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Published: June 23rd 2008
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So after a way too early start on Wednesday to leave London we have spent the last 4 nights in new york. Wow! Everything is massive and lit up in bright lights! We stayed right in the theatre district near time square, so no wonder really!
The first night we just kinda took it easy, grabbed brochures and went through them and walked around to get our bearings, and had a well earned early night...
We had decided we would get a double Decker city sights bus ticket as it was the easiest and most cost effective mode of transport around Manhattan.. The pass we got have us an uptown tour through Harlem etc, a downtown tour past all the tourist attractions, wall street etc, a night tour that went through downtown and over to Brooklyn for night harbour shots with the Brooklyn bridge, a Brooklyn tour and a 75min boat trip out past liberty island and back... So we started with the uptown tour which was really intresting.. It took us past central park, which is massive!!! We went past all the luxury apartments of just about anyone you could name, learnt about how Harlem is turning around
time square
The ball drops just above the Chrysler sign and becoming a respectable part of town, and learnt about music and soul food... We jumped off at the bottom of central park and got some pics and then went to tiffany's... 6 floors of heaven!!! Looked around pretending we could afford the $2500 pieces we were enquiring about... Fun much!
I finally dragged myself out of there back to the real world and we jumped on the downtown tour... We had 48 hours for our ticket, so we figured we would do the full loop and see where we wanted to get off and look at further on Friday... It too was a good tour taking you past all the major sights and giving a bit of history along the way about different areas and immigration in the area etc... We also got to see the hell's angels streets and a few of their bikes... One theme that kept popping up was real estate... It is VERY expensive! And you really wonder how some places could be worth so much...
We also got to see their current emergency training thing... Each day right in peak hour all the police get to one spot and they then head
as a convoy to another location and time it to see how long it took... LOTS of cop cars and LOTS of very loud sirens... But very cool to see!
Went and grabbed food after all of that excitement and I had a Vegan burger, complete with Vegan Mayo and Vegan chips! Awesome! I also had a drink that was the length of my forearm! Hehe
We decided to do the night tour that night too... And jumped on that at 8pm... This was a great time to do it as it started off at twilight and the lights were just starting to stand out a bit... Really pretty... Empire state was red for us and we went over the Manhattan bridge to Brooklyn and down to the foreshore for pretty pics of the new York sky line and the Brooklyn bridge... Then back on the bus and back through the pretty city lights to time square... Amazing place at night! Not that you would know it is so bright! We headed down to rockafeller centre to go to the top of the rock observation decks. This has to be the best view of the city at night
m & m world
This only a brief glimpse of the mix your own... as you see all the lights including empire state looking pretty, where as the rockafeller doesn't light up coloured... All of a sudden it was midnight, so we headed back to the hotel through the billions of people that were still out and about on the Thursday night, and crashed...
Friday we did the Brooklyn tour, which was good, but not as good as the other three... We hightailed it back up to midtown and bolted down to the ferry docks for the boat trip, only to get there and realise that I misread my watch and we still had an hour to go.. Oops! So after ducking out of mum's dagger looks hehe we found shade and water to cool down as we did all that running in 87 degrees farenheit! The boat trip was great though! We went down the east river, which is actually sea not river, past Ellis island and up to liberty island, turned around and came back... We were really close to the statue of liberty without having to fight through crowds, which was great! There were so many people there!
We slowly headed back to the hotel and caught the downtown
bus down to pier 16 overlooking the East river... It was a bit like darling harbour with street theatre and shops and stuff... Caught the last downtown bus back to midtown, picked up some groceries and some monster sized pizza slices for dinner! I think it was bigger than my face!
On sat we went through the shopping district... We wandered through the shops with all their sales on our way to Macy's... Much better layout than harrod's but still like David Jones in the city... For international visitors you can also pick up an 11% discount card valid for 30 days on presentation of a valid photo ID...
From Macy's we kept wandering down toward the empire state building, where I had seen a bag I liked on the night tour... It's a guitar shape with lines on the strap to look like guitar strings... I like it...
We also visited toys r us so we could compare it to F.A.O Schwarz and both were very impressive, but only toys r us had k'nex... Don't worry I refrained from buying more! They also had a Ferris wheel that you could ride on but the queue was
me having fun in F.A.O schwarz
How cute is the elephant! So much fun... too long...
We went back to the hotel for a little and then to rockafeller centre for Nintendo world! We stopped off on Broadway so I could have a photo of me on Broadway, and then made it to Nintendo just as it closed :-(
It was about 9.30 so we headed back for bed.
Currently we are heading north to Boston, so back to driving on the wrong side of the road again! This time we are in a Chrysler impala lt which is like a commodore... Photos soon...
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Duff
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My dad is on his way to New York... say hi from me if you see him. Har. =p