New York City

A view of the Empire State from the Empire State Building

New York at night


Ground Zero

the Flatiron Building
The Carlton Hotel(& a yellow cab)

Part of Central Park
No Soup For You! forever! (it's closed down)

The Chelsea Hotel

The Hudson River loooking out to New Jersey

Times Square

Um, the picture explains itself


Got into New York and got a charming New York yellow cab driver(thats sarcasm by the way) not a terribly pleasant start to our visit. The cabs are fairly high tec with a TV in the back and the first thing we see on the news is a thing about a near miss with two planes on a runway at JFK airport(the one we just left). So we got to our 'blow out hotel' of the tour which made up for some of the grot we had stayed in, The Carlton on Madison Avenue, Manhatten, very nice, and nice staff. We went out for a walk in humid heat, and around the block was the Empire State building, we cheesed it down to Museum of Modern Art(MoMA) to see a Dali exhibition they had on. The staff there were great and we ended up seeing some amazing art work such as his Persistance of Memory(the melted clocks one) and the Metomorphosis of Narcissus and many other uber famous Dali paintings (though strangely after 3 exhibitions -London, Figures, New York, we still had not seen one of the 'elephant' paintings). Then we wandered up to The ed Sullivan theatre(The David Letterman show) and down Broadway to Times Square, and off to Grand Central Station and the Chrysler Building, and back to The Carlton where Steph and her flatmate Jen were also staying with us and we headed out for food, except Steph, whos order never turned up, bummer. Had an unexpected 6.5 hours sleep!
The girls got up and went on their 'sex and the city bus tour' which I obviosly declined. i planned out a route and wandered exuberantly through an amazing New York sunday morning down to the 'flatiron building' (the triangle one you'd know if you saw it, was the worlds tallest building in 1903) and on through Chelsea down to The Chelsea Hotel, visited by the likes of Jack Kerouac, but probably most famous for the fact Sid killed Nancy there, so I popped in to the foyer for a look round. On down to The Hudson River where I wandered along and cut back down and saw the Soup Nazis Kitchen from Seinfeld, and on to Central Park. on my way to Mannys, and Sam Ash guitar stores i came across Radio City Music Hall and NBC theatre. Bought myself an Ebow after a few accent problems (an 'E'bow, 'E'bow, 'E', no not a 'capo', an 'E'bow, 'E', 'E', 'E'bow, maybe I should have said 'A'bow) Mannys is uber impressive, with signed photos all over the walls of anyone you can imagine, anyone, Stones, beatles, Clapton, NY Dolls, The Doors, Dylan, Hendrix, Zeppelin, ACDC, Ozzy, Dean Martin, anyone.
Went back and met the girls and headed down Broadway. We caught a cab out to Pier 17 where we got tickets for the 7pm 'water taxi' and then went down to a Clothes Store and i went and checked out 'Ground Zero' though you can't see much, a lot of construction and cranes etc. went back and jumped on the water taxi (our tour guide was reminded me of dolemite, trying to rap and rhyme all his commentaries, hilarious) so we headed out to the statue of liberty , ellis Island, Brooklyn Bridge and got back an hour and a half later, just in time to miss the 'Bodies' exhibition across the street by 5 minutes. So we decided to walk to Little Italy for some food, which took a little longer due to our map being a little innacurate and Chinatown taking up a bit more room than indicated. After dinner caught a cab to The Empire State building (which is open till 2 am) where the girls went up the top for a look. After al the other frak outs in towers and steepleshalf that height I new it would be too much for me, and it was windy emough at ground level, so I sat it out, Deb later confirmed I would have lost my insides if I'd gone. Back to the hotel for a solid 1.45 hours sleep before our cab ride to Newark Airport. New York at 4am Sunday is actually very quiet for the city that never sleeps. we did see the rats coming out of the (steaming during the day) sewer grates to climb up the rubbish bins and inside to get their nightly dinner, rather fascinating actually.