New York

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New York New York

Arrived in New York on Monday 20th August, We got the bus from Buffalo near Niagra Falls on the American side at 11 pm on Sunday Night (19th). Carrie’s Amazing idea to arrive into New York at 6 am thinking we’d only have to hang around for 6 hours to get a bed lol and able to have the day exploring . When we arrived in New York at the HI hostel we were told that checking in was at 4pm. We had hardly any sleep on the bus and had to wait 10 hours to get a room and we were exhausted. What we should of done was left in the middle of the night and arrived around 12 pm or so which would have been perfect timing but things didn’t work out to bad after all and we didn’t really wanna be walking threw Buffalo at all hours of the morning. I was in the male dorm and Carrie was in the female dorm, as they didn’t have any co-ed left. We thought we’d chance our arm around 1pm to see if the rooms were ready. Luckily enough my room was, so both of us went up to the male dorm and into bed and went out like a light until about 6pm.
After a great sleep we went and got something to eat and came back and when I went up to the supposed MALE dorm when I walked in, there was 5 girls in there saying Ohhhhhhhhh I think you’re in the wrong room mate this is a female dorm. I was like WTF ! ! LOL… so I went down to reception who told me it wasn’t a female dorm after tonight, it was a mixed dorm it’s just full of girls at the min. I thought NO way……. I’m shattered and I don’t want to sleep with 5 girls knackin all night about nails and hair so I asked to be moved. They gave me another bed to sleep in so I made my way there to find out that some random guy was sleeping in it LOL like what a nightmare how hard could it possibly be to put someone in a bed for a night. Anyways went back down to reception and asked for another bed that there must be some mistake that some guys sleeping in that bed. They got me another bed and make my way back upstairs to my room which was called CHINA TOWN!! LOL . The next morning we were off to the Hudson hotel for 4 nights for some luxury. Whooo hoooo!!
That night we decided to phone down to the Hudson to see if the laptop had arrived, Carrie’s mum Angela was sending it over and it was getting delivered there so we thought we’d chance it. We were getting fed up paying for net access all the time so we phoned down and they had it. Happy days!!! We jumped on the sub way down to 59th street on Columbus and grabbed our parcels. ( Carrie’s aunt Kath had also posted us over Tetley teabags and tooth powder, After collecting our things we headed straight back to the Hostel for a shower and then bed and sat on the net most of the night sorting out our blog and emails etc.
The next morning we were packed up and ready to hit the Hudson hotel for 4 nights, oh we couldn’t wait we hadn’t slept in the same bed in over a week lol Big double beds hard to beat! All we kept getting was the top bunk with some complete messy random sleeping below. The Hudson hotel is top notch!! The only bad word to say about it is the price of drinks and the price of the mini bar in the room. Other than that it’s spectacular and it’s right in the heart of Manhattan. Well our first day staying in the Hudson we went to Macys the worlds largest store… great !!! (if you’re a woman) and headed to times square to check it out and century 21 which is at ground zero right beside were the world trade centres used to be. It was full of pre-season stuff a bit like TK Max back home. We never bought anything to be honest it was crazy… packed to the doors and everyone walking over the top of each other so we just went threw the shops just off Times Square, we ended up back at the hotel about 6 and had a beer as we were soaked through. (Rained all day really hard)
The Next day we made our way down to South Ferry which is at the very south of Manhattan to get the boat that takes you out to the
Statue of Liberty. The weather wasn’t that good, bit cloudy but visibility was still good. The boat ride was only an hour long but it was cheap and apparently you’re not allowed to go up to the top of the statue of Liberty anymore since September 11th so there wasn’t much point in getting off at the island anyway. (There’s word that next month your gonna be allowed up again, just our luck). After our boat trip we headed to Broadway on Times Square to see if we could get tickets for the Lion King. We were told to go the ½ price ticket store on the day and you might be able to get some. We got to the ½ price ticket store to find about 3000 people queuing up so we left and headed straight for the Lion King box office. Happy days they had a few tickets left and they were ONLY $121 dollars each (f**king bargain) so off we went and made our way threw Times Square. We got approached by some random girl on the street asking us if we wanted to go to a comedy night, the tickets were marked $40 per couple and she was offering them for $20 with an extra ticket so 4 people got to go for $20. Couldn’t resist it so we bought them and made our way home as we were gonna go that night. After a shower and getting changed we took a walk threw Central Park making our way to the comedy strip….We went into a bar and had a few beers and cocktails, The comedy strip was were Eddie Murphy and all the good comedians started there careers so we knew it had to be good. The 1st four or five were brilliant and the last 4 or 5 weren’t so good. They were wannabes and as the night went on the worse they got. The good comedians at the start got half an hour and the sh!t one’s at the end got 10 minutes so we left before it finished and that was about 12:30 excellent night out for a cheap price. The only catch was each person had to spend $20 dollars (tenner) on drink and we weren’t long in tallying that up. We started on the half bottles of champagne and drunk 3 of them and got the last bottle free so everything was sweet!!
The next day was hangover day so nothing to extravagant was going to happen lol I woke up at 8:30 am so headed into the town to get Carrie a web cam for the laptop and came back and went to bed until Carrie got up. Eventually when we left the hotel we were making our way to Bloomingdales for some more shopping and on the way we thought we would make our way threw Central Park. Carrie wanted to get the horse and cart threw the park so started talking to the guy to find out how much it would cost. The horse and cart was $35 for a quarter of the park but if you took the bicycle-cab it was $60 to go the whole way around the park. Carrie asked him would he drop us at Bloomingdales LOL 1st of all he said no straight away and then when we were gonna give it a miss he said ok…. “Normally I don’t but I’ll do it this time” So we hopped on the back for a lazy ride threw the park. He was really good he was telling us about all the different movies that were filmed there and where the scenes took place including things like, home alone 1 & 2, Big Daddy, Stuart Little, and Maid in Manhattan. He also showed us the John Lennon Memorial and where he was shot just outside his apartment. So after our park ride he made his way to Bloomingdales what a carry-on that was. Flying threw the main roads of New York on the back of a bike taxi’s tooting it was crazy!! What a mad idea that was asking him to drop us at Bloomingdales we should have just walked he almost killed us but he was sure he had it under control. We couldn’t stop laughing and we looked like 2 complete freaks on the back of this guys bike LOL, Eventually got there and off for a bit of shopping. Carrie ended up getting one of those Brown bags (I think they’re a waste of money, they look wick, and they look like a plastic bag lol) and also one for my sister. The Diesel shop was next, they had sales on but nothing that I really liked, Carrie got a pair of Diesel y fronts. After coming back to the hotel to drop off the shopping we jumped on the sub to head for the Empire State Building. The wait time to get up was 2 hours but if you paid $40 each you got to do the sky ride. That included a simulator ride which was narrated by Kevin Bacon it was pretty good and ya also got to jump the queue. We had to go for it as we didn’t have the time, we had to be on Broadway in less than 2 hours to catch the show. Everything in New York is just go, go, go!! lol. The Empire state building was completely rammed but the views of New York were amazing as you can see from some of the pictures, well worth the visit. Also on the tour as well it tells you all the best places to go and visit whilst staying in New York. After the Empire State Building we made our way to Broadway to see the Lion King.
(The following write up was by Carrie )
The Lion King was unreal, unlike anything that I’ve ever seen in the theatre or elsewhere, from beginning to end it was non stop entertainment. The opening scene had animals (cast dressed up) coming down the isles and the stage was packed with life, the colours, the costumes-wow they were really made up to look like animals, and the stage props were like something from a story book. ( the scene where Mufasa comes back to speak to Simba was fantastic, it was all done in the dark with twinkley lights and he came out in what looked like 3d/4d, I couldn’t stop clapping the whole way threw. Broadway truly have a winner, if I had to choose between the movie and play, I don’t think I could make the choice.

Back to me
After the Lion King we came back to the hotel straight away because we thought we had to fly out to Florida the next morning. When we got back and checked our tickets (after packing everything up that day) we found out that we had an extra day, we weren’t leaving until the Saturday. We were too tired to go back out so we just went to bed to get up early to make good use of our extra day.
Our Last day in New York we got up early and headed for Soho, Little Italy and China town all beside each other. Not much to do other than walk around the stalls and shops in China Town and Soho and Carrie bought a new juicy tracksuit, China town was massive the biggest I’ve ever seen. You actually think you’re in China there are that many shops and stalls and Chinese people around its unreal. Little Italy seemed to be just full of restaurants so we didn’t spend much time there. After China Town we came back to the hotel to leave off our bags and headed to Ground Zero to check out where the Twin Towers used to be and the firemen and policemen memorial. The memorial for the American Citizens was closed off apparently they are building somewhere for them. There’s loads of construction work going on at ground zero they’re building something to replace the towers, not to sure what it is but it won’t be finished until 2010 or so. After Ground Zero it was back to the hotel for a shower and then bed up at 6am to catch a flight to Orlando Florida. New York is a must see city to visit although in the summer months the humidity makes it really tough to travel around but Times Square and Broadway makes it all worth while…. We absolutely loved New York and hopefully we’ll be back again sometime soon.





Colin and Carrie

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Photos

Twin Towers Site
Ground Zero.

Ferry Trip
Carrie (hoods up, its cols outside)- with the New York Skyline

Comments

[Julie]

The big apple
Oh my god, I'm going there. It looks amazing, I'm so JEALOUS!!!! You two look like you are having an amazing time.......... I need a holiday :-) XXX