The Big Braeburn

It's funny. When I was flying from London to New York, I remember sitting on the plane trying to take stock of the few days previous. What with graduand's dinner and graduation, so much had happened so quickly that it was hard to take in. I'm now in Washington DC after spending less than three days in New York, and the feeling's exactly the same.

New York is overwhelming. I don't think I've been anywhere else where you can walk for so long, in a straight line, and the essential nature of the place doesn't change, at least to the untrained eye. I was staying in Brooklyn, which was a little less frantic than Manhattan, but it's still a little hard to take in. Walking around I got the impression that you probably don't gain much by walking everywhere in New York – I did walk everywhere largely, but it's so huge that it takes so long to get to where you're going that it's probably more profitable to take public transport, and that's what I ended up doing (although, due to an unfortunately sized suitcase and some stubborn subway entrance gates this morning, it ended up costing me three times the usual fare to get to the Amtrak station as my bag lay on one side and me on the other).

Unfortunately, a combination of jet lag and being in court all day meant that I saw very little of New York, and essentially nothing that lay beyond my walk to work. The first day this took me over the Brooklyn Bridge, and yesterday over the Manhattan Bridge – and I'd recommend walking over either or both to anyone visiting New York – the views over the Manhattan skyline are stunning.


But aside from that, I walked a bit of Broadway, rode the subway, ate some pizza from Lombardi's (courtesy of Judge Koeltl) and had the 'third-best breakfast in New York' at Blue Sky Bakery. But New York is so huge, and so diverse, that I wonder if it ever makes sense to say you've been to, or that you know, New York at all.


But still, sitting with Judge Koeltl and his staff was interesting and I thank then for being so hospitable. I wish I'd got more experience of English court room proceedings to be able to properly compare, but I sat in on quite a few criminal trials at various stages of progression and got to talk to his clerks and interns about what they do etc. The courtrooms themselves are amazing, grand rooms that fit slightly oddly with the purpose built relatively modern sky scraper that houses them. Coming from the unashamedly low rise UK, Manhattan has the undoubted ability to put a crick in anyone's kneck.


Yesterday evening I met up with Jeremy, a friend from the Bethesda Baking event last year who lives in Queens, and after he took (and kindly treated) me to dinner in a Vietnamese restaurant we walked over the Brooklyn Bridge and he remarked how he no longer stops to look. And I know exactly what he means. I couldn't help but be overawed by the skyline and sun reflecting off of it. But looking back, I'm almost no pictures of the places I've lived – Penzance, Cambridge and Utrecht are all essentially pictureless in my records, while places I've spent a few hours in have hundreds of photos to their name. I guess when you live in a place you've got all the time in the world to see the sights, but too often that means you never do. I didn't live in New York, and I doubt I ever will, but I certainly didn't come close to seeing even a fraction of what the Big Apple has to offer.