And it's good bye to New York, hello Craignure

I have been home nearly a week now and joined the ship yesterday to
take up the vital lifeline service to the Isles of Mull and Colonsay.
Looking back at our holiday some memories of our visit are Grand
Central Terminal and its wonderful marble staircase, balconies, gold
chandleries and green ceiling, another is the girl ahead of me in the
queue at Just Bagels ordering a "toasted onion bagel, the dough out,
with a scallion tofu cream cheese filling and a skinny de-caff latte
to go" and nobody turns a hair. Lots of other things like the night
time view of the city from the Empire State Building, and that there
is a Starbucks on nearly every corner.

There is a definite buzz to the city, it's a very fast paced
environment and I would think to live there you would have to be
willing to deal with the hustle and bustle. There are masses of things
to do, in our case we found a week of being a tourist was enough for
our levels of energy, but if you stayed for a fortnight you would
still only be scratching the surface to take up all the opportunities
to be entertained. It's probably a great place to be young and there
are many young people about but to live well I think you would need
money, a lot of money. Coming back to the West end of Glasgow it all
seems a bit slow I'm afraid, but at least we can afford it.

One of our guides explained that an attraction of the city is its
diverse population but he felt that, unlike Europe, it is not a
melting pot more of a mixing pot where many different people exist
together but continue to maintain their own culture. Manhattan has
its China Town and Little Italy, not too sure where the other ethnic
groups are but I'm sure they exist if you care to look. Anyway a
fascinating place and one I hope that we will be able to visit again
in the future. In the meantime back to my rather sedate life here.

A job has come up with Calmac as Safety and Security Manager based in
Gourock, pretty much the same as I was doing with Waverley. I have
the qualifications and experience but do I want to go back to an
office based job again? Applications have to be in by the end of the
month, so some time to muse over it.