New York, New York, I *heart* New York

I'd never really had a romantic vision of America, and especially not New York.Practically every film I watched as a youngster in the eighties painted a grim picture of the citywhich during the day had bustling streets filled with cocky yuppies with double-breasted grey suits and bubble-breasted power-dressed business women with big hair. At night, the city became a modern-day, gun-crime-riddled wild west, with daring cop duos and serious drug problems. Apparently Rudolph Guiliani came along and cleaned up the place. Not that I knew of course, I was too busy going out and getting pissed to watch the news in the late nineties. I guess shows like Friends and Sex in the City really helped to paint a new picture of how cosmopolitan, funky and fresh New York was, without a red-eyed horse in Central Park in sight.

It was only when the Twin Towers got attacked that I had an opportunity to see another side of the city in the media, but I still had no desire to go there.By the time 2003 came around, the majority of the summer holidays I was lucky enough to have in Cyprus or elsewhere in Greece brought out a real love of the beach and/or scenic views of the countryside. I hated cities, from limited trips to Croydon for Christmas shopping, and even fewer daytrips to London, being squashed onto the tube, or being jostled about on Oxford Street made me yearn for some fresh air and space.So when my wife suggested a short break over to one of the biggest cities in the world, for Valentines Day weekend, I wasn't exactly excited about the prospect.

I was in a bit of a grumpy mood when we arrived at Newark Airport, New Jersey after a sub-eight hour flight. I soon found out that I was horrifically under-dressed for the harsh New York winter and as we stood at the end of the concourse wating for a shuttle bus, I was openly cursing. My previous experience with wind was the kind that moved around you and over your head. I'd never felt such an icy wind that just moved right through you as if you weren't there.The skyline that hulked up towards us as we drove towards Manhattan changed all that. Something I'd never experienced before was an appreciation for man-made beauty, but boy-oh-boy New York has it all.

The first thing I noticed as I stepped from the bus into a slush covered street with steam rising from the vents in the road, was how enormous everything was; how much the skyscrapers really did look as if they were scraping the sky, and I fell in love with the place there and then. We were staying in a small hotel on Lexington, and as it was my longest-haul trip at the time, I didn't sleep that well. At all. The other people in the nearby rooms were really loud, and the noise of the road traffic outside throughout the night was a bit of a unwelcome shock. One day we walked out of the hotel and into a stream of marching anti-Iraq invasion protesters. We followed them down the street a little way and then turned off towards 5th Avenue, in search of shopping and Central Park.

On the way, on Park Avenue, we came across a rack of newspapers, one of which looked like a version of our own tabloids. I can't remember the headline, but the picture spoke a thousand words. There was an image of two delegates; one from France, and the other from Germany, both having just opposed the coming invasion in the U.N. Their heads had been replaced by that of weasels. We did all the touristy bits in those four days but one of the most memorable points appeared one day when we got on the wrong tube and ended up in Chinatown's bleakest area, choosing to walk to another subway line, which ended up being a trek down what seemed like a quarter of the island. We walked a very, very long way.

We came upon Ground Zero quite by mistake. My teeth were chattering by the time we reached the rear entrance of the old Century 21 department store on the edge of the financial district. And as we pulled on our hats and gloves and once more re-entered the streets of Manhattan, we were stunned by unexpectedly open space ahead of us. And the silence of it. I think we both knew what we were looking at without needing to be told. Although 15 months had passed since September 11th, there was a very thick cloud of emotion in the air. Respectful tourists shuffled from the wall of photographs and letters leading up from the subway station, across to the fences surrounding the perimeter of the site. A black mesh of sheeting covered a the entire right side of a huge building to the left, the sun shining through the thin material to reveal the barely disguised scarred facade of rooms missing walls. Thin gaps in the fence showed a hole in the ground (I think there was also a large cross inside), and I was surprised just how raw it felt, like an open wound that no-one wanted to cover.

The last time I visited the site, in March of 2008, the area was transformed. There wasn't much built on the site, it actually looked really similar to what it had before, but there was a new subway station, and a proper memorial area. The biggest change was that there was an almost profound air of resolve and regrowth.After we left the site that day in 2003, we moved on down towards Wall Street and on to Battery Park, the southern-most tip of Manhattan, overlooking the harbor (sic). There was a large dented sphere that had been pulled from the plaza between the two WTC towers, lying as a memorial to those lost, in front of an eternal flame. We had many adventures during that short trip, but it was that flame that characterised this amazing city, it's unerring drive to not only continue, but to move forward; to not only heal, but to create something even more spectacular than before.