The Sunday

Today was the day of our helicopter trip. I was feeling surprisingly relaxed about this and in the morning tucked into corned beef hash topped by two eggs done over easy at the Manhattan Diner. Becky had pancakes, bacon and syrup. We then took a cab down to 5th Avenue to watch the Easter parade. It was a fantastic spring day and sun shone on the brightly coloured bonnets of the smiling exhibitionists. I joined in with the ordinary folk clamouring to get photos. Not a parade as such, more like peacocks strolling the park. Very New York.

Anyway, it was soon time to head down to the heliport on Pier 6. Starting to get a little nervous now. Popped into Grand Central Station on the way to see where the scene from Madagascar was set. Pretty impressive but I remember liking Milan station more. Could have been the ice cream.

Arrived at the heliport early. Wow, it was like the entrance to a beehive. Mouth slightly dry by now but the French guy who would be flying in the same helicopter seemed more nervous than me. This makes me feel better. We then check-in and then hang around for quite sometime. At last it's our time to head out the helicopter. I notice genuine fear creeping in now which has the effect of making my legs slightly wobbly. I think of Anna and her happy sky dive and confirm to myself that I will never be following in those footprints. We get to the helicopter, which seems a lot smaller than all the others. The pilot makes a sign indicating the size of my Johnson. No, sorry, that means he's nearly out of fuel. Time to head back to the building for another wait. The walk out the second time doesn't seem so bad. Thankfully I'm not selected to sit in the front seat and offer to let Becky sit by the window. And we are off. We are about 1000 foot up before I stop taking photos long enough to take in where I am. Arrrrrrh, we are 1000 foot up in a wobbly contraption from the days of Leonardo! It all seems so wrong. Anyway, I manager to prevent myself from panicking and gradually relax a bit. I still hope that the whole thing will be over soon and concentrate on taking snaps. By the time we have passed over Central Park and seen Ground Zero I'm starting to enjoy it a bit but still can't help filling my camera with blurry photos. We then head down to circle around the Statue of Liberty. Nice. From there it's back to the helipad and sweet, sweet solid ground.

We then walked down to a bar on the water front and had smoked salmon bagals washed down with a brace of well earned pints of local lager. It was then off to join a mass of tourists from all parts of the world walking to the middle of Brooklyn Bridge.

In the evening we attended a comedy club (UCB Asssscats 3000) which came highly recommended by my guide book. This involved joining the students standing in line for free tickets. I actually found it quite interesting in a anthropological sort of way. However, we decide to leave at half time.