New York
My 48 hours in New York coincide with a security lock-down. On the day before I arrive police shoot and detain a man suspected of planting bombs in the city. The FBI are busy. So too the Secret Service. On this day Barack Obama and Theresa May are addressing the UN General Assembly. It is his last appearance there as President, her first as Prime Minister.
It means gridlock for midtown Manhattan. My Bangladeshi taxi driver defers to his traffic app, which seems to be promoting the virtues of walking to my hotel. I take his advice and head out into the midday humidity, lugging my suitcase through the Brownian motion of sightseers, office workers, exercisers and traffic cops. My hotel is opposite the Argentine embassy, an elegant turn-of-the-last-century brownstone humbled, like every building on this block, by the skyscraper on the other side of Fifth Avenue – Trump Tower.
