New York Part 2
Trip Start
Apr 20, 2008
1
33
70
Trip End
Ongoing
New York City,
New York,
United States
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
The next day we went off to visit the Statue of Liberty, the procedure to get onto the ferry was ridiculous. We first had to line up to buy tickets, then line up again to get into a building where we had to go through metal detectors have our bags searched and then finally we were able to join another line that would allow us onto the boat. The first stop was liberty island which is the home to the statue. Unfortunately only a limited number of people can enter the monument per day (as in climb it) so we had to be satisfied by walking around the base. We got back onto the boat which took us to Ellis Island, home to the immigration museum which was once the first stop for all immigrants arriving into the US
Empire State Building
. It was here that they were processed and checked for infectious diseases etc. Some of them were denied entry and had to return on a several week boat voyage back to their home country. It was really interesting but it was huge! It just kept going and going and there's only so much information one can take in in one day. We returned to the mainland and went to the site of the World Trade Centre. This is now a massive construction site where a new world trade centre is being built. There is a memorial plaque on the wall of a nearby building but apart from that all you can see it a massive hole in the ground. We then visited the Brooklyn Bridge and walked across that. Later in the evening we went back to Time Square just to wander around and do some shopping. We then met up with another of Jo's friends from Australia called James. We went to a wicked rooftop bar and had some beers. The bar was on the 12th floor of some hotel, the view was great but it was a bit fancy pants really and we felt quite under-dressed!
The next day we hired bikes and rode around Central Park.. it was nice but I am a bit of a critic as I prefer my parks without roads in them! There are lots of smaller pathways that would be nicer and quieter but they don't allow bikes on them.
Empire State Building
. So my favourite thing about this city so far is the street food, in particular the 24 hour fruit stalls... yes thatīs right 24 hour fruit stalls...! With the most delicious looking and cheap fruit ever, I just can not help myself every time I walk by, packet of blueberries, raspberries, a peach.. thankyou! Yum! There are also the kebab, yiros type stall which at times can have a line up of over 100m long! Crazy. Amongst many others is the giants pretzels, now I was expervting them to taste lie wetzels pretzels like we have at hoem but it was nothing lik eit, it actually tasted like eating a giant pretzel... covered in an extraordinary amount of salt that made it close to inedible. I donīt reccommend it!
Thursday I visited the natural history Museum, it was a great museum, shits all over Adelaide's and I think from memory may even be better than the London equivalent. I got there early which was lucky as it was quite uncrowded, the the time I got to the top floor, the dinosaur floor! It was PACKED! Full of vacation care groups and a million kids running round screaming. When I left the line to get in was astronomical! I walked through central park for a bit and then caught the subway to Little Italy. This neighbourhood pretty much consists of Italian restaurant, souvenir shop, Italian restaurant, souvenir shop
Empire State Building
! Later I went to meet up with Jo at the statue of Liberty which I had previously thought was somewhere else which turned out to be the Chrysler building, the tallest building in NY but only contains offices! Again we had to wait in several different queues and go through a rigorous security process. I found going up over 80 floors in a crowded lift quite an uncomfortable experience but it went very fast.. which was perhaps part of the problem. When we finally got to the top it was so crowded we could hardly move and we had to wait our turn to get to the front so we could enjoy the view. This involved being quite assertive or one would find oneself pushed to the back of the crowd again. We had picked a good time to go as it was just getting dark, it was still light enough to see everything at first but the city was all light up and we got to see the sun set. The view was incredible but I was SO relieved to be out of there! It was quite a stressful experience and we felt quite exhausted.
We headed to a neighbourood called Greenwich, near Soho to check out some bars. We ended up getting talked into getting into a bicycle taxi with a man trying to raise money for his tee-pee tour.. quite an interesting fellow. He took us where we asked to go and when we got there told us it was crap and so took us somewhere else! We had a drink at a random bar and then headed to a jazz club around the corner. When we got there we decided it wasn't worth paying the cover charge as we couldn't stay too long. The manager happened to be walking past and let us in for free. A big fat American man from Tennessee came and sat next to us and bought rounds of tequilla and beer. It's quite funny that no-one here can place out accents. They all think we're English or Scottish?? OR as this man guessed.... from Boston???!!! Met some other interesting types and there was a cool band playing so we ended up staying longer than we had anticipated. It was our last night in New York after all although I didn't appreciate having to get myself to the airport the next day with a splitting headache!!!
