Requiem for a tall building

Day 1 of Anne's visit.

First breakfast (the absence of punctuation is important I should add) of toasted cinnamon muffins and tea before Anne expresses a desire to revisit the Empire State Building which we had previously only "done" at night. Queuetastic I say and off we trott.

Devastated at the lack of adequate queuing facilities, not only did we wait less than an hour but they had the nerve to offer us the stairs from the 80th to 86th floors in order to save queuing. I almost demanded our money back there and then, but my mouth was somewhat engaged in chocolate eclair land and so on we climbed to the summit for my last chance to visit the tallest building in NYC (hence the title of the Blog, but wait, it gets even more aposite shortly).

Manhattan duely surveyed from on high, we continue to walk up fifth avenue en route to the luggage shop - as Anne had expressed a desire to a) shop and b) some new luggage. Luggage suitably investigated, it seems time for a small and friendly coffee and we find a rather nice new Italian cafe serving suitable comestibles.

Next stop destined to be Tiffany's to see if we can get Anne's pendant chain lengthened, however at this point we are assaulted by Barnes and Noble so we are forced to go book shopping :-) I was positively restrained and bought a thriller for the filght back (The Amber Room) plus a business book (The six fundamentals of success) ... and that was all. Anne managed to spend something close to $123 so I felt distinctly under shopped once we finally escaped.

Onwards up fifth avenue and next stop Saks for a brief explore. Anne seems underwhelmed by my attraction to the local goats (you had to be there really) and so it's not long before we arrive at Tiffany's and head in search of customer service. I was kind of expecting a small desk somewhere tucked away at the back of the shop floor ... ah ... oh no ... how wrong could I be.

Tiffany customer service has an entire floor to itself. A rather funky looking receptionist manned the computerised desk and after taking some brief details, ushered us to a sofa (one of many) to await service. After a moment we were summonsed to a booth to explain our problem to a rather friendly and funky assistant who proceeded to take digital pictures of the pendant for verification and take down the details. It was all distinctly ... well ... exclusive feeling.

By this time we had of course not managed to fit in all the planned events for the day and we needed to hop in a taxi back to the apartment to get ready for the evening ahead. Anne does some splendid taxi hailing and after a quick tea and change, we're soon back in a taxi and heading to the restaurant for the evening meal.

And when I say "the" restaurant, I should perhaps capitalise to "The" restaurant as I'd got us a table at Le Bernardin which had just been voted NYC's best restaurant (for quality of food - trust the Americans to have more than one category) in the Zagat survey. It was quiet when we arrived (at about 5.25) but the atmosphere soon improved as we began our eating experience. If memory serves I had scallops followed by shrimp followed by monkfish and finally passion fruit (did I mention it was a seafood restaurant) and Anne had a salad followed by salt cod, then black bass and then er ... a pudding I forget. There was of course an obligatory amuse bouche to start with and we both agreed our bouches were suitably amused ... this really was a fab meal and more than reasonably priced - so given that upon our return to blighty I discovered that it is only one of 2 restaurants in NY to receive 3 (yes, count them all) Michelin stars this year, all in all it was a fab experience.

But wait .. there's more.

Dinner was just a prelude to the main event of the day ... a concert at the Carnegie Hall. A brief walk from the restaurant to 57th and 7th took us to box 45 on the lower tier to see the St Lukes Orchestra performing two of my (and one of Anne's) favourite composers in action - Arvo Part (that's me) and Mozart. Not just any Mozart ... but his requiem (now you're really dead impressed with the blog title aren't you? Go on, don't be shy, add a comment and say "Hi" ... I don't bite).

Wow.

It really was fab. The control of the choir was stunning and sent shivers down my spine at times - these were people who really knew how to sing!

Taxi then bed.