We arrived Monday early evening at JFK, courtesy of American Airlines, whose plane and service were much better than when I last flew with Eastern and Delta, although I still think they may be in Chapter 11. The taxi driver did well and within about 20mins we were at our hotel on Lexington and 37th and good central location and in easy walking distance of 42nd St, Broadway and the Avenues with all their shopping.

 

My suitcase hadn’t arrived as it was held up in Customs who wanted to know how many shoes and suits etc – “Men’s Clothing” on the AWB was not good enough. Anyway I got through to them on Tuesday and between Sharon (thanks Sharon) at our office and myself it arrived at 1030 on Thursday. In the meantime we had done a recce of Bloomingdales, between Lexington and 3rd Ave on 58th St and they have a lot of concessions, so in a single shop you can buy most labels, so I wasn’t too concerned – except the pricing was of course rather more than I would pay in the UK.

 

On July 4th there was no parade, just fireworks on the Hudson, but we stopped at the Hard Rock on Broadway for lunch and Suzanne went into a Sephora store and got talked into having her make up done – “I’ll just be a few minutes” she said – Yea – right I thought – at least half an hour. So I wandered up Broadway checking out the cameras and computers until I found myself in the Hugo Boss store on Columbus Circle – Opps, big mistake.

 

By the time Suzanne arrived I had a reasonable selection which my Personal Shopper, the Store Manager, was laying aside for me, which Suzanne then started adding to !!  Then I spent an hour or so doing the girlie trying on thing – and got some great outfits.

 

At the end of our stay when we checked out of the hotel to go down to the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal to board the Queen Mary 2 the doorman offered us a dodgy deal with one of his mates – which we actually accepted. So instead of a bright yellow NYC taxi we took a monster black Cadillac Escalade with a 6.2 litre V8 engine and arrived in style and all for USD$50 – good value.