Four Points By Sheraton Midtown Times Square New York City

... outweighs it all for some reason. I can't help it.

I tried to give a chance. I really did. I saw as much as I could. Times Square, the Statue of Liberty, Central Park, Empire State Building, Ground Zero, St Pauls Chapel, Madison Square Garden, all those main touristy things. Well I did them all, but a little differently. I saw the Statue of Liberty for free, by taking the Staten Island Ferry. Didn't pay to go into the Empire ...

... NY but little there was so much more to come.
I went to the starting hostel and there were loads of people there, no one seemed to be on the same tour, then I chatted to a girl called Nikki from Aus, who was on the tour then they came out of the woodwork. We were soon loading the van and off we went.
The highlights of the Trans America has to be, Yellowstone, Chicago, Teton National forest and Yosemite

... a million years.















My last stop on my self tour was a Belgian bar. I honestly don't ...

... We were going to watch the Independence Day fireworks but decided that we had done enough for today and would walk back to hotel. Halfway back my dreaded ankle gave out and I only just made it back to hotel where I immediately collapsed onto bed for a well earned rest!

Now completely recovered after invigorating shower, but ankle still quite sore. Will have to take it easy tomorrow! Maybe going to Ellis Island ...

... the hostel, and immediately met a guy in my room. He called himself "Gus", but I'm pretty sure he was the fat guy out of all the Simon Pegg movies. I really wish I had a picture. Anyway, walked around central park, and got lost pretty much straight away. That was a real blow. I eventually found civilisation and walked around, looking a bit of a state. 50 blocks without a purpose later, I went back to ...

... just a few short hours I would be back at my desk instead of lazing around the Symphony. Disembarkation did not go as smoothly as I would have hoped. We were told we could leave at 9am, but when we went downstairs, there was a long line. Nobody had been let off yet. So we waited in line for over an hour and eventually walked down to the port ...

... take us to customs. Then they realize one of us needs wheelchair assistance, so they take all of us except that couple in the bus back to the terminal. But the skyway isn't lowered for us to enter it, and apparently we can't be trusted to walk up the little stairway along the side of the thing, so we're left sitting in the bus for 20 minutes watching a bunch of ground crew guys try to line up a rolling staircase to the end of the skyway. Fellow passengers are growing quite ...

31.1.08 Today was a quiet day for us in New York. We realised that we were due to leave NYC in five days and had not made any further arrangements or our travels. So we sat down and worked it all out. We were annoyed to find out that flights from New York to Las Vegas had doubled since we last checked in Kissimmee. We should have booked them then. There was not much ...

... could wait for the boat. We snaked along for about 30 minutes but were entertained by the myriad of street performers playing horns, violins and guitars. One colorful performer sang happy birthday to Sister and made up a song about Texas. The ferry was very windy and quite chilly but we got tight up to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Since we were short on time we didn't get off to take a closer look, the ferry had already eaten up about an hour and a half of ...

... NYC peak hour is crazy unless you know where you are going in advance you are screwed!). There were so many busses going into the system they had special lanes for them, although totally mad it was well worth seeing. The first thing I wanted to do was see wall st. on a business day, I also wanted to see grand central station and the subway system, so I combined them all. I learnt about the subway system (and the smell) and first of all went the wrong way, but ...