs. But some lovely Tudor portraits, and really great to see Hogarths, Turners and others up very close in a very quiet space. I shall return. Tomorrow, though, I get down to work properly, and will be at the Beinecke all day with my first batch of manuscripts...

Tuesday: Off to New Haven

So, time to leave New York. Having arrived at the Bowery Hotel in style (i.e. with all my jackets and underwear about my person), I now left it it style, having blocked the loo. A design-fault, not my fault, I'm convinced. It was an old building. Stormy in Manhattan. So on my taxi-ride to Grand Central Station I watched everyone being blown around and lashed with rain. Hotel doormen were wearing wellington boots. Grand Central was Grand. The coffee was still weak, though. The Metro-North train to New Haven left at 11.07 and got me to New Haven - in even stormier rain - at about 12.50. Another taxi-ride to the Amadeus Healing Center and Guest House, where I let myself in and dragged my luggage up two flights of stairs. I'm in a room called the 'Library Loft' - a lovely open-plan space with bed at one end, kitchen at the other, and a sitting-area in-between. There's a stag's head on the wall. After unpacking, a wander through New Haven to get my bearings - most of the Yale buildings, cafes theatres and shops are just a few minutes easy walk away - though I got soaked through, despite rain-proof coverings, such was the force of the weather. Picked-up copies of local newspapers and city-centre maps, grabbed a bag of groceries, and headed back to the Loft. Now struggling with a slightly wobbly wi-fi connection. Will cook some supper soon, then, tomorrow it's a day of administration: registering at the Beinecke Library and the various other places, to get my visa checked, my social security status cleared, etc.

Wet Monday in Manhattan

Really, really wet day. Started by heading out at 8am to the Lower East Side and finding Katz's Diner - which the guidebooks hail as the original NYC Jewish deli-diner, and which has been featured in various film scenes (e.g. When Harry Met Sally). I noticed a signed photo of FDR there among the many hundreds on the walls. Here's a picture of my fresh-fruit-rich breakfast: a pastrami-on-rye. I think it is fair to say that it has kept me going all day. And it was fantastic. After that, a walk westwards to Soho, then south and east to the Brooklyn Bridge. The original plan was to explore Brooklyn and get a view on the way, but the steady drizzle was getting heavier. On the bridge, you're not supposed to look back until at least half-way across so that you turn-round and get the sudden sight of the sweep of Downtown skyscrapers. And it was worth it, even though today the top half of each building is shrouded in rain-clouds. Got three-quarters of the way across the bridge before the rain got to me, and I turned back in order to get back onto Manhattan and find somewhere for water and coffee (especially water, after that pastrami-on-rye). Must have walked miles and miles, which is the only way I feel I can atone for such an irresponsible breakfast. Stopped off to buy a timed ticket for the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, which I'll go to later. And on the way back to the hotel, I noticed that Whole Food Market have their flagship store nearby, so popped in for some fresh fruit. So my overall daily diet will be quite balanced after all. At the hotel early-afternoon: some time to dry-out, check emails, skype home, wish Happy Birthday. Then out again, wandering through my 'local' neighbourhood, the East Village, then a few blocks south to the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, where some tenement rooms in use by immigrants between the 1860s and the 1930s were open - some left as they were, others restored. Very interesting, and moving. But I was struck by the way it was presented as being about ethnic and racial discrimination: no doubt true, but the conditions struck me as no different to ones probably experienced by millions of working people in industrial areas of Britain during the same period. It's about class, innit.

Sunday afternoon and the Shake Shack

The Shake Shack does all sorts of hot dogs and hamburgers, and shakes - whisked-up custard with all sorts of exotic flavours and extras. The electricity is powered by wind. When you place your order, you're given a little hand-held device a bit like a mobile-phone or an audio-guide. When your order's ready it 'shakes' and lights up so you can sit around while you're waiting, then fetch it from the kitchen. I had a 'Shake-ago' and fries - the fries not using trans-fats, so really now a health food. One thing I didn't order was the 'Pooch-ini' - a 'delicious' snack for your dog, involving peanut-butter, custard, cookies, and other stuff I can't remember. It's not suitable for small dogs, though. After stopping at the Shake Shack, I wandered south into Greenwich Village, which had a fairly retro (i.e. 1970s, 1980s)- rather than buzzy - feel. Then cut across back to East Village, which - though grittier - seemed more 'happening'. The street next to the hotel is tiny, but has about seven alternative theatres and tiny coffee bars. So I'll explore that a bit tomorrow.

Sunday afternoon wanderings

After leaving Central Park - a quick look into the vast Apple Store - it's under the street level, and you get in by going down a glass circular lift. Packed - a place to be on wet Sunday afternoons. No Ipads yet, Morgan: they come next weekend. Then slowly down Fifth Avenue - which had that feel of an archetypal Manhattan street. Iconic and consumerist - simultaneously seductive and repulsive. Also very long. So, once again - especially after walking round the Met and through Central Park, I succumbed to a taxi - to take me to Madison Square Park.... where I came across Shake Shack... about which more in my next post....

Sunday morning

Woke up really early - my body still slightly on UK time, and also with a really persistent headache, made worse by knowing that I'd forgotten to bring Anadin. Had breadfast at the hotel. 'Steel Cut Irish Oats' - which, basically turned-out to be porridge, with sliced bananas and strawberries and a side-dish of crispy bacon washed down with coffee and orange juice. Glanced at the New York Times Sunday edition - outside my bedroom door courtesy of the hotel. Then headed straight out so I could get to the Metropolitan Museum as soon as it opened at 9.30am - though stopping off at a pharmacy to get headache tablets (the choice being irritatingly wide because obviously unregulated, with a random selection of tablet strengths - and I ended up choosing some that made my face go numb within 2 minutes but which certainly had the desired effect of killing-off the headache for the day). Beginning to get a feel for the size of Manhattan and the scale of the map I use - which, in this case meant giving up on my original plan to walk to the Met, and getting a taxi instead (it would have taken hours walking). The Met is absolutely enormous. I started with the Egyptian section, which contained vast numbers of mummies, statues, frescoes, whole tombs with enormous galleries to themselves. Then Medieval, Renaissance, right up to modern and contemporary. Kept getting lost. Lots of famous pictures, of course - Rembrandt self-portrait, Van Gogh self-portrait with straw hat, and irises, Caravaggios, vast numbers of Picassos. etc, plus lots of modern American - Jackson Pollock, etc - and Damien Hirst's 'The Impossibility, etc' - i.e. the pickled shark. Stopped off for a double-espresso in the American Wing cafe. (Strange thing I've notice is that no matter how nice a cafe, even if you're drinking 'in' they still serve all coffees in paper-cups). Other than that, kept going for 4 hours or so, in order to take advantage of being there. Afterwards, out into the gentle drizzle to walk through Central Park - kept getting a little disorientated. Then to Fifth Avenue, where I first of all noticed the mega Apple Store... which I'll tell you about in my next post.

Arrival at The Bowery

The Bowery Hotel is in a 'gritty', but trendy part of NYC - half-way between 'Downtown' proper and Midtown - and sandwiched at the intersection of NOHO, Greenwich Village, East Village and Lower East Side. Inside, it's dark and exotic - with a kind-of turn-of-the-century art-nouveau feel in the Bar. Which, when I arrived (at about 6pm NYC time) was full of very trendy folk - all, I think, quite impressed by my own cutting-edge style (i.e several jackets, pants hanging out of every pocket, etc). The staff also have style - with aggressively emo'd hairdoes. My bedroom's on the twelfth floor - and yes, I do get vertigo if I get up close to my window and look down at the street below. So I concentrate on looking straight ahead at the skyline: no landmarks but a nice New York-y mix of loft-apartments and mini-skyscrapers, dotted with what look like water-towers (but I'm not sure). Lots of sirens and car-horns when the window's open - but it's all part of the background, so I had no trouble falling asleep.

But sleep came only after (a) checking out the mini-bar: wardrobe-sized - and tasty cashew nuts; (b) a wander up Broadway to Union Square and back down via First Avenue - to sniff the territory in the cold. Took twenty minutes to work out how to turn off the lights next to the bed. The TV has over 700 channels. There was nothing worth watching. I know you won't believe me, Morgan, but it's true!

Saturday - arrival in NYC

Arrived at JFK about 3.30 US time... after the trauma of carrying far too much luggage and - in order to reduce the weight of my suitcase by 2kg - having to wear several jackets and shoving various pants, cables, and portable devices into every pocket. Getting through customs, etc was faster than I'd expected - though the baggage reclaim is pretty time-consuming when the conveyor belts are spitting out a Jumbo-jet load of bags. Long queue for official yellow taxis - but worth it for the flate-rate during the ride into Manhattan. First glimpses of the skyline... and eager to get to the Hotel and 'dump' my stuff ;)