And on the 22nd day it rained and rained and rained and rained. Another two inches. The streets are awash with the proverbial cats and dogs.
Our first outing, early, was a visit to Dr Nissan.
Since 2013 he’s been a regular on our annual trip. Back then I suffered a massive retinal detachment. He put my eye back together and so seeing him each year allows him to monitor my progress and keep an eye out, pun intended, for any issues.
Last year he picked up some issues and did some laser to hold my right retina in place.
This year all good. Left eye holding steady. Right eye, steady, but some thinning of the retina is creating blind spots. That’s why I’m bumping into stuff. We chat for a while about the future of retina repairs. Dr Nissan is driving research in this area in the USA with a major R and D project. He takes some photos of my eyes with a new machine he’s testing. The technician and he marvel st the images of the back of my eye, instantly shown on an iPad attached to the high powered 3D camera. Pretty cool.
Anyway, after the visit we head home. We take it easy for a couple of hours.
We head out for a late lunch to urban space at grand central, rain still teeming down.
We sit inside the space and enjoy our burgers before catching the shuttle home.
We spend a couple of ours inside before heading out to Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden. I plan a perfect undercover route so we can leave our umbrellas at home.
We run to the subway at around 7pm for the 8pm show. Transport ten minutes, security 50 minutes is usually the go.
We pop up at Penn station nowhere near where I thought we would. We wander a block going around the garden and finally find a back entrance in out of the rain. The going is slow. Airport style security. Everything out of your pockets, bag searches, security screening equipment. No wonder it takes forever.
We are seated by just before 8pm and Billy is on stage at 8.15 banging out his hits. The middle of the show is a bit tedious with some b sides snd little known Travis. But he ramps up for the second half belting out hit softer hit.
Check out the playlist here: http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/billy-joel/2016/madison-square-garden-new-york-ny-1bfb997c.html
We leave the show walking down the stairs, there are a lot of them. A drunk woman in front of us insists on talking to her friends four rows of people behind us and holds up the flow every flight as she wraps around and sees her friends. She wobbles from time to time almost falling over. We eventually get past her and out on to the street. Th rain is still falling, slower now and it’s quite warm so we decide to walk the ten blocks home instead of battle the subway with 21000 other people.
We arrive home, a little damp and call it a night after a great show.
