New York Trip, Part 2 - Thursday to Saturday

Thursday

This morning is dominated by the much-looked-forward-to helicopter ride over Manhattan - 20 minutes for $450, definitely a once-in-a-lifetime event. Actually it wasn't a bad experience at all, though it was a little hazy. Emma got to sit in the front seat with the pilot while we were in the back. We flew out from the heliport on the lower east side and up the East River as far as Yankee Stadium and then down the Hudson river and back round via the Statue of Liberty. Only my second time in a helicopter (the first was in 1996 when I took a flight from JFK to the Chase Manhattan office on Park Avenue during the Hanson demerger - what a high-flying business executive I was)

Emma in the front seat

The Empire State building - now the highest in New York again

Central Park from the North

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After the flight we walked round to the Financial District, taking in the Stock Exchange, Trinity Church, etc.

Emma and Linda outside the New York Stock Exchange

Wall Street looking towards Trinity Church, where traders go to pray when things get particularly bad

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The afternoon was going to have been Emma's run round Central Park, but there was a general tiredness around and we had a quiet time instead. We do make it to the watch shop near Tiffany's and Emma chooses a present from my mum for her birthday after an hour's deliberation.

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Dinner was at Rosy O'Grady's Irish pub near the hotel (one of my favourites in New York and the scene of quite a few meals in the past) and it was here that we gave Emma her main present (no, the trip to New York wasn't it) - a sum of money to cover her trips abroad this summer and set her up a bit form when she moves to London and starts work in the autumn.

Friday

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Our last full day and Emma and Linda decide to hit Bloomingdales while I go to Strands secondhand bookshop, picking up a couple more trading-related books on the way. I have nearly finished Patterson's The Quants, my main holiday reading and I am looking forward to getting back and examining how the proposed trading systems have coped during their period of "blind testing" while we've been away

Still one of the oddest buildings in New York, the Flat Iron Building on Broadway

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Our aim tonight was to have one last nice meal and see another show. Unfortunately, Friday is the main Theatre night and we were not able to get tickets to anything we fancied, though we could have seen Chicago again had we wanted. So we had dinner at a pizza and pasta place I had passed ealier in the day and then went down through Times Square to a multiplex cinema where our chosen movie was Hot tub time machine, which was actually quite funny (of course Linda and I remember the 1980s well!)

Saturday

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We have a leisurely morning, breakfasting at the same chain we have eaten at all week (though at different branches), then a walk down to the Rockefeller Plaza so Emma and Linda can have one last look round J Crew and I can have a good look at a book on Statistical Arbitrage that I have been eyeing up all week in Barnes and Noble - too expensive, I will look for it secondhand when back in the UK

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Then to Ben and Jerry's and a deli for some more food - our main meal before the red eye flight.

Overall it has been a pretty good week and one we hope Emma will look back on fondly in the years to come. It is clear that her being with us all the time does provoke some tension and no doubt she would rather be with her friends - but that is how it should be! I can't help feeling melancholic that Emma is now a full-fledged adult, not our little girl any more. And while we can only hope things work out ok for her over the next few years as she starts work, it is said that our main time with her is now passed.