New York New York...where do you start? We arrived late Monday evening and after having navigated the subway system (nearly got on the wrong train and would have ended up some where in the Bronx!) to get to our hostel found that our room resembled a prison cell (having just been to Alcatraz the prison cells look nicer!). All it had in it was a very hard bed and a sink with about a half metre strip of floor space down the side - though it was clean which is the most important thing i suppose.
We woke up very early on Tuesday from the jet lag and found this little diner for breakfast - the food was so nice, cheap and you got so much of it. You can easily see why americans are so fat. A standard size bottle of coke is larger than ours at just over a pint and contains 65g of sugar!! To burn off our hearty breakfast we walked to the Empire State Building - we didn't go up to the top as it was rather expensive - and then on to Times Square. Before we knew it we were in Central Park and then wandered round until we came to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which is just amazing. They had a new gallery of Roman Art but it was only open to members - rude!!! Spent all afternoon wandering round the museum, which must have been miles in itself, until they chucked us out. We had been walking constantly since 9am till 5.30pm, so what did we decide to do? Walk the 63 blocks home, which if you look at a map of NY is a long long way! By the time we got home i was about ready to collapse.
We took it a little bit easier on the Wednesday and treated ourselves to getting the subway downtown. We went to Ground Zero first, which is a strange place. It just looks like a typical building site but its the huge gap in the middle of all the skyscrapers that it takes up which makes you appreciate the scale of the World Trade Centre and the destruction it caused. After this we walked down to get the ferry to see the Statue of Liberty and the immigration centre on Ellis Island, which was very interesting.
Wednesday night at our hostel is free pizza night!! yay, the cheap skate in me cries! that was until i spent all night throwing it up. I don't think it was the actual pizza that made me ill as rich was fine and i can eat pretty much anything but something wasn't right. Least it was free food that i wasted, would have been more annoyed if had paid for my meal and then was sick. I was fine by the next day, though it took a couple of days for my appetite to get back to normal.
Thursday was are last day in NY but we didnt do much. We walked back up to Times Square and did some more site seeing, but everything in NY is expensive and we couldnt afford to go shopping. That night we went to see Hot Chip who were really good - though turns out i know less of their stuff than i thought i did.
Our flight to San Francisco was on Friday morning, and so to make sure that we got up in time i bought an alarm clock. Dumass here though set the time but forgot to switch on the "alarm on" button so it failed to go off - luckily rich woke up not long after we were meant to. We got the subway to the airport which just took forever! We were only a couple of stops away from the airport but had less then an hour and a half to get our plane when some idiot on the train infront pulled the emergency cord and so we were stuck at a station until they could sort out the problem. As you could imagine i was a little panicked. We got off at that station, which was somewhere in Queens and found a taxi. We got to the check-in desk on time but then had to queue to get through security. It was while we were still in this queue that they made the final boarding call for out flight!! We pushed to the front and then had to run to our gate, which was obviously number 40 and miles away. But we made it, thank god!
San Francisco here we come!
