Welcome to the concrete jungle, and the definitive dispatch

Scene opens in Grand Central. Roger is looking impressed with himself. Dora is looking confused. 

Roger: Who's that in the back of our photo? 
Dora: Oh yeah, some photo bombers. That's funny, that one looks like Tom Loughran...and weird, that one like Becky...
Stranger who took the photo: They look like your friends?
Dora: Yeah, but they're not here.
Roger: ...
Stranger who turns out to be Nora: ...

SURPRISE
Dora: *minor meltdown*

[Dora here] Once I'd recovered from the impressively well-kept and well-planned surprise (3 hours sleep on a United Airlines flight makes you very confused and emotional) we all headed on the subway to our apartment, which was charmingly New York (small, noisy and nestled between Chinatown and the Italian quarter). Lunch was excellent gluten-free and glutenous pizza at Rubirosa, recommended by my Meridian friend Polly. A nap was then necessary ahead of our big evening activity: a trip up to the Top of the Rock (Rockefeller Centre) for that quintessential New York skyline view.

NY Rainbow Bagel

We regrouped for celebratory engagement bubbly and Pringles at the apartment with the full team: Greg, Becky, Simon, Nora, Tom Loughran. The Chinese restaurants of NYC were less fulfilling for our dinner plans (one we abandoned when it turned out that despite being a veggie restaurant everything on the menu had meat substitute in it). 



The next morning we made up for the night, by embracing American pancakes in various forms accompanied by bottomless coffee at diner. Tom Loughran also helped a grateful older lady download an app on her phone: ever the polite English gentleman. We wandered through a wintry sunny Central Park, briefly considered the MET ($25 entry), and continued down to Macy's for Christmas displays (very stressful). 






MOMA had a free entry evening on, so we enjoyed an hour in the Is Fashion Modern? exhibition before reparing to the cafe-bar for a revitalising beer/wine and chat about the hoodie, the white tshirt, the shift dress, and other such matters of fashion importance. The evening was spent eating huge burgers and cocktails and flaming milkshakes until we realised we were too old for the dark noisy bar in which this was happening and went home at 10.30pm.



We were saving our energy for the big boat trip to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. We carefully chose a competent tour guide to sidle around after, avoiding the one with really relevant lines such as "Why are there only 239 beans in an Irish stew?" (turns out to be a joke, we'll let you work it out).  After a photoshoot from the pedestal and a fast food cafe lunch we finished the day on Ellis Island, learning about the immigration process. The fascinating personal stories kept us there til closing and the last ferry. 

Team at Time Square

The evening kicked off with a quiet drink at a 'pub' and moved on to the infamous Tortilla Flats Mexican restaurant and bar, where pitchers of frozen Margherita and super spicy tortilla-wrapped meat helped us recreate a Sidney boyz night that went down in history last time they were all here. This time we just bopped in our seats to the excellent dance music, and Greg helped out a drunk patron to earn our table (ironically) free shots! We were therefore very enthusiastic when Tom led us to the apartment block used in Friends for the outside shots. Cue theme tune singing and lots of clapping.

Nursing sugar hangovers, we navigated Penn St Station at length to (a) meet, (b) buy tickets and (c) board a train to see an NFL game! It was Nora's birthday and what better way to celebrate than in America's most expensive (new) MetLife Stadium cheering on the NY Jets. For NFL, we were assured by Greg, it was an actually REALLY exciting match. And it was! Close, high scores and even a stroppy flag-throwing incident. We embraced the experience, munching chicken, chips and Pepsi and debating who had the harder training regime: the players or the cheerleaders. 

Time for Brisket!

Returning to New York proper, we dived into a nice hotel bar before dinner, where we ordered brisket by the pound in true (Southern) American-style. 

Monday saw us touring the World Trade Centre memorial museum, an impactful exhibition that chronicles every detail of the events of 9/11. Hunger eventually tore us away, and after stopping off at Wall St. we picked up some tickets for an evening show and then went shopping, starting off in the impressive Oculus retail mall (giant whale bones architecture). Come evening, we had a brew at Brew Bar and then ascended to Broadway for the Rockettes Christmas Spectacular, a cheesy, well-timed gluttony of christmassy tunes, precise dancing and wooden child acting. It was stereotypically American as the burger and sundae desserts that followed.


A Tuesday brunch in Chelsea market was followed by a tour of the High Line, a converted docklands railway that now hosts flora and chillaxing urbanites. We wandered up it all the was to a Brooklyn Diner, then made like bananas and split - Tom to pick up his things, Simon and Nora to the airport, Becky and Dora to tea at the Ritz Carlton (an engagement gift from Becky) and Greg and Roger to a hastily-arranged escape room. The lattermost event was even more intense than expected, as we [Roger writing now] were thrown into a group challenge with some apparently-ditsy American teenagers, one of whom turned out to have a Rain Man-style ability to solve clues that left us clueless. 

Emerging with our dignity barely intact, we rendezvoused with Becky and Dora at JFK and completed our Big Adventure with an overnight hop over the Atlantic. Dora's parents greeted us, as did sleep soon thereafter. 

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Thank you all for following us on what has been an adventurous two years. The adventures will continue, as we discover Riga (where Roger is working), rediscover London (where Dora is working), and dabble in Europe as much as we can afford. However, our dispatches will cease for the time being. 

Please contact us if you'd like a hard copy of Doger's Dispatches for posterity. We'll be getting some printed for close family. 

We hope you've enjoyed reading these as much as we've enjoyed writing them. Our avid readership has encouraged us to be much more exciting and spontaneous than we would be otherwise, and your thoughtful feedback has comforted us even from the other side of the world. 

We hope to see you all soon,

Dora and Roger ('Doger')