After about half an hour Susan was ready, and we decided we couldn't really take anything else. On the way to the cash register we saw a Rolling Stones record we hadn't seen before so we added it to our collection and when the man behind the cash register said $26 I was staggered. Over the road there was a place which sold something called an Orange Julius. Barry and Susan decided that we had to have one of them, a visit to New York would not be complete without one. The drink is what happens when the man behind the counter doea something to orange juice, normally I don't appreciate the juice of any fruit - except the Coca-Cola plant - but the result was pleasing. Since it was almost lunch time we also fed ourselves, the cheese hamburger I got was a strange thing indeed, the cheese was more Iike liquid cheeze-whiz than anything else and was just as tasty. We leaned against the counter and Susan and I looked over our records. I was slightly more enthusiastic than Susan but then Regina is closer to New York than Melbourne. Barry was amused by both of us I think, he works in a record shop so I suppose he was entitled to his amusement. As planned we decided to make like tourists and go to the Empire State building. I might have been just as happy visiting more record shops but what would my friends say when I told them I'd been to New York and hadn't seen the world from the Empire State. The size of the city wasbrought home to me when Barry said we'd have to catch the subway to a closer station and we had to walk a long way at either end. The nature of the city didn't seem any different where we entered from where we got off and we walked along a wide street for a while and then Barry said we where there. I'd seen films of New York before, I didn't believe him. He assured me that it was, I looked up and the building was indeed rather tall but I knew it couldn't be the Empire State because there weren't any flashing lights, loud speakers and dancing girls, it was just a building like any other and it was beginning to show its age. But Barry was sure that this was the place so in the end I had to go along with the joke and in we went through the circular doors. The inside was about the same style as the outside, thirties, and it is hard to realize that the building is reasonably old. We found our way around some wide corridors along to a place where we spent $1.70 each for a ticket to the top of the building which must be an office building but all we saw of it were lifts and corridors The place where we bought the tickets was set up to handle hundreds of people with barriers set up for a very long queue. Being a Thursday there were far less people wanting to see the sight of New York spread out below them and so there were shortcuts through the barriers. There were still enough people though and we had to wait some time until it was our turn to get into the lift upto the eighty-sixth floor which is the first stop for tourists. The lift was quick enough and might have made some people a little light headed as it slowed down but it still took a long time to get to the right level. It was packed as full as they could manage it and standing for a couple of minutes like sardines was not a great thrill. The eighty-sixth floor (or the bit we saw of it) is a large area where tourists can have a field day spending their money on all sorts of things of no particular value except that they were bought in the Empire State. You could have your photograph taken with a gorilla or in such a way as to make it look as though you had fallen over the edge, but we were not attracted. Another queue was formed up from people waiting to get to the top of the building for an even higher view so we joined onto the end of it and waited. Through the large windows we could see parts of New York and Susan kept us entertained with amusing stories of the various insane things that fans do, like driving from New York to Toronto for a surprise birthday party. The wait this time took much longer because there was only one lift and just as many people wanting to use it as had wanted to get this far. The lift doors finally opened onto a small room with windows in it. The room with its riveted columns and beams reminded me of something out of those stf/adventure serials that we used to see at the local theatre on a Saturday afternoon. "So this is where they got their idea of what the future was going to look like". The room wasn't too packed which was a blessing because we didn't have any trouble getting to the windows. The city was really a long way down and we could see a fair distance. Down at the bottom of the