We woke up really early – unbelievably so, in fact. The TV told us it was 7.00, and we didn’t believe it. We strolled around the Village for quite a while, mainly looking for somewhere to have breakfast, but weren’t able to find anywhere. Eventually made do at a Burger Ville, with its breakfast special offer – it was OK. Rang up AACON*, and got vaguely encouraging noises, so went back to the hotel room, changed, and caught the bus up-town. In their office, we filled out a couple of forms and then waited for ages for Marsha – everything seemed to have to go through her (including a long call from her daughter.) However, eventually we saw her, and were speedily fixed up with a 1970 Ford to drive to San Francisco on the 29th.
We went to see the Empire State Building, which was OK – took the usual sort of pictures. The main advantage was to get us up out of the heat – it was incredibly hot in the city. Then we caught the bus back to the Village.
Bought some bread, cheese, milk and apples and had a very pleasant lunch sitting in the Square. Then (sorry, too many thens) the walk to Battery Park to catch the Staten Island ferry. It was a long, long walk… too long. I got blisters on my feet, and it seemed to take forever. However, the ferry was cheap, and we managed a couple of snaps of Liberty. On Staten Island, we bought some beer but then couldn’t find anywhere to sit down and drink it, so we had another walk, eventually finding a small square with benches which we shared with some drunks.
We took the ferry, then subway back to the hotel, arriving totally shattered. I tried to ring Dennis, but he wasn’t in, so said I’d call back around ten. Then we lay down on the bed and that was about it for Tuesday.
*AACON was the name of a “driveaway” car delivery company – no idea what the letters stood for – that we were signing up with. And Dennis is one of the relatively small number of contacts we had when we set off; I had worked one summer at a US summer camp, and met him there, as a fellow counselor, and we had stayed in touch since.
