When I first arrived in Dublin in February I was looking at a world map and discovered that New York was only a hop, skip and jump from Ireland. Which is why, last week, I took off to visit the Big Apple for five days. I thought I would also love to see US friends, mother and daughter, Nancy and Katie Richards and as they only live about 5,000 kms away in Oregon I thought I would invite them to join me – which they did.

We met in the New York apartment they had booked for us and then we proceeded to fit as much as we could into our days together. Central Park, Liberty and Ellis Islands, walking across Brooklyn Bridge, Madame Butterfly (New York Opera House), a contemporary percussion concert (Julliard School of Music), Chicago on Broadway, the top of the Empire State Building, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Natural History Museum filled in three days very well. However, if asked, Katie may offer the opinion that her Mom and Australian host Mum (Katie lived with us for a year when she was 17) were slightly driven to get things done and forfeited basic things like food and road safety in their quest to discover New York (this was a first trip for Nancy as well). Earlier I told Katie about the movie “An Affair to Remember” and the important role played by a New York yellow taxi and she reckons by following Nancy and I every time we dashed across the street in between the traffic, she nearly got run over by a cab. By the way we didn’t entirely forgo food as we enjoyed stacks of pancakes for breakfast, hotdogs from a Central Park hotdog stand and Brooklyn Pizza.