A belated honeymoon, Father’s Day, a birthday and the chance of a medal, this trip was always going to be something special.
But it was an anniversary of an entirely different nature that left the deepest impression.

For two whole days we have the slate grey skies and streets of Manhattan all to ourselves. Impending Hurricane Irene has cleared the subways and city of cars and commuters. Downtown is populated only by taxis, their bright yellow popping in the gloom as they evacuate residents to safer ground. The only people crazy enough to be out and about are tourists like us, there for the World Police and Fire Games, easily identifiable by accreditations hung proudly around our international necks. This year, the games are being held in NYC to commemorate the ten year anniversary of 9/11. Right now however, this usually vibrant and alive city has the feel of a giant grownup amusement park, abandoned and quiet before the storm, temptingly but frustratingly, closed for the weekend.

At the lush tip of Battery Park, Lady Liberty raises her torch over the Hudson, defiant at the oncoming storm. News crews are poised for action. We are tempted to stay and watch, but the city beckons and we turn northwards. Elegant waterside apartments are humbled by sandbags and chip-boarded windows. Up Wall Street, the narrowest of cobblestone alleys are overwhelmed with dizzy skyscrapers that look as high as the island is wide. Unexpectedly they open up at Federal Square, with classic columns and expansive marble steps of court buildings solemnly contemplating others opposite. Above, the wedding cake spires of the Woolworth Building remind us to keep looking up for other marvels. Chinatown and Little Italy, bustling with colour and crowd in the days following, is blinded by roller-shutters like a deserted side-show alley. Plate glass windows fronting chic Soho boutiques have designer signatures unceremoniously crossed out with packing tape.

Emptied of traffic, my husband and I are able to walk up the middle of Broadway for blocks. Times Square still manages to attract a sprinkling of tourists, the adrenaline ad-fest of neon and plasma further heightened by the anticipation of gathering clouds and rising winds. Those who brave the conditions are rewarded by a camera that captures images of random tourists from the crowd and throws them up enlarged on a giant screen opposite. Faces caught delighted, not just by the city, but the surreal circumstances we are first discovering it in.

To soon for me we leave one island for another, over bridges over sand spits, past pretty pastel clapboard houses to Rockaway Beach in Queens for the final surfing events of the Games. The contestants, mainly American and Australian emergency responders are competing under police protection and the scrutiny of ASP judges there for the Quiksilver Pro. Six black-clad NYPD monitor the boardwalk, in communication with two snipers on the rooftops behind and a massive police launch lolls in the waves out the back.

We think it complete overkill when two Blackhawk helicopters sonourously pass by at low altitude but they are quickly upstaged by the perfect flying formation of WWII bombers afterwards. At our gobsmacked expressions a local laughingly explains: first is the governor of New York surveying storm damage on Long Island and the vintage bombers are a private Wildcat flying club. Of course – this is New York.

As if the day couldn’t hold more amazement, my husband, competing for the first time ever, unexpectedly takes out the gold medal. We are still in shock as he steps onto the dais and dips his head to receive it. There is much back-slapping, hand-clasping and beer drinking as a local firefighter belts out the best Bob Marley covers we have ever heard. A proud surfing community embraces us and firm friendships are made.

Which creates a dilemma. My husband wants to spend more days at the beach but I can’t get enough of the city. We are saved by a fast and firm friendship with another couple. The boys are happy to go surfing some days and leave us girls to do our own thing. We come together at the end of long summer afternoons to share our adventures.

In the city, we discover extreme limits and an abundance of everything in between. Culinary delights at every price and from every corner of the globe: warm salty pretzels and tasty chicken gyros from street carts, tangy Polish borscht, crisp Japanese tempura and of course hotdogs, burgers, pizzas and steaks (for up to $150 I’m told!). Twenty four flavours of rice custard (including Cinnamon Sling, Coconut Coma and Chocolate Chip Flirt!) are a taste-testers delight at from Rice to Riches. Hale and Hearty soup and sandwich stores serve up 14 soups and custom salads daily. Well trained servers watch your face to make sure they stop pouring your chosen dressing at the exact right drop. I taste test Spicy Lentil & Spinach and Shrimp & Roast Corn Chowder and they are both so good I have to go back the next day. Union Square Green Market is foodie heaven with an abundance of colourful and flavorsome produce: Amish cheeses, coloured eggs, fragrant wines and fresh picked fruit and veg (six varieties of carrot!). Pretty pastel cupcakes from Magnolia bakery taste as good as we hope and I am sure I will have withdrawals from the chocolate topped New York baked cheesecake our local restaurant owner kindly organizes for my birthday.

And the shopping! Designer prescription glasses for less than 200 bucks and under an hour on Mott Street. Pop up sample sales beckon with next season’s kid leather brogues for $50 and one-off designer experiments in gorgeous prints and fabrics for $30, railroading my well-intentioned plans to spend the day at the Met. At Anthropologie, sales assistants welcome, coo and reserve change rooms with my name on it. Elaborately styled shop windows delight as much as the merchandise inside. There’s hand painted western gumboots in NoHo, 24 hour chess shops near Washington Square Park, flea-market treasures in Brooklyn and vintage finds all over. We rest in cool shaded parks along the way, sip cold mint tea and are entertained by a busker playing the grand piano and a flash mob of conga-dancers. Before we can decide if we are brave enough to join in, it disappears.

As the days unfold, the preconceived must-see-and-do list we came with is pushed aside. Just being here is more than enough.

In the first week of September our experience of New York shifts downwards. As the city recovers from Irene, with much less damage than anticipated, it prepares for the ten year anniversary of another aberration. News footage switches from floods and fallen trees to planes flying into buildings and paper rain. Locals who discover my husband is a firefighter offer their memories of that day. Minok, from the Korean restaurant in Bleecker Street remembers weeks of cleaning up the dust that “got into everything” in her Greenwich Village apartment. She still grimaces and shakes off the smell ten years later. Mel, a volunteer for the Games, worked for the Port Authority who built the towers. He calls them his ‘babies’. He recounts the day he arrives – blessedly late – for work at his WTC office, coming up from the subway and into the light to experience the agony of people escaping from the buildings and worse, and then, rooted to the spot, the earthquake of their collapse.

On our last day, at Mel’s suggestion, I visit the World Trade Visitors Centre. I am hesitant – it feels somehow voyeuristic. And I’m right. The displays of personal effects and faces of missing loved ones are overwhelming and I rush through in tears. I have spent two weeks with fire fighters and their families and their grief is still raw underneath stoic exteriors. This time of year re-traumatises many of them and it’s the ones who can’t talk about it I worry for the most. While they proudly wear T-shirts emblazoned with “we will never forget”, in reality, it would be a blessing if they could.

Years afterwards I still reflect on our time in the city. It’s easy for me to see past the flash and dazzle and big attitudes. It’s the tension of opposites and sensory overload that makes me feel I will need to go back again and again just to absorb it. The contrasts: the magnificent carved façade of Grand Central Station with its doors locked for the first time ever in that storm – against bewildered homeless men wondering where they are going to sleep that night. Tiny centuries old sandstone churches surrounded by glass and steel monoliths. Massive public spaces and cramped dark tenements. Remnants of the wall in Wall Street. Strangers who make eye contact, ask direct questions and mean what they say.  Sirens like cats wailing and the gentle birdsong of Central Park. The smell of rotting garbage, of street spices and fragrant blooms. A teddy bear shrouded in a coat of ash. I feel love for it all.

In many ways New York City has stamped itself on me.