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It’s taken a long, long time, but we finally made it to New York, to Brooklyn and Park Slope for a long weekend in the cold, wintery sunshine. And I am utterly smitten.

Inevitably, it is just impossible to do any sort of justice to the sensation overload that is a first visit to the city, so a few highlights instead.

After granola and coffee at 88 Orchard, to a Belle and Sebastian soundtrack, we visited the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side. At one point, I’m told, of the United States’ then six million population, two million lived in the Lower East Side. Our guided tour took in one building, 97 Orchard Street, where 7,000 people lived in a 70 year spell from the 1860’s onwards. The building, unoccupied since 1935 remains much as it was, dark, cramped and inhospitable but a home to an industry and spirit that still typifies immigrants hungry for opportunity. Truly humbling stuff.

For a slice of what New York has become, MOMA might have been a more predictable stopping off point, but it was a sensation. The building itself was amazing, full of serendipitous discoveries of unexpected angles and views across windows and spaces. It’s utterly beautiful, but the space doesn’t overshadow the most impressive display of modern art you could hope to find anywhere. We found ourselves racing from gallery to gallery as closing time neared thinking, ‘good grief, they’ve got that one as well…’

Lastly, and really the essence of what made this such a memorable trip, was Al di Là, a neighbourhood Italian restaurant in Park Slope. This review of Al di Là from the New York Times captures much of what was good about it, but I’d disagree about the service which was as good as I’ve experienced. Passionate, interested and informed, our waitress really helped make the meal a memorable one. Great ingredients, prepared with care in surroundings you’d love to call your local, it had a really special atmosphere.

And yet, most of all, what I gained from New York was a re-found understanding and appreciation of London, a chance to stand back and appreciate in it much of what I found myself so charmed by in the streets around Prospect Park. Big cities, amidst the grind of ten million or so rubbing along together in a space, have so much to offer, a liberalism and diversity of experience to be relished. New York is an amazing city, and it made me proud to call another such city home.

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