The day after our wedding on the late May bank holiday weekend in 1994 we headed to New York City filled with excitement and some trepidation.

A period of zero tolerance policing had made the City a bit safer from it’s peak crime period in the late 80s and early 90s when a crack epidemic sent criminality soaring.

Friends and relatives were still of the opinion that we would be shot the moment we emerged from our hotel, such was the negative worldwide perception of the largest city in the US at that time.

Suffice it to say we had a fantastic time from beginning to end and certainly fell in love with The Big Apple.

We returned to NYC a year later en route to Australia to get the wintertime Xmas experience and fell even deeper in love with the place.

Around the turn of the century I visited New Jersey on business as the US Telecoms company I was working for had many big offices around the state and on one occasion I drove into Manhattan to give a UK colleague a flavour of the City.

I was still working for the US company when the 9/11 tragedy befell the country and particularly NYC. Some of my US colleagues were directly affected by the horrendous terrorist attack, a couple being on the planes that hit the World Trade Center, and others knowing people who had died.

Lucent – the company I was working for – was heavily involved in the aftermath of the attacks, setting up emergency cell systems in the immediate area of ground zero devastation.

We had enjoyed those iconic buildings in the skyline and had visited them too so I think it was the immense sadness that they no longer existed and had been destroyed in such a horrific way that meant we didn’t reconsider revisiting NYC again for many more years. Even our 20th and 25th wedding anniversaries seemed too soon to return.

30 years seemed right and also an excellent opportunity to help rekindle our relationship after a rough time of my making.

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