The Emperor's New Clothes...

OK.

In reference to a recent post, sometimes, it takes Marcus Brigstocke from The Now Show to make you see the light...





...and, although it pains me to admit it, he's actually right.*

*About the Marmite, not about America

Haven't I seen that on "Friends"...?

Yes, you probably have...

Most of what you see in New York is familiar to you because you've seen it all before on the television or in films. You can walk round almost any corner and see one of those iconic shots that they slip in for a few seconds to remind you that you're there, even though it's all filmed in a studio in Hollywood.

Friends is a perfect example because it's littered with them... (You can do those accompanying bits of "Ross and Rachel on a break...", "Phoebe slightly weird..." incidental music in your head as you look at them...)



North up 5th Avenue, 16 blocks to Broadway and the Flatiron Building, another 10 blocks to the Empire State Building and another 11 blocks north (and a couple west) to Times Square....



Washington Square Garden (it's rectangular, but is a garden) with its miniature Arc de Triomphe, a staple of the Friends library shots. But you can watch 10 series (on E4 over the course of about a week, probably) and not see any of them actually walking past any of these places.

And, of course, the corner of Bedford and Grove Streets in Greenwich Village.

("Where?" I hear both readers asking...)

You see you'll recognise it now...



It's their apartment building. No honestly, it is...

When you are there, it doesn't look much like it, but that's 'cos you've only ever seen it in 2-D. It was only when I looked at the photo on the digital camera screen that I was sure we were in the right place.

If you just want a sit down and a coffee when you get there, what you might expect some telly-savvy entrepreneur to have rebranded as Central Perk is actually still the very bijou and refined Little Owl restaurant.

So take a flask.

Served by Pat at 8.29am...

It wasn't a pilgrimage, but it wasn't really tourism either. Part of it was curiosity, but not morbid curiosity; part of it was compulsion.

We went to Ground Zero.

And actually, the renewal which is going on there is quite uplifting.

The big hole in the ground is no bigger than the big holes at any number of major construction projects...



...and the things which remind you of why it's there are round the corner or along side streets...





So it really wasn't morbid, at any point. And it wasn't really particularly easy to relate what happened here to what we all watched on television six years ago. Not because I'm heartless or unfeeling, lacking in sympathy or empathy; just because, initially at least, it was like visiting a film set. But, as I realised later, only because up until this point in my life, everything in New York was just a film set.

And then we went into the temporary visitor centre and listened to some of the personal testimonies and looked at some of the belongings of the victims discovered in the wreckage. But it still seemed like a story, something unreal.

But it was the receipt which did it...



Until I found it again on the exhibition website, I'd remembered it from the exhibition as a train ticket, one tiny bit of paper, recovered from the rubble with a few other belongings.

And for me, it was seeing 9/11/2001 on the receipt which actually made it all real. Something which happened to real people on a real day. Served by Pat at 8.29am...

Tall, Tall, Tall as big as a Wall, Wall, Wall...*

I think if you've never been to New York before, and I hadn't, I'm not sure any number of photographs, scenes in films, news reports, stories from other people etc., prepare you for actually being there, the actual impact of what you see at street level, what you see when you look up...

It may sound crass and predictable and touristy, but the city has a "Wow" factor which perhaps nothing prepares you for. In fact, I guess it'll still be there when I go a second or third time. Which I will.

So, let's start by getting in the queue for the city that never sleeps...



It's the Empire State Building and it's iconic New York. Photos don't do it justice. They don't make it look as tall or omnipresent as it is in real life. And at the back of your mind is always the reason it's now, once again, the tallest building in the city.



Quick tip... don't bother to book tickets in advance on the website. You don't get to skip the main queue, just the ticket booth, which saves you about three minutes out of two and a half hours.

So, up the lift, and here's the reassuring, "Oh bugger, we're 86 floors up, I wonder if it's safe..." view you get when the doors open...



Please excuse our appearance while we make our visitor facilities even better... And is that another queue to get outside? Yes! Never mind, queues don't worry me. I've tried to buy a newspaper at WHSmith in Southampton on a Saturday morning enough times to know a life-sapping queue when I see one, and this wasn't it.

So, outside and Manhattan is spread out before you just like it is on the postcards, in the films, just like it's supposed to be... There's hundreds of photos to take, each one only slightly different to the next (and I took them...) and each one only slightly different to the ones taken by everyone else who's been up there.

But here's a few anyway... by day...



...and by night...



...and no, I didn't go up there twice, it just got dark.

It's a great place to go within a few hours of getting to the city, 'cos (a) it gets the longest queue you're likely to stand in the whole time out of the way early and (b) you get your bearings and see where everything else you're going to see actually is.

But it's not the best view of the city. More about why another time.

* Fetch more water, fetch more sand...

Biltmore (and Booze...)

Biltmore is America's largest private residence. It's also quite old for America.

This means it gets quite busy and you follow Americans round who say things like "Oh My God!!! It's, like, so AMAZING that they could build something like this 100 years ago...!!!"

I think if you took them to, let's say, Chatsworth, or a castle, they would probably go into meltdown.

None of this is to say it's not impressive...



...because it is.

But it's not really that old.

It was built with proper plumbing, lifts, electricity, central heating etc., by the Vanderbilt family on the proceeds of their trade and commerce. (So at least it was earned and not just inherited...) Today, they don't live there, it's just a going concern as a tourist attraction. You can't take photos inside so if you want to see what it's like, you'll have to look at the website. Or go yourself.

Some of the best views are from, and in, the formal gardens and grounds...



...which are huge.

About three miles from the house, but still in the grounds, is a converted dairy which is now a winery...



If you're not driving, you can taste up to eight wines, guided by a professional wine professional. Ours didn't seem to be counting how many we tasted. The plan is that if you taste eight each, you buy eight each, thus enabling the whole enterprise to do better as a winery than it ever did selling milk. We tasted at least eight each and bought three bottles in total, so we probably weren't the best customers.

But back in Greensboro later that evening, we drank the wine and discovered that it was cheaper in Harris Teeter anyway...

Posh McDonalds and Custard...

Not Nashville in Tennessee, which is about 300 miles to the west, but Asheville, still in North Carolina, and in the Blue Ridge Mountains (which I thought were in Virginia, as in the song).

Seems my geographical knowledge of the eastern US states is about as good as the average American's knowledge of where Basingstoke is. (And who can blame them.)

Asheville has history...



This is at Biltmore village on the outskirts of Asheville. It's a preserved area and all the houses and shops are in some manner of ye olde style which I know nothing about. Here's a picture and you can tell me...



The Olde World Christmas Shoppe sells Christmassy things the whole year round. 365 days a year. (Except when we were there and it was shut.)

Even the McDonalds has to be in keeping...



Yes, we did go in, and it had a grand piano on a little stage too. Albeit one of those you put a memory card in and it plays itself. Also my first experience of an Egg and Bacon McGriddle, which is egg and bacon in two small maple syrup pancakes. And my last experience of one too.

The actual town of Asheville has some really impressive buildings...



...and some interesting public art...



...but all of this pales into insignificance besides Asheville's top feature, which is...



...Kamm's Frozen Custard Shop, which is well worth a visit. In fact, it's well worth the two round-trip flights and the three hour each-way drive. Best food experience of the holiday so far. Here's the order form if you want some... (I'm not sure they deliver, though...)

At the Mall...

A quick 55-mile drive down Interstate 40 (which is nothing in a 500-mile wide state) dodging the really big trucks...



...and we're at the mall.

The Streets at Southpoint seems to be a relatively new development in Durham, NC. So new, that it looks like no-one else knows it is there - certainly it was deserted for about the first hour and a half we were there and then officially "not very busy" for the rest of the time.

It's called The Streets because they've done a lot of ye olde brickwork inside...



...and the malls are signposted as quaint streets and lanes, often by slightly "Midwich Cuckoo"-looking cast-iron children with cast-iron dogs...



From the outside, it looks nothing like that. Just the standard temple to excess à la Bluewater, except with a Macy's...



And, of course, everything is ridiculously cheap. Especially clothes. So much so that within a couple of hours between us and our credit cards, we had amassed a Nike top, a pair of jeans, a jacket, two pairs of sneakers, a shirt, track pants (not for me!) and a belt.

Oh, and I bought a new watch too.

I was briefly tempted by this jacket...



...but thankfully only briefly. There were actually matching trousers to go with it.

It was a fairly lazy day, which we needed after travelling, and in the evening we went to see...



Premonition, which proved two things:

1. Sandra Bullock really still can't act... and
2. It's quite rational to be scared of really big trucks.

Down on the Farm...

Unexpectedly, it's 30°C here in Greensboro.

(Or 88°F, as non-metric America would have it. So non-metric that you have to buy a gallon of milk, $3.)

But, hey, it doesn't matter because every house here has air conditioning. In fact, just outside the bedroom window is Lisa's air condtioning...



...along with the air conditioning for the other three apartments in the block. It's slightly less noisy than if you were living under an airport flight path, but not much, and I have discovered the delights of earplugs!

(Sorry? What did you say...?)

Anyway, apart from that, it's great here on Adams Farm, which is a bit like Wisteria Lane-lite. Miles of identikit houses and blocks along the winding Adams Farm Parkway (see where we are and zoom around a bit) in a really nice part of town with lots of trees!



So, quite classy all in all and no hint of any drive-bys. Not even when we went to the movies* tonight and were driving downtown** in the dark.

*cinema
**Petula Clark

Welcome to the US! Have some food!

Half way there...



...and the Rolls Royce engines did their job admirally. And thankfully.



At JFK, it was time to start as we will be obliged to go on...

...with fattening food...



...and then to the drive-thru donut shop...



...three down, nine to go!!

Will be the size of a house by the time I get back!

Off to the Mall today!