You know I dreamed about you for 29 years before I saw you.

I’m not one for tourist attractions.

I don’t take photos of myself in front of Famous Things or go out of my way to have ‘bucket list’-style experiences.

I find much of it too kitschy and tacky. I don’t like being around mobs of people all doing the same thing; the same photos, the same poses, the same shitty restaurants selling shitty, overpriced food to none-the-wiser tourists. There’s nothing wrong with being into Seeing The Sights and Ticking The Boxes, but it’s not for me. I was walking behind an Australian family this morning who were dead-keen on visiting the Disney store in Times Square. Why? They weren’t a young family; the “kids” were probably late teens or early 20s. Dad was wearing a Yankees cap. Mum & daughters were wearing matching puffer jackets. I half expected the kids to be on leashes so they didn’t get lost. I also don’t like Disney movies (or anything fun, according to many of my friends) so perhaps that explains my confusion over the obsession with visiting the Disney store.

(Incidentally, I walked through Times Square to get to where I was going and discovered that if you wear headphones, the amount of people harassing you to take their city tour or buy their passes to x show or y exhibit drops to pretty much nil. Something to keep in mind if you’re anything like me and hate being cajoled into buying/doing things/are jaded enough to think you’re better than everyone, haha.)

I love travelling for other reasons: because I love looking at people going about their life in different places, because the buildings and the cityscapes are same-same-but-different, or because they’re so vastly different to that with which I am familiar that I can’t help but be fascinated. I love travelling because the world is beautiful and ugly at the same time and because, as people, we are really all the same.

New York has been at the top of my travel to-do list for about a decade. Before that it was London. However, after having been to London six times across three European holidays in the past 13 years, it’s no longer somewhere that excites me. There’s something dully familiar about London these days.

New York has remained elusive. I don’t know why I haven’t made it back before now; in fact, I haven’t been to the United States since 1991. True story. 22 years. I wish I could show you a then vs now photo; I’ll have to get my mum to send me some when she gets home from this trip so that when I go to San Francisco next year I can recreate some images of me as a six year old vs me at a 29 year old.

Anyway. New York, New York. I let myself believe the hype. I thought of New York as the antithesis to little ol’ Perth, isolated and self conscious on the edge of the planet. It seemed daunting and spectacular and unreal. It was, in my mind, full of people and places and experiences unparalleled anywhere else on Earth.

Now that I’m finally here, I think that might just be true.

One of the main reasons I’ve wanted to come to New York for so long is the architecture. I am obsessed with old skyscrapers, to the extent that I spend an inordinate amount of time researching them and watching documentaries about them. I’m so amazed by the way that these immense structures were built before the development of modern technology.

My favourite has long been the Flatiron Building. Ever since seeing it in a movie as a child, and being inexplicably freaked out by its narrow structure, I have been obsessed with the Flatiron.

This morning, I laid eyes on her for the first time. Rather by accident, I turned a corner and looked up from my phone to see her skinny front-end bearing down on me.

Simply spectacular.