I woke up and felt the melancholic dread of having to go home. There’s always something that hangs over the final day of any time spend anywhere else. We packed up the last of our things and said goodbye to our cute apartment.

We dropped our bags at a nearby hotel so we could explore unencumbered and walked back to 2nd Ave to a diner called The Remedy. It certainly was one. I ordered a Californian omelette with toast, potatoes and coffee. Jaz had pancakes with bacon.

We walked up the Bowery until we joined with 5th Ave and the New York Public Library. The library, like the rest of New York, is famous. You’ll know it from the Sex & The City movie of course. I was excited to have the chance to visit as we had noticed there was a J.D. Salinger exhibition on. For those not in the know, Salinger has been my favourite writer since I was a teenager. A lot of my fanciful notions towards New York can be laid at his feet. I had to visit.
We weren’t allowed to take bags, coats or phones into the exhibition as it was all privately owned but I can tell you what I saw.

The exhibition was in a small room with a number of Salinger’s personal affects and letters about the place. Everything I know about the man suggests he would have hated this. I read every slip of paper in the place. After some issues with a title being changed by The New Yorker, Salinger became obsessed with the detail and presentation of his own work and insisted on having the final say on anything. The idea of any of his process or his typewriter or his photos or indeed his eyeglasses being on display would probably make the man balk, but here we are. It wasn’t going to stop me scoffing it all with my greedy little eyes.
This was followed by an obligatory trip to the gift shop.

On our walk back I finally found the site where the legendary punk club, CBGB, had once stood. It’s now a fashion boutique but someone has kindly stamped the letters into the concrete outside just to make sure everyone knew they were in the right place.

The list that the pair of us had prepared ahead of our trip was heaving with suggestions and recommendations. There was no way we could have got through everything we wanted to. The last thing we were able to do was swing into Heaven’s Hot Bagel and spend $7.00 on a bagel with the works.

We sat in a park and tried to work out how we could ever go back to eating like normal people ever again.
We collected our bags and with a little effort I hailed a cab for our journey back.

New York has always been somewhere I wanted to visit. I was lucky to have Jaz with me to explore. The city is loaded with false memories from the music I’ve listened to, the books I’ve read and the films I’ve seen. There is no way to explain just how much the experience lived up to the hype. It’s a harsh place in some ways but has the biggest heart. Wherever I visit becomes my absolute favourite. For now, New York has my heart.

I learnt about Thanksgiving through Addams Family Values, which is a fairly solid historical depiction. I was excited to experience my first one in the land of the free and the home of the brave, but first, Dunkin’ Donuts.

Jaz and I set off early. We had a lot to get done. We got Beyond muffins and ridiculously sweet coffees and took the subway towards 34th St and found a good spot to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade from. This meant tripping over kids and working out what the floats were supposed to be. After seeing the Green Giant, a Power Ranger and Snoopy, I was cold enough and we walked on in search of other entertainment. We wandered around Times Square, had more coffee and a doughnut and realised that we had an awful lot of time to kill before Thanksgiving dinner.

We walked through Central Park and found a spot which I think was in one of the John Wick films. We stopped on the edge of the lake and I thought of Catcher In The Rye. It was bitterly cold out but the park was busy. Everyone was in good spirits to celebrate whatever it is they are actually celebrating at Thanksgiving. We got a subway to Grand Central station.

When I was a student I was even more pretentious than I am now. I had a huge black and white print of Grand Central, with the sunlight coming through the crescent windows, up on my wall. It meant a lot to me to suddenly be stood in this incredible marble palace with a full-on New York bustle around me. The lighting was golden and everything was beautifully distant from the grime of the city.

We took a subway all the way up to the Upper East Side and collected some booze for our hosts. It was great to arrive at Ben and Audra’s, not just because it was warm, but also because they were so gracious. Ben’s friends, Chris and Steve, were visiting and the six of us immediately got to a wonderful level of chatter that was only stopped by the delicious food that was served and then the seriousness of the card games we played. Someone kept my wine glass full and then shots of Limoncello saw me off. We left late and rode the subway all the way back to the Lower Easty Side.

We collapsed into bed and I fell into a drunken slumber.

On Tuesday I got to live out a dream I’ve had for most of my life. I got to have what she’s having.

When I was twelve, my best friend was a girl called Amy. My grandpa told me that “men and women could never really be friends because sex got in the way”. When I looked disgusted, he told me about When Harry Met Sally and a new love was born. It’s also worth recommending that this conversation never takes place across two generations again.

The famous scene, where we all got to see Meg Ryan’s O-face, took place in Katz Deli. They do sandwiches that are so thick that they would believe Boris Johnson. We split a sandwich and got some latkes and sat at THE TABLE. This, aside from the birth of my niece, is probably the most beautiful moment of my life. I cried at both events. It was without a doubt the best sandwich I’ve ever eaten. I can’t explain how good it was but I would do terrible, terrible things for another one.

Worried that I would never feel hungry again, we walked to Greenwich Village and found the exterior of the Friends apartment. It was only as we stood outside that I realised there was no way the apartment itself had such a layout if it was in that building. I had been royally stiffed by Rachel and Monica (chance would be a fine thing).

We found the Ghostbuster Firehouse on our walk to the Brooklyn Bridge. We were having a day of modern cultural relevance.

The bridge is supposed to be an amazing experience but, like most things, is ruined by the people who wander about on it aimlessly, taking bad selfies and having zero awareness of the space they are taking up. By the time we got across I wanted to kick them all in the river.

We walked through Brooklyn and found a cool coffee shop before arguing over the direction we were going in and heading back to Williamsburg. We had booked in for the Brooklyn Brewery tour but were there about three hours early so wandered the streets and looked in shops ahead of our tour time.

The Brooklyn Brewery Tour is definitely worth doing (I found out later that it is free on a Saturday). You get four tasters along the way and learn about how the biggest independent brewery in the world works. It made me appreciate my booze all the more.

Back on the island, I left Jaz to sleep through Friends repeats while I headed to a bar to meet my friend Noah who was playing a show. It was great to see him perform and to catch up but by the time I got back to our apartment, I was dead on my feet and happy to fall down on the bed.