hold fast

Day 6: New York

I’ve been pretty rubbish at keeping this up to date since I left, hopefully now we’ve got ourselves a little netbook I can do better!  I’ve been retro and kept an actual journal, so I’ll get them up online in the next few days hopefully…

Pretty shaky start to the whole trip when we nearly missed the flight from Heathrow, there were two flights to JFK at the exact same time,  we didn’t realise, and obviously ended up at the wrong gate, and of course that would be on the otherside of the terminal from where we needed to be.  We ended up rather hot and sweaty after a little run to make it to the right gate!  The rest of the journey was fine and we made it into NYC in early evening.  We grabbed a shower and headed out to meet Grant’s friend Chloe who lives over here in in a bar (we were meeting her in a bar, that’s not where she lives… However she does work there, and we would end up there quite a lot in the next few days!), but we missed her and didn’t have a number to get in contact with her, so we grabbed a couple of beers then retired to the hostel for the night to get some much needed sleep.

The next day we got up fairly late after the travel the day before, then took the subway downtown to go for a wander.  We just happened to get of the subway outside a diner I remembered from holiday here last year, so we headed in there for brunch (more of this place later).  Spent the afternoon wandering Times Square and Midtown and being fairly obvious tourists, and definitely out of towners - a doorman commented as we walked past, “Afternoon Gentleman… shorts and t-shirts? Alriiight!” We replied by saying we were Scottish, he seemed to accept that as an acceptable justification.  At night we went back to the sports bar from the night before, Blondies, to meet Chloe.  We proceeded to get horrendously drunk for completely free.

By horrendously drunk I mean waking up at 3pm the next day with neither of us remembering how we got home and having to sit down in the shower.  We cured the hangover by revisiting the diner from the day before and some more wandering/people watching/sunbathing.   Back to Blondies again later that night to piece together the night before,and watch the Yankees go out of the play-offs.  Still don’t really understand baseball,  back home we stopped playing rounders in Primary School.

Day 4 we got up bright and early(ish) and headed dowtown, as had become standard,we visited Majestic, the diner on 50th street for brunch, did a ‘downtown’ bus tour, a trip up the top of the Rockfeller Centre, and an ‘uptown’ bus tour through Harlem and the Upper East Side (xoxo).   I prefered the view from the Rock to the Empire State building when I went up last year, you can see a lot more of Central Park, it’s nearly as impressive a view as the sky scrapers down town. Wandered home via Central Park and definitely got a bit lost.  At night we went to the cinema with Chloe and her friend, we had to go in a side door of the cinema though, Tina Fey was filming some 30 Rock at the front door, how inconvenient.

Day 5 started as usual with a trip to majestic for some food, by this point the guys behind the counter recognise us, not sure if this is a good or bad thing?  Took a wander into China town, bought some Ray Ban sunglasses off a man in a alleyway, after he brought them out of another alleyway in a black bag to show us.  Haggled him down to $50 for the pair, I think he wanted $160 to start with or something.  You can make up your own mind if you think they’re genuine, but we’re happy with them!  More wandering and people watching was followed by a night time bus tour, this time we went over to Brooklyn to see the Manhattan Skyline at night, lovely!  Back to the Hostel, a quick shower then out to meet Chloe, her flatmate and her boyfriend for a night out.  We ended up in a club called Webster Hall, It was overly expensive, and had the most random crowd I’ve ever seen.  A 6’ 8” transvestite, a middle guy dressed in some sort of ships captains uniform and a boy who literally looked about 11 getting up to some ridiculous bump’n’grind on the dancefloor where particular highlights!  On the way home we managed to catch the end of the Ireland v Wales game at the Rugby World Cup, then home to bed!

Up the next day and time to check out, we left our bags at the hostel and headed down town a final time.  Obviously we stopped by Majestic for a final brunch, then headed down to battery park.  Our plan had been to head out to Liberty island on a cruise, but we were a bit late getting down there and the queue was huge, so decided to take the Staten Island Ferry to see the Statue of Liberty and the New York Skyline.  In the afternoon we took a walk round the South Street Sea Port and another wander round Central Park.  A quick stop off at Blondie’s to say goodbye to everyone we had met there, then picked up the bags and headed to catch the bus.  Seeing a Megabus in New York was a strange sight, but It was our chariot to Boston, and is where I’m writing this!

Next stop, Boston!

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