An anticipated return

There’s something calming about scotch before a flight. After the stress of fighting through crowds to the airport, navigating numerous check-in gates and surviving airport security interrogations, a small sip can be just the thing to bring your heart rate back to its comfort zone. I’m a hopeless traveler without one.

I have one now so all is good. And to be honest, apart from a suspended Tube line, the process of getting to the flight lounge has been unusually relaxed. So much so that a couple of security personnel at the screening zone were making out. I repeat, making out. Clearly they knew something about the working status of the security cameras the rest of us did not.

But anyway, I digress. I’m here waiting for my flight to New York (airports are proving a wonderful place for navel gazing and blog writing). It’s an eagerly awaited trip, although once again I don’t feel at all prepared which is becoming somewhat of a trend now that I don’t have to plan travel years in advance. I left New York eight months ago feeling like I‘d just said goodbye to a holiday romance; all late nights and good times with none of the revealing morning breath. This will be the trip that either confirms the city’s magical quality or reveals it to be an animatronic fraud, much like when I first returned to Disneyland as an adult. (To be fair, it was EuroDisney.)

New York City is a place like no other. That most of us can agree. For me it holds a powerful allure. My first encounter with New York was fresh off a 45-hour trek, heavily jetlagged and severely emotionally drained following a series of raw farewells in Australia. I was ready to collapse. I was ready to retreat. I was ready to hate being anywhere but home.

But how can you hate New York? On that first day I remember being recharged by the frantic neon of Times Square. Finding peace in the sanctuary of Central Park. Feeling like it should be home as I walked the streets of Greenwich Village.

In short, I knew in a few hours what took several months to discover about London – it’s for me.

New York is a city of sights and sounds. But the thing that took me completely by surprise was that it can also be still, when it wants to be. Away from the pace of Midtown, the streets can be calm and inviting. The small lanes tangled in the Village were tree-lined and immaculately kept. I was prepared for Manhattan to be anything but ordered. The revelation left me feeling that in New York, you can have your cake and eat it too.

I’ll be interested to see if the memory holds up. I’m quietly confident it will. And this time I won’t be carting my entire life, dispersed across three flimsy suitcases. I won’t be dragging the weight of starting a new life. I won’t be spreading costs across several Australian credit cards. This time I’m going to take New York out on a fancy date.

Yes, New York and I are going to pick up right where we left it. Hot and heavy.