Mary Reid

I haven't been blogging for  a few days because I've been in New York. And, of course, that would be just the time that mobile blogging stopped working - it's OK now, so although I'm using my host's laptop I'm back in business for the rest of my trip.

I'm here with Kingston Choral Society on a shopping singing tour. It's my first visit to New York but everyone who's been before says how much it has improved. The city made famous in countless movies - with graffiti covered subway trains, litter and high crime rates has been transformed. Central Park is now an enchanting landscaped garden; apparently they employed the rough sleepers and drug addicts who had taken it over to clean it up and plant it. Surplus plants are used in surrounding streets spreading the park outwards. It feels like a safe and welcoming city. And the shopping is brilliant with 2 dollars to the pound.

I've bagged all the usual tourist treats - Empire State Building, Wall Street, boat trip around Manhattan (which is much larger than I realised), Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lincoln Center (for the New York City Ballet). And although by no means a treat, I did go to Ground Zero and into St Paul's Chapel nearby which survived the blast and became the rest and feeding station for the firemen and volunteers.

Two famous views of the New York skyline - first with the Staten Island ferry, and then over Central Park from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

And we did find time for singing, with a concert in a church on Tuesday.

Kingston Choral Society singing in the Church of the Blessed Sacrament in West 71st Street
(Thanks to Roger Ward for the photo)

Members of Fairfield County Chorale from Connecticut came to hear us and we are now staying them around Norwalk, some 40 miles up the coast. We've got a joint concert tonight - Mozart Requiem (which I love) and some Handel - and it was inspiring singing with so many voices at rehearsal yesterday.