“I kinda give self-guided tours when guests are in town,” she said behind a pair of over-sized sunglasses and sipping from a bottle of water. She stood in a corner of shade on a simmering Manhattan morning while her friends shopped inside Flight 001. A new bag was needed to take home all the wares they had purchased on their first trip to New York. “Most people, on their first trip want to see everything, so I try to pack it all in in one day. On their second trip the site-seeing has lost its luster and I usually wind up just eating all weekend because they want to dine out.”

“My tour starts out in the financial district, Wall Street and the WTC, then we navigate through Chinatown and head up Broadway to Times Square and then over to Central Park.” She spoke quickly as if she had repeated and carried out this tour several times before. “We make a million stops on the way, shoe shopping, lunch, coffee whatever. But we cut across the park, sometimes the zoo and end up around 86th Street. The die hards will want to walk down the East side, but most of ‘em are exhausted and we cab it back to Washington Square [Park].”

An exhausting trip? “Well yeah, nothing a bottle of wine at dinner can’t erase. Besides, when I first moved here my brother and I took the subway all over the place. Not only did we get lost several times, but he didn’t get to see how the city was connected- which is important. The overlap of neighborhoods is as interesting as the neighborhoods themselves. Well, to me at least.” She stared down at her feet and rolled her shoulders to loosen up. “But ya gotta have great pair of shoes,” she declared “or you don’t stand a chance.”

andrew said thomas.