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Trip Start
Dec 06, 2006
1
101
188
Trip End
Ongoing
New York City,
New York,
United States
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Last night we did a bit of wandering to see Times Square. Believe it or not I'd not stepped foot inside a McDonalds on American soil so thought it was time to set things straight and where better than Times Sq. After a surprisingly tasty and random Aberdeen Angus burger we walked back via a quick glance at the Empire State Building and then it was time to devise a plan of attack.
Actually I was tired so I went to sleep. In the morning, it was time to devise a plan of attack. This involved a number of key stages. Step one determine the sights to see. Step two price up the sights. Step three determine the most cost effective way of seeing those sights. Step four derive a shortest path to efficently visit said sights. You may be thinking that's all very easy, but you'll actually find step four is the travelling salesman problem and is NP hard, yes that's right nondeterministic polynomial-time hard. This means that I've had to apply heuristic techniques to develop an algorithm that can solve the problem for the limited number of time contrained destinations available.
I do love a bit of maths nonsense to liven up a travel blog.
Anyhoo, moving on. Ceri was up bright and early as she's got less time. I'm leaving her to it so I can cover more things in a more relaxed way. Or maybe just more things at the same pace. I decided to buy a 3 day New York Pass which would get me in to everything I would want to see for less than 100 smackers as well as plenty others I wasn't originally interested in but could now have a look at. Only problem was that the pass I'd bought online was trapped in my laptop as the pass people would only accept a print out. Luckily i forwarded it to the incredibly helpful man that works on the front desk and he printed it off for me. He's not failed to give good advice as of yet, but I'll trip him up. With my print out in hand I bounded off back to Times Sq, got my pass card and then, as it was sunny, headed on to the Empire State Building. One of the advantages of the pass is that you don't have to queue for tickets so I also saved myself a while. Not on the original list was the Skyride, one of those naff motion video rides. As I couldn't afford a helicopter ride and it was there and thanks to my pass it was free (sort of, but you understand) I thought why not. It was as predicted, not great but hey ho, Kevin Bacon thought enough of it, or the pay check (that's a cheque), to do the voice over. It was a bit disneyesque and I wouldn't call it a thrill ride but someone wasn't expecting quite so many turns. Near the end a bloke asked for it to be stopped as he was feeling sick! Quite funny. They offered to show the whole thing again but I didn't see much point as I could see it was near the end but some people sat through it a second time. I think it was the old classic footage of being on a rollercoaster that tipped him over the edge.
I then headed up to the observation level, got my snaps and then I was off again. Something isn't quite right with my travelling, afterwards I realised I paid the extra to go to the top and spent more time in the Auckland SkyTower. Never mind, the views were great up there but made me realise I've a lot of sights to see.
Next I went to MoMA. I do enjoy a good modern art gallery. Actually I enjoy rubbbish ones too. The art itself is often, sometimes literally, rubbish. But it's not the art that's entertaining, it's the description when the artist tries to convince you a charred hotdog represents the trauma of a nuclear holocaust, one of my favourites from the Tate. There was plenty of old toot on offer here, my favourite this time was an old telly and video playing the day of the week. Yes, the artist got it spot on, by displaying a very general measure of time in the gallery space, the low tech equipment made me aware of my own spatial and temporal presence. I just like stuff to look at, if I like the look of it I like it, it doesn't need comical meaning. Having said that, when I see a block of blue colour I can appreciate that it's a means of evoking the immateriality and boundlessness that reflects the artists own peculiar utopian vision of the world. That's obvious from the hue of the colour, isn't it? Parp.
No time to contemplate that one, on the subway and across to the pier as I was off on a cruise. I chose to do the 4pm one so I could see the skyline by day one way and then by night on the way back. It's all about efficiency. It was really good, it was the sunset cruise and they managed to get a beauty. How's that for organisation. The only problem with it is that I couldn't really get any decent photos once the sun had gone as my camera isn't really up to it. Also the boat was sloshing about in the Hudson a fair bit so keeping it still was a problem. The cruise left from 42nd street, so midtown on the west and did half a trip around the island past Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty and under Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges. I sat on the left hand side so I'd get the views all the way although it backfired slightly as the best views for the Statue of Liberty were on the right. Ho hum, I got some snaps as the boat swung around and if need be I can also go back on and sit on the right thanks to my pass!
It was a two hour cruise so after that I had a slice of pizza pie (cracking diet at the minute) and thought I'd cram in one more thing for the day. The obvious choice was Madame Tussauds, it was on the way back to the hostel and still open. It wasn't on the original list and having been in I wouldn't hurry to go back. Some were better than others, but generally it wasn't a very well put together attraction. I know it's a waxworks but it's just a load of wax people stood in rooms. They've not really done much in terms of the sets. Anyway, for a short while of free fun I couldn't really complain.
Now to get planning for tomorrow.
