After some phoning around, Phil was directed to Columbia Air Services which was a TBM service station located around 70 nm NE of Westchester at Groton so we took G-PTXC up there and their chief Engineer promised to try and rectify the fault. This was a short VFR flight up along the attractive coastline although on a hot day without air conditioning not the most comfortable. At Groton, we hired a car for our return journey which took about four hours in heavy traffic although this did include a stop of lobster rolls for lunch at an excellent coast side eatery found by Ed on Google.
After a quick swim, Phil had us heading to the Big Apple for a night time tour mainly around the Greenwich area where we found an excellent restaurant for dinner on a warm balmy evening eventually arriving back at our hotel rather late. Fortunately there was good news from Columbia Air Services who had found the fault – a blown pipe – and rectified it.
Next day we were back into New York with what we thought was a modest tourist itinerary devised by Phil. However getting into the city involved a ten minute car journey, time to buy tickets and then a fifty minute train journey so even a prompt start meant we were not in central New York until towards midday. We walked first to the Chrysler Building, not far from Grand Central Station. Although the central hall was officially closed at the weekend, we were able to go in and see something of this high point of grand Art Deco work. New York in the 1930’ties must have been quite something.
From there it was a short trip to the Empire State Building where we joined a crowd of other tourists and soon were rafted up to the 78th floor and shortly afterwards to the 86th floor viewing gallery. There were magnificent views on this fine, sunny day and we could see La Guardia and JFK airports in the distance with aircraft landing and taking off.
Thereafter we walked south eastward towards the Brooklyn Bridge taking time at an enticing bistro for a salad lunch before taking the subway for the rest of the way. This bridge was of amazing suspension construction and having appreciated it from afar, we ended up walking across it on an elevated passage way shared with cyclists with motorised traffic in two lanes below.
Phil had planned a boat trip round Liberty Island as well as a visit to Central Park but we ran out of time for these as we needed to get back to our hotel for flight planning the next day and to take up our dinner booking at a seaside French bistro nearby. Another longer visit sometime in the future is a must.
KHPN (Westchester) to KGON (Groton New London) 70 nm in 29 min