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My husband and I were lucky enough to spend some time in New England in June of this year. Rather than drive down to Heathrow or Gatwick in order to get a direct flight to Boston, we flew with Continental Airlines from Birmingham to Newark and picked up our hire car there. As we started our journey, we drove along the Interstate round the coast from where we had some magnificent views of the New York skyline - how I wish now that I had taken photographs. It was very hot and I was glad that we were not visiting the city at that time. We had been for a long weekend in December 1997 and had a week booked for this December - it is Steve's 50th birthday so six of us are going to celebrate

On September 11th, my sister and I were at our late father's house clearing things out when the phone rang; it was my brother-in-law to tell us what was to be the beginning of the news, we found a radio and listened as the full horror unfolded. I telephoned Steve and my sister called her daughter who then called her boyfriend - this is the six of us who are going in December. Our hearts were no longer on what we were doing, so we packed up and came back to our house where we put the TV on just in time to see the second tower collapse, we had not visited the World Trade Centre on our previous visit, as five days is not enough time to do everything, so we had planned to go this time - so much for advance planning. I am not ashamed to say that, every time I watched the news for the next week, I was in tears.

A lot of people assumed that after what had happened, we would cancel our trip, but why should we? If we do not go, then we are letting the terrorists win and surely America and especially New York deserves and needs our support at this time. If we cancelled, then we would lose out. We know that the city we visit this year will be very different from the one we enjoyed four years ago, but we shall make the most of our trip. We shall shop until we drop and see what we can that is open and if things are still closed, as I believe The Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island are, then we shall find other places to visit and things to see, but we will not let the terrorists ruin our celebration - we shall fly out on December 1st as planned and find out first hand just how the city and its people have changed - I'll let you know.

First published in VISA issue 44 (winter 2001)

Find out how Eunice's trip to New York went