We ended our visit with Scott and drove down in the morning to Wilton, where we parked the van at the railroad station and took the train into the renovated Grand Central (quite nice). We did a lot of walking around New York City, had a nice lunch, saw the 9/11 hole, and crossed the Brooklyn Bridge (a big favorite with me). We walked down Wall Street, which was cordoned off with barricades and M-16 toting police. Under this heavy guard, very black-suited businessmen were being picked up by very black limousines and giant polished SUV's. We poor camera-toting tourists and workers felt privileged to get a distant peek at the ruling class of America, who no doubt were wisely investing their billions of dollars in tax cuts. We made it back to Wilton in time to head to Julie Anderson's (yet another cousin!) house for the night. She lives in a neat 1700's place, with steep creaky narrow stairs, head-bumping doorways, hand-hewn beams, the whole works. Plus a tree limb through the bathroom. There was a big windstorm a couple of days before we came, and a tree fell on her roof, with one limb in particular skewering its way through. Luckily no vital organs, pipes, or wires were punctured, and insurance is covering everything. It was a fun visit with Julie, who keeps busy by teaching piano most days after school, something she's been doing for 60 years!

The next afternoon we drove from Julie's up to Ginny and Rick Umiker's (our last set of cousins to visit) outside Boston. Had another fine dinner and visit, and got up early the next morning and drove up to Manchester to catch our plane back to Seattle. All-in-all we had a fine trip, sure to be repeated in the future