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A little sad to leave Cape Cod, but we managed to get some early morning baseball in before we left, and a final outing on Huffy and Hot Diggity. We contemplated a trip to Plymouth en route but in the end decided to head straight for New York. The journey was pretty good, rather than Route 95 all the way there we went slightly off piste and traveled through some places we might not otherwise have been, and got to see some of the smaller roads that were a bit more interesting than the Interstate. It got a bit more complicated as we approached Manhattan, as the GPS seemed to lag a little and gave us no notice of a couple of turns meaning we took a detour over the Robert Kennedy Bridge, but we made it to hotel, and dropped car very easily with some fine driving from Allison.
We had chosen a hotel rather than the apartments and houses we had previously been favouring for the final leg. This was partly because position was important for the last couple of things we wanted to do, and the hotel on W35th between 8th and 9th was really good. It was handy for the High Line which we walked on the Sunday night, and which was a highlight of the trip and something I had wanted to do for a long time, and also for the Monday morning trip to Penn Station to catch the Long Island Rail Road.
Part of the reason for coming back to NYC for a couple of days was to take mum to the US Open at Flushing Meadow and we had secured tickets for the day session on Arthur Ashe court. The journey was fine but the organisation outside was very poor and the words 'piss up' and 'brewery' sprang to mind. Once in was fine although some officious crowd management meant we only got to see Laura Robson's post game interview and the back of Annabel Croft's head.
Once on Arthur Ashe things were fine - Venus Williams seemed back on form and it was great to see Nadal play. Beers were overpriced but we managed to sink a few in a valiant attempt to secure commemorative cups.
Upon return, we decided to finish off with a (horrendously overpriced) night time trip up the Empire State Building. I had not been up there for 20 years, and never at night, and it has to be said that the views were spectacular and the queues minimal at 9.00. The building was lit in blue, white and green in honour of the US Open and we got some great photos, then back to the hotel via Tick Tock Diner for a short sleep before our final Manhattan transfer. In the end this was stylish as Allison managed to get us a stretch limo which Noah appreciated.
JFK is a pretty poor airport when we are used to Heathrow, but I at least managed to break my shopping duck. Having bought diddly squat during our 25 days in US I at last managed to rectify this with 2 litres of grey goose.
It's been a great trip, and was good to be able to see Keir in to her year abroad and spend some time as a family and to experience a lot of different places. No sure we will be doing it again for a while but we will definitely aim to do something similar again at some point.
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