4 Englishmen in New York

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A snow covered New York might look really nice in the movies but nothing could prepare us for how cold it's been.

We got in on Wednesday evening and spent a few hours sampling the local Irish bars. We were all pretty tired and had a big day of sightseeing planned for Thursday, so had a relatively early night. The night will be remembered purely for a full speed pelt through the streets of New York back to our hostel. We were worried we would literally freeze if we didn't move quickly - it was about -15.

Big day of sightseeing yesterday in temperatures of -13 (the extra 2 degress made all the difference!!) and we took in the Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, Grand Central Terminal and the site of the World Trade Centre. We walked all the way down from our hostel at Time Square to the bottom of Manhattan, a walk which we started at 9am and finished at about 3pm (with a couple of stops on the way).

Quick taxi ride back to Greenwich Village, during which Joff convinced the taxi driver that people living off the state in the UK are called "Robsies" (sorry Robin...) and we were nicely warming up in a pub called the Slaughtered Lamb. Happy hour (which ran from 4 until 7) came and went, a man smelling of urine sat next to Joff, we got talking to some guy whose girlfriend went totally nuts at him before running off crying and Joff got the barmaid to have her picture taken with his Gudjohnson figure.

A lot more drinks later and we were wandering around looking for somewhere else to go, when we spotted a cool looking bar which looked like it could be a laugh. It was cabaret night, and we pulled up a few stools before noticing the Rainbow flag (international sympbol of homosexuals) winking out at us by the piano. We'd only walked into a gay bar on cabaret night. They pulled out all the sterotypical numbers, Liza Minelli, Judy Garland, Ricky Martin and everyone who got up to sing was absolutely brilliant! Despite Jamie looking like he might keel over at any minute with shock, we stayed for a few hours and had a great time. One to remember, though it's all a bit fuzzy today.

Haven't done much today as we're all a bit hungover, but we did manage to have a walk around snowbound Central Park. We're currently working out what to do this evening as we went to get tickets to see the Knicks tonight, only to find out that all the people who've told us it would be easy because the Knicks suck were lying. Sold Out!!

Off to Rio tomorrow evening, where it will probably take us a week to thaw out.

AC

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