Irene...

We are on vacation! And a much longer vacation than planned at the start of the trip... How does that work? All thanks to Irene (with a little help of Delta along the way). We flew to New York a week ago, rented a car and started a slow drive up to Canada. We stayed at Sleepy Hollow (famous for the cemetery), visited the Dutchess County Fair (the biggest and most famous fair in NY State, after the State Fair) with friends of mine and drove through the Catskills, the Adirondacks and the Finger Lakes Region. In between, we visited the university towns of New Paltz (SUNY New Paltz) and Ithaca (Cornell), as well as Seneca Falls: the birthplace of the American women's movement. It was all lovely!

The last night before crossing to Canada was spent in Buffalo (what an absolute shithole), and we went on to visit Niagara Falls from both the US and Canada sides (my 43rd world wonder; Fedor's 39th) and on Thursday, we went to Nissrine's wedding at a winery in the Canadian Niagara region: it was stunning!!! So beautiful, such lovely people, simply great to have been there!!!!

Around the same time, the first news reports about Irene making it all the way up to New York started popping up. We drove back to NYC in one go on Friday, going against the majority of the traffic, which was full of people evacuating from NYC. Oh my, was I happy to get rid of the rental car, before anything bad could happen! Thankfully, we were staying with friends in Brooklyn (just outside the mandatory evacuation zone) with their two kids.

On Saturday, with the underground shut down and those people still in the city in some sort of giddy anticipation, we made sure to gather the last bits and bobs before the storm hit: 2 gallons (8 litres) of milk, 20 bagels, a few kgs of fresh produce, filling up all buckets and vessels with water, batteries, flashlights, etc, and then we waited.

and waited

and waited

and waited

I mean, it was stormy, don't get me wrong, but at no point did it actually feel like a hurricane. The next morning, it still didn't look too bad. By the afternoon, we went for a walk to the park, where there indeed was more damage: uprooted trees, huge branches all over the place, etc. But it still looked more like a bad storm than like a hurricane in my book!

Anyway, we were originally supposed to fly out on Sunday night, but our flight was (obviously) cancelled. However, apparently things are going rather well for Delta, so they didn't have a lot of free space in their flights over the next days and the earliest time we get to fly out is Friday! In other words: five days of New York City, which will be paid for by Delta (they don't know this yet, but they will)... I'm not sure whether I am happy or sad (happy seems to be the prevailing emotion, particularly now that it is sunny and pleasantly warm). We moved into a hotel (in order not to bother K & A too much: 4*, 2 blocks from Central Park, Midtown Manhattan and we are going to have a grand time!!!

So I bid thee goodbye, from New York City!
Tschüßi,
OJ

PS Update: we managed to get a flight that goes out on Thursday night instead, which is nice because we're expecting friends for the weekend, and it would suck if they couldnt come...