New York, New York! The city that never sleeps... unfortunately we had to, so that made for two and a half jam packed days. Our weekend began at 2am Saturday morning, yes – that’s right 2AM! After an hour and a half trip to Buffalo (including a stopover at the US border, which is actually quite a funny story because I was feeling like crap and looked like crap and had to try and face up to the border patrol without fainting. Needless to say I was getting the eye from them all, and was actually asked if I had been taking narcotics - I swear they all thought I was smuggling ingested drugs). Anyway our flight from Buffalo was delayed two hours which was fine by me because being as sick as I was I got another two hours sleep on the airport lounges. Classy.
Once we touched down in New York we managed to navigate our way out of the airport in Queens into Manhattan, out of Manhattan and over to Brooklyn (which is actually just south of Queens) to our hostel Crown Brownstone. Our neighbourhood was complete with stoop monkeys, black guys playing basketball at the local courts (as seen in every New York TV show) plus the privilege of being two of the only 6 white people we saw all weekend. Strangely enough, because you see that type of neighbourhood on TV so often i had this weird sense of de ja vu all weekend... I’ve seen all this before....
Our first day involved a stroll around lower Manhattan, checking out the New York Stock Exchange, missing the last ferry to the Statue of Liberty, waiting for an hour to get to the top of the Empire State Building for a disappointingly smoggy view and then enjoying a fantastic dinner atmosphere in Little Italy.
Day two was immediately better with me and the weather feeling better. After a makeshift brekky we began our day with an amazing walk over the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan. As you can see from the pics we were a bit snap happy. It was a beautiful old suspension bridge opened in 1883, with amazing views of Manhattan, the Manhattan Bridge and the Liberty statue. After that we headed uptown to Yankee stadium, soon to be torn down, to see the Toronto Blue Jays beat the pants off of the New York Yankees. Plus I got a picture with an NYPD cop! And he loves Australia! Go Blue Jays!
After the game, Times Square was next on the agenda for some shopping, a little bit of heaven at the M&M’s shop and a Brazilian festival. Dinner at the Heartland brewery and a taste of some pumpkin spice beer, followed by a trip to the top of the Rockefeller Centre for a spectacular night view of the city. It was a million times better than the Empire state, with fewer people and we enjoyed a relaxing hour taking in the lights and the balmy evening.
Day three was a rush – so many things to see still, so little time! On the road by 9am down to the ferry docks for the coast guard escorted trip to Liberty Island. The statue is HUGE! But at the same time i expected it to be bigger (thanks to the movies and trick cinematography). A generous gift from the French. Our ferry ride back included a stop at Ellis Island where previously all new immigrants were required to dock. A lot of interesting historical information, including the ‘quotas’ of people from the Northern and Southern hemispheres permitted during the early 1900’s to stem the flow of immigration, and an ‘Asiatic Barred Zone’, much like our infamous ‘White Australia Policy’.
After Ellis Island we sprinted up to the top of Central Park, by way of subway, and then power walked for two hours from the top of the park to the bottom, rapidly absorbing the peaceful greenness of the park in such a big city (and a lake where you are only permitted to run around it in an anti-clockwise direction!). At the bottom of Central Park was 5th Avenue and we did some speed shopping at Abercrombie and other shops of that sort, before once again navigating cancelled subway routes, streets around our hostel (for five blocks) being blocked off for a festival and an unmarked taxi ride to the airport. Ah... made it.... Wait! What do you mean our plane has propellers?!
One final stop at the border for some duty free grog and the weekend came to an end...
Check out the pics!
Kiles xxx
