Hello, hello, hello! Due to largely self-driven demand you will be treated to an, ideally, daily update from yours truly over for the next three or so weeks (lucky you!) This post is to be the first in just over six years mostly thanks to the dead horse I refuse to flog and my assumption of the lawyer-boy position. Fear not, the wait is over and you will once again be graced with my flowery prose. Onwards!
Our first stop on this 2023 tour was New York, New York. We were fortunate enough to spend our 16 hour Auckland to New York trip in the presence of none other than Mr Tim Arbuckle by pure coincidence. Not only did we laugh together about how much snowboarders have to learn from skiers but I was also on the receiving end of some handy suit-maker recommendations.
Having landed the night before, our first day’s morning consisted of some sub-par coffee, a morning 11km around Central Park, and then a walk to Grand Central Terminal. Next stop was a nearby park, and then a Whole Foods. Needless to say, Whole Foods was revelatory – I’m talking three stories, salad bars, thirty different ice-teas, etc. Way too many options for it to make sense. I digress.
After a sumptuous lunch, we meandered over to the old home/mansion of John Piermont Morgan. J. P. Morgan’s net worth apparently peaked at around $60 Billion when adjusted for inflation etc. It was quite scary seeing a house from the 19th Century imitate my own bedroom and workspace so closely but I somehow found the few differences there were to alleviate any time travelling, floorplan-stealing worries I may have had. I’ve recently become a bit of a reader but, unlike Morgan, I cannot say that my family houses three of the fifty ‘Gutenberg Bibles’ still known to exist.
Once we’d critiqued the home of America’s greatest ever banker we jetlaggedly dawdled over to the cities public library. Although it was busy, my interest was quickly piqued when I saw hand-drafted scores from the likes of Beethoven and Duke Ellington along with handwritten Maya Angelou poems and original printings of Shakespeare’s complete works. Oh! There were the original Winnie the Pooh, Eeyore, etc. Wild that they were real animals.
Just when you think we’d have had enough educating for the day, oh no – this was just the beginning. Leaving behind Charles Dickens’ desk at the library we headed back to Grand Central Terminal for our first touristy tour. The tour nicely fed into our day’s emerging theme of the who’s who of America’s golden age elite. The terminal was built in 1871 by a man called Cornelius (the only name which both automatically provides you with billions of dollars at birth and also requires you to maintain those billions in order for you not to be bullied for eternity). His last name was Vanderbilt. Aside from building terminals, Mr Vanderbilt probably spent his spare time laughing at the poor people beneath him of which our friend J. P. Morgan was one of many. Remembering that Mr Morgan’s net worth was $60 Billion in today’s money, Corny Cornelius Vanderbilt’s net worth is thought to have reached $2.3 Trillion in today’s money. That is 10% of the current richest man’s net worth. Anyhow, it turns out GCT is the place where the red carpet was popularised as part of a marketing ploy as well as one of the first places to use electrical lighting throughout its building as a sign of wealth. There’s also a tennis court, once owned but then lost by the Trump organisation, on the fourth (?) floor of one of the pillars that is open to the public.
Ending the first day was dinner at a lovely Italian place on the upper east side, some reading, etc. and then passing out only to wake up and do it all over again the next day!
P.S
There are indeed photos but I've had trouble uploading them :( I'll do my best to have it sorted by this time tomorrow!
