New York

We've made it to New York.  Landed at John F Kennedy Airport in our Qantas Airbus 330 late in the afternoon on a nice sunny day, about 26 hours after we took off from Wellington.  The Airbus has just two seats between each aisle and the windows, so we had our little space to ourselves, and managed to get enough intermittent sleep to arrive in reasonable shape.  The movies-on-demand also help to pass the hours.  We landed into LA through a low blanket of cloud, but almost all the flight from LA to New York was beneath clear skies giving a good view of the passing landscape.  I'm sure I saw Area 51 go by.  Approaching New York we saw more greenery below - more trees, waterways, and beaches than I expected, and we could see people below enjoying a sunny afternoon beside the sea.

The coastline just south of New York

The airport (Terminal 7 actually) was pretty basic and a bit scruffy.

We rode into Manhattan in a yellow New York taxi driven at speed through dense afternoon traffic, through the tunnel under the East River, and popping up the other side beside our "Affinia Shelburne" hotel, on the corner of Lexington Avenue and 37th Street.  We could see the top of the Empire State Building just a couple of blocks away over the top of the neighbouring buildings.