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I’m dead asleep on the red-eye special from Montreal to New York, when I hear a Jamaican voice lilting “Here’s Man-hat-tan!!!”

I bolt up in my seat. It’s 5 a.m. - two hours before we’re due to arrive. Pitch black out there. And this is not JFK or La Guardia Airport. It’s the bus! Times Square, baby! The Port Authority Bus Terminal. And nothing’s open.

Nothing’s open but Port Authority security guard Derek Gross’s eyes. They’re beaming like sentinels as he wields his portable metal railing like a lance, fending off homeless people and drifters waiting to get inside. An eight-foot tall guy in jeans with nose and lip rings and bellbottoms swimming around his ankles inquires about lockers.

“Lockers? Lockers?!!!! Ha!!!” Derek laughs. “Ain’t no lockers in the Port Authority since 1988, after the bombings. But we got perfume shops - perfume shops! - and French cafés. Oh Bon Pain - that’s bread.” He does a running patter David Letterman would love about the glories of the renovated Port Authority Bus Terminal, then turns to me, “Where’re you from honey - you’re gor-geous!”

Gorgeous? At 5 a.m.? Bleary-eyed and mealy-mouthed?

Here’s to you, Manhattan! Manhattan before she sips her first coffee and puts on her make-up. Disheveled but loveable.

A night bus from Montreal to Manhattan was the handiest way of getting two extra days in New York at either end of a balmy September weekend. I have an invitation to see New York like I’ve never seen it after 15 years of living here - to stay at Donald Trump’s International Hotel & Tower, and to dine in the private 52nd floor penthouse of this sensational billionaire. But the invite didn’t include transport, and so now I’ve got to do my Cinderella act, transforming from a budget bus traveler into a damsel worthy of a $1,300 a night suite.

I stroll over to Times Square. It’s gleaming! Bright as day. Ten-story neons make it dazzle like Tokyo’s Ginza. With the subway token from my last visit to the Big Apple, I hop on a bus up Eighth Avenue to the southern edge of Central Park at 59th Street. I meander over to The Trump at One Central Park West on Columbus Circle with the smug air of having just stepped out of my limousine.

“Did you enjoy your flight, Madame?” asks the Concierge.

“Oh yes, lovely,” I reply, secretly savoring the irony. My Jamaican bus driver had flown down Route 87 South, so he’d have more time to party in New Yawk! Heck, what do I care. I’m here with my Trump Attaché, being shown around my plush marbled suite with nine-foot, floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Central Park.

“Here are your bathroom amenities, in a filigreed gold bag, Madame, and this is the button for your whirlpool bath. Here is your china cupboard and your dishwasher, Madame, and if you’d like the en-suite dining service, a three-hour minimum of $50 an hour, a sous-chef of Jean-George Vongerichten will prepare dinner in your room. Here is your high-tech Entertainment Center, Madame. And here are your pre-printed private stationery and business cards with your private hotel number. We can arrange a cell phone if you’d like. Enjoy your stay, Madame. Local calls and faxes are free.”

Free ???! How many times have I been dying to call from a hotel bath or bed and been stopped by the $5 surcharge charge for each call? After a romp down below in Central Park, I’ll come back and call every local friend and colleague I know, describing Trump’s view from The Top.

Central Park - hallelujah! Muggers be damned! All you see is people having a good time. Rollerblading, speedwalking, jogging - even while pushing baby carriages! Playing volleyball on fake beach sandpits, sailing model boats on the lakes, picnicking around the Alice-in-Wonderland statue, riding the antique- Bavarian carousel horses or real ones on the bridal paths. As a guest of The Trump, you can have a trainer jog or rollerblade with you if you’re lonesome or wary of Central Park, or want a trainer’s push. But there’s so much training energy here already, you just jump into the colorful stream and are pulled along by it.

In 1850 this 840-acre territory between 59th and 110th Streets was “a barren rectangle of rocks and swampland occupied by squatters, goats and bone-boiling works.” Landscape artists Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux transformed it into a lush, vast public playground dotted with ponds, lakes and gardens, decorative benches and bridges, rustic shelters and nature sanctuaries. The Central Park restoration program of the last ten years has returned the magnificent old grace to Belvedere Castle, Bethesda Terrace, and the old Dairy, and the Conservatory Garden and the Beatles’ Strawberry Fields.

I’m strolling past the new Central Park Zoo, where 450 creatures live in a simulated rain forest, a temperate zone and a cool, blue re-creation of an Antarctic ice pack. Flocks of gentoo and chinstrap penguins frolic and dive in the Polar Region, and poison-arrow frogs, flying geckos, piranhas and Yacare caimans inhabit the Tropic Zone’s misty jungle. But what do I see scurrying across my path in front of a ‘Wildlife!’ sign, like a pedestrian dashing to make a green light before being run over by a stream of honking cars? A hideously fat rat. Some things in New York never change.

The Donald has thought of everything. In the health club of the Trump Tower each exercise machine has a miniature cable TV. On the Virtual Reality bike, you pedal over fields and valleys, unless you make a bum turn and leap into a lake or smash into a brick wall. Ouch! You forget your burning thighs.

On our hotel tour, publicist Sherrié Liu explains how a Feng Shui Master was hired to design the The Trump International Hotel and Tower’s arrangement of furniture and space, to allow the Chi energy to flow harmoniously. ‘Feng Shui’ means Wind and Water. This ancient traditional Chinese science of placement is the latest Manhattan fad, and as we’ll see on a visit to Felissimo, a 1903 townhouse converted into an ethereal Japanese-style department store, Feng Shui candles and chimes are all the rage. The Trump has no 13th floor, but what’s more telling about its clientele, is that is has no 14th floor either. “In Asia the number 14 is bad luck, because in Japanese it sounds like the word ‘shuh-shuh’, which sounds like the word for death,” explains Sherrié Liu.

Going back in my room to change into sequins for the soirée in Trump’s private penthouse, I’m appalled to find the dishwasher going in full throttle. Appalled because I knew there could be only one dish in there, the small plate I’d used to cut a small slice of cheese. All alone in there, beaten senseless by tidal waves of soap and water. Could not the chambermaid have washed it by hand, or summoned it to the kitchen? With dishless dishwashers dishwashing, how much more of New York’s water is senselessly going down the drain? I inquire about this. I’m told that New York City’s hotel hygiene laws require dishes to be washed by machines, to protect guests from bacteria. Gee…

Majestic empty rooms and rooms and rooms with 20-foot floor-to-ceiling windows... Our small group of journalists is wafted to the 52nd floor just before sunset, to experience Trump’s Manhattan. Wow! Wow! I’ve never seen Manhattan like this. The East River and the Hudson all at once, from 60th Street to Wall Street and the Statue of Liberty. Lights blinking on after the sun’s last blush. It’s too much. Too, too fabulous. Rhapsodic for an evening, but living with one of the greatest cities in the world inside you day and night... how does it feel? I must ask The Donald.

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