Great views from the High Line

A diminutive Andy Warhol stands in between the old
track on the High Line

There was a rumour on Arcadia that clothes shrunk in the wardrobes. Well, so they might for some passengers. Mine expanded. I think it was the excitement of going across the Atlantic by ship and visiting places I never dreamed I would visit. One skirt expanded so much that I had a wardrobe malfunction one night! Having soaked up the exciting sounds, smells and sights of New York streets, we bought tickets for the Subway at 42nd Street-Time Square. They would have lasted a week, if we had wanted them to, but we certainly had good value out of them for the two days. The weather was warm in New York, the subway trains are air conditioned unlike some of the underground and tube trains in London, but the stations themselves are really warm, hot even, so waiting for the trains can be uncomfortable and we certainly needed the showers when we got back to the ship each evening. The Subway is just sub-surface, like our underground in London, not deep underneath the city like our tube tunnels. When we caught the train two passengers moved up to make room for me to sit down, so my first experience of traveling on the Subway was pleasant and friendly. One thing I noticed about all the other passengers is that they all wore flat shoes, mainly trainers, but some women wore pumps. I remember seeing a very smartly dressed woman in a black dress, immaculate hair-cut and patent leather handbag, sitting upright with a neat new pair of pink trainers on her feet. Even immaculately dressed men in suits wore trainers or as Bob Dylan calls them 'sneakers' or gym shoes as we might say. I soon found out why, after a full day in New York my feet really could not take any more walking... it was as bad as a full day walking around Pompeii in Italy... perhaps something to do with volcanic rock? Who knows? It became a bit of a mission for me to see people walking in the streets or traveling on the Subway in high heels, but I only saw about three and two of them were "kitten heels", so I suppose all those Jimmy Choos on display in Bloomingdales must be worn by women who can afford to swan around New York in Yellow Cabs all day. I'm not sure where we got on the High Line, I believe it was near 8th Avenue Subway, to walk above the street on wooden boards and view New York from a higher level which had plantings of flowers and shrubs on either side. The High Line was a goods railway which closed in the 1980s and from public efforts in the guise of the Friends of the High Line, opened as a public walk way. I'm not sure why by the tune of Duke Ellington's "The A Train" kept popping in my head as we walked. What a wonderful way to view the city! We saw the Empire State building from there and intriguingly some quite dilapidated buildings, which looked almost like a film set. As I mentioned before there is lots of building going on. We saw sparrows around the plants on each side and at one end of the walk/line it disappears into a building! There were quite a few others walking the High Line, some, like us were obviously tourists, but others were locals and could bring children in push chairs up in the lifts. The access point we had intended to use was being re-furbished, so we had to walk a block away to get up to the line. In some places there is a little bit of railway track left. In others art-works, such as a painted statuette of Andy Wharhol among the metal rails. Walking on a spur we saw cars piled up on top of each other, like some sort of vehicle block and a massive advertisement hoarding which said "stop praying... God's too busy to find you a parking place". There was a little stall, run by Friends of the High Line, where I bought a set of fridge magnets for my oldest son and a map of the walk. Nearby was a coffee stall and toilets, sorry bathrooms. A little further on we found the "Chelsea grassslands" and a water feature, where children played in the water. It was a great way to see the variety of buildings on the west side of Manhattan. When we came down off the line, we took the Subway to South Ferry for the Statton Island ferry terminal and joined the crowds to go across the Hudson River.