New Year's Eve in New York City

It's the last day of 2011 and tomorrow will be the first in 2012 and the beginning of what will be an enormous year for us!

Yesterday was a very weird day for me and pretty unusual for Mike too.  We went over to Brooklyn to meet his uncle Cecil for the first time and were joined by his uncle Denzil who we have met in Barbados, his cousin Keith (who could be his older twin were that possible) and a good friend of his father's, Vincent, who was present when his father wrote his will.

We spent a lot of time in the morning working out to how get there given the apparent complexities of the Subway journey and some concern about the safeness or otherwise of the area we were travelling to - Bedford Stuyvesant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedford–Stuyvesant,_Brooklyn
We chickened out and opted for a taxi but it took sometime to find one that knew how to get there!  Eventually, having failed to find a yellow cab we took a private hire vehicle at an agreed reasonable rate.  It was a classic Brooklyn Street of brownstone buildings with high front steps going up to the front doors.

We had a lovely day, Mike's family were so pleased to see him and he reminded them all so much of "Super" his dad who died this time last year.  Uncle Cecil cooked for us and the day whiled away while they all reminisced and "chewed the fat".  If someone had told me 10 years ago that I would one day be sitting in a house in Brooklyn with 4 elderly Barbadian men and Mike discussing at length the details of their prostrate troubles I would have said they were insane!!!!

We made it back on the subway with a bit of help from Keith, had a couple of cocktails and a debrief in a bar before heading back to the hotel.  Contrary to everything we have heard about travelling on the subway at night, it was full of normal people simply going about their business.  All in all, we are sure that all the uncle's have Mike's best interests at heart and simply want to make sure that his father's last wishes come about.  Bedford Stuyvesant was a really charming traditional Brooklyn neighbourhood and no way the scary place described on the internet - we would happily travel back there under our own steam.....