The long and winding road through Canada and the States, September-October, 2019.

So where do you start a 25-day grand tour of Canada and the States?   From Rome, where else?

The idea to go back to Canada came about in March, 2019 as I had finally turned 60.   I thought that a multiple number of 3-0s would be rather cool: 30 years that I lived in Canada, 30 years that I hadn’t been back to my former hometown (Winnipeg) and 30 years (as of 9/11/2019) that I've been living in Italy.  We thought that it’d be a nice way to also celebrate Dani’s retirement last summer after 45 years of dedicated service at the U.S. Embassy in Rome by going to the States after our trip to Canada to see her former bosses and colleagues, as well as some dear friends I had in both Savannah and New York.

As far as Winnipeg is concerned, I must admit that what pushed me, out of curiosity too, to visit my old hometown came about thanks to Internet: I, like so many people out there, am on the mailing list of a kazillion sites (I lost track of all of them).   One of them is Classmates.com (or something of that same name).  I was curious to see if any of my old friends-schoolmates were still alive, so I typed in one name.  Sure enough,  Ted’s email was there so I whipped off a message to him.  Shortly after I got a message and threw the idea around to him about our visit to Winnipeg, which he naturally and enthusiastically accepted.

The nice thing is that Ted led me to a few other friends that I had there, such as Cal and George and also a former Winnipegger like me, Todd, who had moved to the wonderful city Vancouver (some say it's THE most livable city in the world).

And so off we went on September, 15^th from Rome’s Fiumicino airport with a direct KLM flight to Vancouver but via Amsterdam.  Or at least we thought that it was going to go that way: as we arrived at the KLM desk we heard those horrendous words that ALL travelers dread, “You’re 10.30 am flight has been cancelled”!  Why, we didn’t know, and we were already tired just at the thought of having to turn around to go back home and to wait for another available flight to Canada.  Someone instead from above was watching over us as the kind KLM employee told us (we had received via Internet a message telling us the night before that our flight had been cancelled, but we didn’t see it) that we were instead put on a direct 11.30 am Air Canada flight Rome-Toronto and then to Vancouver.  Hallelujah, our plans and day wouldn’t have been totally ruined!

After an eight-hour flight we landed in Toronto and with one of THE smoothest landings ever aboard a rather massive 777 jet with slightly more than 300 passengers (I had last been to TO in 1994).   Dani though nearly fainted when she found out that the remaining part of our voyage, that is to Vancouver, would only be another five hours!  I had to point out to her that we were after all traveling across the 2^nd largest country in the world (after Russia).

Vancouver

We landed on time in Vancouver and took a limo-taxi to our nice and very quiet Chinese run B+B in Port Grey (CC’s Home, if I’m not mistaken).   While not being that close to the center of Vancouver it was nevertheless located in a very nice area of the city, right next to UBC, aka the University of British Columbia (where in 1983 I had also been accepted to do my MA in Hispanic Studies.  I instead chose Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario’s, the very same university of a fellow by the name of Elon Musk who went there directly from his native South Africa in 1989 at the age of 17).

I had two friends now living in Vancouver, Todd and his wife Wendy and Diego and his wife Giusy.   Diego was now retired and had been a Spanish and Italian professor at Queen’s. We met back in 1983 when I studied there for two years.   He hadn’t been per se one of my profs but he had given me a few 1^st and 2^nd year Italian courses to teach to his undergrad students.   We also had a good time playing tennis together in between me writing the chapters of my thesis (Diego had also been a darling during my thesis defence that dreadful day in July, 1985). 

Us with friend Todd on the splendid tour of Vancouver.

Our neighborhood where our B&B was located.  Interesting the way they load bikes on the city buses!

Scenes from Stanley Park and the Canada geese.

Todd had been exceptionally nice when he took us around with his car for the entire day, taking in the intriguing sites and sounds of Vancouver, including for me a special treat: the Warehouse Studio which is owned by Kingston-born Bryan Adams (and where AC/DC was recently seen working on yet another new album!).   He also took us to a stark and sad reality of Vancouver, Hastings St., aka a Canadian “Skid Row” where on both sides of the sidewalks drug addicts would be shooting into their veins every drug under the sun.   It was pretty horrendous to see and Todd added that former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani had seen the area years ago and was simply aghast as he noted that not even his own city had something similar.

The city is beautiful, even though it's at times rather rainy.  We hooked up with Bob and Loretta who were also up in Vancouver on vacation (Loretta’s is Dani's former colleague.  We’d be seeing them just a few weeks later near Washington, DC.).   We spent about five days in Vancouver and we also managed to see Diego and Giusy who live in nearby North Burnaby.  Again, a nice treat to be able to go down memory lane with Diego and to catch some of the sites in his neck of the woods.

Us with Diego and Giusy at their nice home.

Winnipeg

Time to finally, and after that 30-year absence, leave from Vancouver’s international airport for Manitoba’s capital (for those Italians who know nothing about Canada and/or Manitoba, the Canadian province is “only” three times bigger than Italy and has only 2 million people, plus a record 100,000 lakes, a fisherman’s paradise!).   I think that was another three-hour flight.   We got there and were picked up by George.  It was VERY nice to have been greeted by a familiar face and someone with whom I used to share as a teenager a lot of good rock and roll music.  Winnipeg too has a nice international airport which in 30 years has undergone some rather nice changes (again, I last saw that airport when I flew in/out from Montréal to say ciao to my folks as I would be soon moving to Rome to go work at the U.S. Embassy).
My 4th old home and the last one I lived in before moving to Montréal and then to Rome.  The owner was inside and was nice enough to spend a few minutes in the back lane chatting with me about my old abode.  He was so nice that he had even invited me in to take a look around but I politely declined as perhaps the old memories of me with my folks and our two dogs would have been a wee bit too much to handle.

Above my old elementary school and here below my old high school, Kelvin.  The house instead? Old Neil Young's home not too far away from one of my homes in Winnipeg.   Bob Dylan many years ago flew from the States to Winnipeg and directly to Neil's old home.  The new owner opened the door and saw Mr. Zimmerman standing right in front of him!  He asked if he could see Neil's old bedroom where he'd compose his great songs.

Another one of my former homes (below).

My former junior high school which apparently Neil also attended.

A real fighter, dear old friend Ted on the left and some of the fauna just outside of our B+B in Winnipeg.  

George was nice as he dropped us off at our nice B+B, the Aspen Woodlands Bed and Breakfast at 32 Chalfont Road (bedandbreakfast.mb.ca).  It’s located right in front of a forest and also a hop, skip and a jump from the city’s main park, Assiniboine, where I used to go with my friends to horse around on our bikes.  It’s nice zoo is, or rather was, home to the world-famous “Winnie The Pooh” (a Canadian soldier had adopted a cub bear and had named it Winnie in honor of Winnipeg).   It was pretty cool that as we’d head out of the door of our B+B right in front of us you could see deer, rabbits, cute squirrels (lots of them!) and wild turkeys scurrying about. 


Everything you always wanted to know about old Winnie The Pooh at Assiniboine Park's main pavilion!

And the old zoo, which I first saw when I must have been 5 years old.

Polar bears swimming about and right over our heads!

The symbol of Manitoba, the bison.

George waited for us and then dropped us off at Ted’s place (very nice too that George and his wife Jolanta invited us for drinks one evening and right next to my last home in Winnipeg, at 630 Campbell St.).   That was quite the emotional meeting for me as Ted had been the goalkeeper of our great soccer team (which had been coached by my father).  A pleasure to have met his wife Valerie as well as their two dogs and cat. 

Scenes of around Winnipeg, including the old concert hall where I saw in 1977 (circa) Ravi Shankar, The Hollies and Canada's Gordon Lightfoot.

The old PanAm pool when I nearly drowned while taking swimming lessons as a young kid! 

The old soccer fiend at Grant Park where we played more than one memorable match many decades ago.

My old university, Manitoba, and its great new stadium.  I spent 6 years at U of M.

The cricket field at Assiniboine Park and other scenes of the U of M.

Somewhere I've got a pic of me with my dad right in front of this train at Assiniboine Park.  I must have been 7 years old.

So how was it to go back to Winnipeg after so many years (my folks had moved there in the 1950s from their beloved Udine.  I was actually born there in March, 1959)?  Wonderful, also because I had met Dani in 1990 at the U.S. Embassy and I had talked to her many, many times about growing up in Winnipeg so this had been a way for her to finally see what I had described to her in all these years.  Another magnificent trip down memory lane was when I got to see my old schools, including my elementary school, St. Ignatius of Loyola, where I had spent the first eight years of my academic life with the Jesuit priests and nuns, my former junior high, Earl Grey and my old high school, Kelvin (where old Neil Young and I believe Marshall McLuhan also studied.  I believe that Neil had also attended Earl Grey), my four old humble abodes, my old university, the U. of Manitoba and also my old stompin’ grounds, including more than one watering hole!

We also rented a car, which was about as large as the American aircraft carrier, the USS Enterprise (it had once been THE largest in the world).  So off we went to both Falcon Lake and Kenora, just across the border in nearby Ontario, two vacation spots which I used to frequent during the summer with my folks (another nice thing trip down memory lane as 50 years ago I was in Kenora as we watched both Neil and Buzz stepping on the moon).

It was great to see Falcon Lake (Neil also used to go there on vacation) where we used to play tennis and mini golf with the folks and we’d also go kayaking on the wonderful lake there, thanks also to my folks’ dear friends who’d lend us their wonderful chalet there (and where one night they had also placed a bear cage right in front of our place.  The thing managed to catch a real, live black bear too!).  

Kenora was about 200 kms from Winnipeg so we also went there and had lunch on the waterfront. Again, more great memories as my parents used to rent for a week or two a chalet plus a small boat that we'd use to go fishing on the lake.  I still remember the fresh smell of the lumber logs that would be transported on the water, the hydroplanes that would continuously land and take off from the water and also the rather large Native, or First Nations,  population that was once there. 

Indeed a most patriotic washroom in Kenora!

The only negative thing about being back in Canada was driving there and the speed limits on the highway and city streets: it drove me nuts as you could go at 100 km/hr and then down to 90 and then down to 80 and then all the way down to 40 as there was construction going on (and with an appropriate sign which said that the fines would be doubled in a construction area) then up again to 60, to 80 and again to 100 km/hr only to go back down to 90 km/hr (that’s the speed limit in Ontario).  It was REALLY nice instead to be back in Rome as most speed limits are rarely respected and so you can drive on our main avenues even at 100 km/hr and without ever being fined for speeding.  I guess it's the pros and cons of living in the “Old Europe” (as Donald Rumsfeld once called us)!  We also went by the sign on the highway which indicates that you're in the dead center of Canada.

Scenes below of the flower garden at Assiniboine Park and the Museum of Human Rights.

The statue in honor of Winnie The Pooh.

Winnipeg’s wonderful Human Rights Museum, a museum which came about thanks to the family of a friend I had in Winnipeg, the Aspers (a former girlfriend of mine was and still is a dear friend of Gail Asper, the daughter of Izzy Asper, a wealthy businessman who left his mark on the city).  The architecture is splendid, ditto for its contents which traces the history of human rights, beginning with the treatment of the Indigenous people to the arrival of immigrants as well as to the many tragic genocides we've witnessed throughout the years.  A visit to the museum is certainly a must.

 

One stark reality of Winnipeg though is its First Nations people.  I took Dani to the north end of Winnipeg and showed her the situation of a very proud nation, a nation that in North, Central and South America was decimated thanks also to Christopher Columbus’s “disciples” more than 500 years ago (and as the Indigenous people have said of that tragic discovery of the New World in 1492, “So what did the white man discover when we’ve been here for centuries”?).  Some say that up to 60 million Indigenous people lost their lives as a result of the colonial period.  

As a young child my mother used to drag me downtown to go shopping.  Quite often some the Native men would ask us “10 cents for a coffee”, when in reality they wanted the money to buy booze.   As a teenager I also worked part-time in the Liquor Commission stores in the heart of the city (they paid VERY well!) and quite often the men would come in and buy bottles of whisky.  If they came back to the counter and were drunk we’d have to refuse them the sale.  They’d usually just slam the bottle on the counter and would head out of the store without  complaining.  If they got violent we’d have to call the police.   An even sadder scenario during the brutal winter months (with lows as cold as -50° Celcius!) was when some would fall asleep drunk behind pubs.  The day after they’d either be found dead or their limbs would have to be amputated as they were frozen solid. 

As we sadly had to leave Winnipeg for our flight (via Chicago’s famous O’Hare airport) to Savannah, Georgia, the owner of our B+B told me, “You are after all leaving home”!,   For some strange reason I didn’t view it that way but in fact yes, I would be leaving home because of the 30 years that I lived in Canada I spent my first 25 years in Winnipeg and it had been a great, big chunk of my life, not only because I got a great education there, not only because I also discovered my very first loves there but perhaps because of something just as important: the discovery of rock’n’roll music, starting with the Fab Four on the Ed Sullivan Show that nite in February, 1964 (I STILL remember that show and the way I told my folks and my godmother—we were at her place that evening—that it had been me, almost 5 years old, that ran into the kitchen to tell everyone, “The Beatles are on the Ed Sullivan Show”!.  A REAL treat in New York—see below—that I’d get to touch the doors and to see that old Ed Sullivan Theatre 55 years after I saw John, Paul, George and Ringo on Ed’s show that night.  And the very first LP that my mom bought me? “Yellow Submarine”), my very first big, live show, Kiss at the old Winnipeg Arena (and with the original band too in April, 1976), AC/DC in August, 1978, and with the late, great Bon Scott (the first of the nine times that I would see the boys in concert), The Who (with drummer Keith Moon), Canada’s very own B.T.O. (twice), E.L.O. (also twice) and other great bands.

Winnipeg was also the city where I saw for the very first time on tv one late evening my 2^nd all-time favorite comedy group (right after the Marx Brothers), the Monty Python gang (I discovered them in 1972ish).   Yes, many, many important memories and facets of my life in Winnipeg.

With some old and dear friends the night before we left Winnipeg.

Savannah

The flight was smooth and on time via Chicago to Savannah (I don’t know if Chicago's airport is still today the world’s busiest, or is it London’s Heathrow?).  There to greet us was the smiling face of another dear friend of mine, Susan (aka "The Queen of AC/DC"!).  I had the great pleasure of meeting her for the first time in Udine in May, 2010 just in time for AC/DC’s only Italian concert that year, perhaps one of their greatest live performances ever and with also the late, great Malcolm Young on stage, the brother of Angus and the founder of that great band. 

Downtown Savannah.

I had presented Susan and her great book “Let There Be Rock” at a local bookstore and to a full house too the night before the band's concert at the local stadium in Udine and also on the night of drummer Phil Rudd's birthday (a whopping 47,000 people showed up for a town that only has 100,000 souls!).  Both the presentation and the concert itself were enormously successful.

Hamming it up with Susan (left) on the dock at the Atlantic Ocean.  Cool t.shirt, eh? 

I had a taste of the famous southern hospitality of America’s Deep South when twenty years ago during the Women’s World Cup (I had been Italy’s interpreter at that magnificent event) I had visited a dear friend in Jacksonville, Florida.  Savannah itself is very quaint and rather easy to visit as its layout is pretty straightforward and linear. 

The famous Spanish Moss which hangs from many trees. At night it gives the town a rather "eerie" air to it!

 

 

Our hotel was convenient too as we weren’t terribly far from the city’s hot spots, including the square where a bench once sat, and a rather famous one too: it had been used by Tom Hanks when he’d tell strangers of his incredible past in the movie “Forrest Gump”.  We got to spend a lot of time with Susan by going down AC/DC memory lane (aka “The Boys”) and catching up on old news (a pleasure to have also met her son Jamey who would be off to New York with a new job), including some great stories on ghosts which seem to overwhelm Savannah (you can see during the evenings the kids in the local squares taking in the ghost tours). 

A rather intelligent way of eliminating your dog's poo!

A nice treat too as Susan took us to the beach on the Atlantic Ocean followed by a nice dinner on the beachfront (kinda funny too that the waitress asked me for ID when we ordered beers!).  It was pretty cool to also touch the waters of the Atlantic as a week before we had done the same thing at Vancouver’s Stanley Park by dipping our hands into the cool waters of the Pacific Ocean.

We spent a few days in Savannah and took in some of the incredible heat and humidity.   And that old “Southern Comfort”?  It had a nice sound to it the locals who would greet us with, “And how y’all doin’”? and “Hi darlin’”!    A pity to have also left Savannah and Susan as it had been well worth the stopover there and we had a great time too.

The square where that famous bench was located, the one where Tom Hanks spoke to strangers about his life in the movie "Forrest Gump".

Another cool t-shirt in honor of Susan and our beloved band, AC/DC!

Washington, DC

And yet another United Airlines flight from Savannah’s nice little airport (ever since 9/11 airport security has become a small pain in the you-know-what as you have to practically strip naked once you go through the X-ray inspections---belts, shoes, etc.) to the Dulles airport in the nation’s capital.
  

Indeed a very clean metro in DC!

The State Department. 

Quite impressive Abraham Lincoln's memorial and the huge statue of Lincoln himself.  Right in front of his statue are Martin Luther King's famous words, "I Have A Dream", that are engraved on the cement stairs during his epic August 28th, 1963 speech in front of 200-300,000 people.  Very impressive also the Washington Monument which you can see off in the distance. 

The husband of Dani’s former colleague (Loretta) at the Embassy in Rome, Bob aka “Mr. Bob” was very nice to have waited for us at the airport.   They live on the outskirts of the capital in a very beautiful home (and what many Italians would call a “villa”).  Their hospitality was indeed splendid.

The Vietnam War Memorial.

The day after our arrival we went on a whirlwind tour of the center of DC together with Loretta and one of her friends.  And Washington?  A very, very nice city which I think is quite often ignored by many Italian tourists who probably think it’s too “bureaucratic” in nature and prefer to rather visit New York, Miami, San Francisco and naturally the Grand Canyon (and also Yosemite Park).  Au contraire!  For its great history, beautiful parks and interesting architecture, not to mention the amazing (and free) museums that can be found here and there I’d choose Washington as one of my first stop in the States. 

Their new Afro-American museum and National Art Gallery are both spectacular, especially the former which has two very interesting sections on the history of Afro-American music and sports and the amazing contribution that Afro-Americans have given to both worlds, such as Robert Johnson, Billie Holiday, Chuck Berry, Tina Turner (just to name a few) and “The Greatest” of them all, Muhammad Ali, as well as Air Jordan himself, Michael, the greatest player in the history of the NBA. 

Briana Scurry, America's goalkeeper, during the glory days of the 1999 Women's World Cup final in the States at the Rose Bowl against China

Chuck Berry's old car. 

Another great museum is the Natural History museum not to mention the Ford Theater where  president Abraham Lincoln was assassinated (another free museum too).

One would imagine to NOT carry a gun while watching a play at a theater! 

Nice to see also the Canadian Embassy which is located on Pennsylvania Avenue (I believe that it had been designed by an architect friend of Canada’s former Prime Minister, Pierre Elliott Trudeau), ditto for the historic hqs of the FBI, the World Bank and also the International Monetary Fund (whose former head, Christine Lagarde, is now the new head of the European Central Bank). 

Roy Lichtenstein (below)

Rather amazing the superb collection of paintings (Degas, Manet, Monet, Rembrandt, Da Vinci, Verrocchio--Leonardo's old master-- etc.) at the National Art gallery!

Da Vinci.

Auguste Rodin.

The area of Georgetown University is a very nice part of the capital with some beautiful homes and also with the odd former U.S. Ambassador to Italy who  lives there.  We walked there from the Supreme Court in sweltering heat, about a 10 km+ march.  We walked to the area of the Jesuit-run university (Bill Clinton studied there and I believe that former Secretary of State and U.N. Ambassador Madeleine Albright still teaches international relations there) as we went for drinks at the rather interesting home of another of Dani’s former bosses, Steve.  Nice to also see off in the distance the famous Watergate Hotel (as a kid I followed most of the demise of Richard Nixon live on American tv) and the Kennedy Center.  As we drove home from Steve’s place Loretta managed to quickly show us from the car the infamous stairs in the movie “The Exorcist” (a movie that still today Dani refuses to watch)! 

Trump's hotel in  DC.

   

And the White House? A pity that it was under wraps as they were raising the perimeter fence as someone had apparently jumped over it awhile ago. 
 

 

We also drove not terribly far away from the CIA hqs and managed to see the Pentagon which had been hit during the 9/11 terrorist attacks by what conspiracy theorists presume was a missile, and not a plane.   I think the Pentagon is still today the world’s largest building.

Another free and great museum!

 

Judy Garland's old shoes. 

Annapolis
Another side trip, and again in sweltering heat and humidity (to paraphrase the Monty Python boys, it was “Hot enough to boil a monkey’s bum”!) as Mr. Bob drove us to Annapolis, the hqs of the glorious American Naval Academy.  The tour of the base was rather short-lived though as once we got there for some strange reason there had been a bomb threat (!!!).  We did though have a nice lunch there and managed to cool off in a nice air-conditioned restaurant. 

The Arlington cemetery with the tombs of JFK, his wife Jacqueline, their kids and both Bobby and Ted nearby.  The cemetery also hosts the massive statue of the Marines at Iwo Jima, an image that was made famous in a photograph by war correspondent Joe Rosenthal (I believe that battle was also made famous in a movie by Clint Eastwood).

The changing of the guard ceremony at the Tomb Of The Unknown Soldier. 

The Pentagon.

And the Iwo Jima memorial.

Our sojourn in the capital was also coming to an end, but not before we got to see the amazing Library of Congress, the hall of Capitol Hill where the President holds his yearly “State Of The Union” address and also the façade of the famous Supreme Court which is another magnificent building (and right in front of the building there was a woman who was still protesting the appointment of Judge Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court).  That building will always remind me of a great movie starring Christopher Plummer on Ali being judged by the eight Supreme Court judges (the ninth, which was played by Danny Glover, abstained) as he had refused to enlist to go fight in Vietnam (while in DC we also saw the monument that is dedicated to the 55,000 dead American soldiers during that tragic war, a war that also claimed the lives of approximately 3 million Vietnamese).

After Vancouver, Winnipeg and Savannah we another terrific, or tremendous (to paraphrase someone who sits at the White House) time in the nation’s capital, and thanks to Loretta and Mr. Bob!

The time had now come to sadly say arrivederci to our two gracious hosts as we boarded a tour bus for the four-hour drive to the Big Apple  It turned out to be cheaper than taking a flight or a train as two tickets cost us only 50 dollars compared to close to 125 (or more) for an Amtrak ride.

New York

Take-off from the outskirts of Washington was at 9 am.  The trip was rather smooth and not terribly painful, with the exception of some line-ups along the highway.   We finally hit New York at 2ish.   We had two large bags plus our two carry-ons and our small backpacks.   We didn’t exactly know where we were and ended up walking just a few meters and hailed one of New York’s famous yellow cabs. 

Many years ago while living in Udine out of the five great authors I had presented (the first one had been Susan)—authors who had written books on the bands that would eventually play in Udine—one of them was Mac, an expert on Radiohead.  He came to Udine with his wife Laurie to present his book on the British band.  Both Mac and Laurie would one day come back to Italy in early 2019, but this time to Rome, along with their daughter.  I managed to drive them around to see the sites and sounds of the Eternal City.

  
St. Patrick's Cathedral.

The Rockefeller building was also a cool place as it hosts that great show I used to watch while living in Canada, "Saturday Night Live" (more than 40 years ago I saw George Harrison together with Paul Simon singing "Here Comes The Sun" on SNL) as well as Jimmy Fallon's show.  I had also worked in Rome for NBC, with hqs in that very same building, during the amazing and touching funeral of Pope John Paul II in 2005.  At that time America's most famous anchorman was Brian Williams and I had been his interpreter at St. Peter's square.  Fond memories of those days at the Vatican.  Nice also the Lego store  and the FAO Schwartz shop.  

Mac and his family live in Manhattan and next to the U.N.’s world hqs.  They let us use their spare apartment which was just around the corner from their place.  The place was great as we weren’t terribly far away from perhaps the world’s most famous train station, Grand Central.  We were sort of running on adrenaline so we didn’t go for an afternoon siesta but instead called Mac to tell him that we arrived safely and thanked him and Laurie for their wonderful hospitality. 

 Trump's Praetorian guard!

New York's massive Apple Store.

We spent five full and very hectic days in New York. And what to say about a city with 8.9 million people (and no doubt with one million people or more when it comes to tourists)?  Simply great!  We took in as much as possible, from a nice walk through Central Park, to the nearby Dakota building where poor John Lennon was murdered by Mark David Chapman, to the “Strawberry Fields” area which is located right in front of his former home, to the splendid Solomon Guggenheim museum and to also the Whitney Museum which was designed by Italy’s most famous architect, Renzo Piano.  We unfortunately missed the MOMA as it was under wraps (it opened again on October 21^st, 2019).

  
The Dakota Building.

Such a pity that John's no longer with us.  How ironic life can be:  New York in 1964 gave John his "life", in the sense of international fame and glory, at the Ed Sullivan Show only for the Big Apple to have taken away that same life of his in 1980.

  
The very interesting Guggenheim collection.

The somewhat "hectic" Times Square.  I can't imagine what the place must be like on New Year's Eve!

Jokermania?

A real treat for me as we also managed to venture to 96 & 98 East 8^th St., St. Mark’s square, a place which isn’t too far away from both Little Italy (or whatever’s left of it) and Chinatown.  That building probably means very little to many people but not to Led Zeppelin aficionados:  it adorns the cover of one of the British band’s greatest albums, “Physical Graffiti”.  Yes, only someone like me can drag poor Dani allllll the way to a totally unknown address in New York to take the picture of a building’s façade! 

The "Physical Graffiti" building.

Another outstanding and historic place, at least for me, was venturing into Harlem to see the legendary Apollo Theater were soooo many famous Afro-American artists once sang, such as James Brown, Billie Holiday, Michael Jackson and also Charlie “Yardbird” Parker, just to name a few (I believe that Clint Eastwood also made a movie on Parker’s life).  Dani was a wee bit “scared” of venturing into that area given that the both of us are rather “white” but I had no qualms whatsoever about going there, nor did we have per se any problems because of the color of our skin.  A pity though that I wasn’t fast enough on the camera trigger as a young white girl rode past us on her bike. She was holding the handlebar with one hand and with the other she was spraying perfume in her face, which I also caught on my face as she rode by.  Indeed a first watching a young woman sprucing herself up while riding a bike! 

A small world: we met a couple who was from Switzerland in front of the Apollo Theater.  He spoke Italian.  The day after we bumped into the two on TOP of the Freedom Tower, quite amazing in a city of 8.9 million souls!  From the Apollo we went to see the truly amazing MET museum (we spent two hours there and I personally came out of that experience punch-drunk from a massive overdose of exquisite art!).   I got in for free, thanks to a press card that I have (and it wasn’t the first time in the States either).  Quite nice when the cashier, upon thanking him for having also let in for free Dani, looked at me and said, “Thanks for being a journalist”!  So much for perhaps New Yorkers being somewhat “rough” around the edges (and on four different occasions as we were staring at the map of the Big Apple we had New Yorkers look at us and say, “You lost? Do you need a hand”?).

Little Italy (or whatever's left of it), Chinatown and Greenwich Village/Soho.

Some of the interesting stores. 
 

 She does have a big ass!!!!!

The city cops were very nice and helpful too.  Of the people we ran into I can’t think of one person who wasn’t helpful or nice (excellent also the sense of American-style customer service, even too excellent for my tastes as in many restaurants the waitresses/waiters will come by your table at least eleven times to ask you, “Everything ok”?).

Washington Square and the famous Stonewall Inn (below).

The rather amazing collection at the Metropolitan Museum (Van Gogh, Chagall, Kandinsky, Modigliani, Picasso, you name it and the MET's got it)!
 

Picasso.

The rooftop of the MET.
 

The Whitney Museum and its very interesting collection. The Museum opened in May, 2015,

Andy Warhol's Elvis.

 

New York's relaxing overhead passageway at the Whitney Museum.

  
A rather famous hotel in New York, the Chelsea.

Some stark contrasts of New York (hats off though to the city's subway system as all the trains we traveled on where spotlessly clean, ditto for the subway stops).

The Solomon Guggenheim museum.
 

We managed to make it to Ground Zero before hitting Wall Street and the famous bull (oddly for “good luck” purposes tourists will bend down and from the back of the bull touch his balls!).  Before going there we walked up to the first half of the famous Brooklyn Bridge.  Indeed a lot of history with that bridge given all the movies we’ve always seen on New York.  A pity we didn’t catch that old aircraft carrier which is permanently docked at the port nor the world’s largest cruise ship which was also temporarily docked there (it was THE largest that New York’s port has ever hosted).

Two temples of music: Carnegie Hall and the Ed Sullivan Theater where the Fab Four played in February, 1964.

 

Indeed sweet, sweet memories for me of that great concert by the Fab Four back in 1964.  A taste of that great music with Sir Paul right on the very same rooftop many decades later!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t23dvnpiLYs

 

Ground Zero itself was also an interesting area because of the rather unique architecture there, starting with Santiago Calatrava’s creation of what looks like a winged bird (I presume it once housed the former Twin Towers subway stop).  The interior of the building is wonderful and is full of stores.  The memorial in honor of the victims is touching and the nearby Freedom Tower is truly impressive: it cost 80 dollars for two tickets and got you all the way to the top, about 102 floors in just 48 seconds!  And once up there there’s an amazing view of the Big Apple, including off in the distance old Liberty herself.  It also gave you a sense of what it must have been like 18 years ago (in 2001) when you were on top of one of the two towers and off in the distance you saw a small shadow which was quickly approaching with the planes suddenly smashing into the two towers.   To say it was horrific is certainly an understatement.

The old Brooklyn Bridge.

Quite the construction by Santiago Calatrava (here below).

A view to a kill!

A rather interesting statue near Ground Zero (see description below).

 I think the statue of the young girl was done by an Italian artist.

Big bull balls!

Once back on the ground we chose to do one last big thing, and that was to take the free orange ferry boat to Staten Island.  Even native New Yorker Alec Baldwin had said in a New York Times article that day that it was the best bargain in town.  And so off we went as we  sailed by the Statue of Liberty.  I would have wanted to visit Ellis Island but that was aboard another ferry and you had to pay for that trip-visit.     Rather than turning back right away we had a nice lunch near the port. 

 

 

 

 

We had walked around New York that day for a mere nine hours so we were slightly zonked.  I would have still taken in other things but it was October 8^th and the day after we had a rather long trip back from JFK to Rome, so it time for a very light dinner at Mac’s place followed by packing.  While on the subway ride back to our stop we thought that we were lost.  A very nice anti-corruption New York lawyer (who had also worked with former mayor Giuliani) helped us.  As he asked us where we were from he was the third person to have told us that he watched the series “Suburra” which is based on a movie of the same title and which deals with the mafia in Rome (Suburra having been a former prostitute-filled area of Ancient Roma).  I couldn’t believe that in 2019 North Americans we're STILL (sadly) talking about Italy’s most famous “export”, the mafia!

And so sadly the morning after we walked in pouring rain from Mac and Laurie’s place to grab the tour bus that would take us directly to JFK airport.   On the one hand more than one person has said that the place is rather hectic and disorganized.  On the other hand I found it to be rather efficient, clean and well-organized.

A rather symbolic picture, the very last one I took in New York and at JFK's duty-free section. 

Our flight was supposed to be at 4.30 pm aboard an Alitalia 777 flight.  It instead left an hour late.  Once we landed after eight-nine hours we were told by the cabin crew that our checked luggage would be waiting for us at baggage retrieval no. 11.  We walked almost one km to get to the luggage.  About three other flights from the States also came in at the same time as ours.  There was a small mountain of luggage waiting for us.  We got to Fiumicino airport at 6.30 am on October 10^th (the day after Lennon’s b.day).  We waited and waited and waited but still no luggage.  We then went to the baggage claim office to find out that our luggage wasn’t at no. 11 but at no. 5.  We eventually picked up (luckily) our bags and got out of the airport at 8.30 am.  Welcome back to Italy!

In conclusion, we had a truly splendid trip to both Canada and the States.  A “tremendous” joy to have seen old friends and to have also made new ones.  Thanks to everyone for their kindness, generosity, friendship (and also patience) and above-all the great laughs we got to share while going down old memory lane! 

(All pics, approximately 2,000 of them, were taken with two Canon bridge digital cameras, the PowerShot G1X and the PowerShot SX60 HS).