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Published: June 22nd 2007
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Well everyone told me that New York would be amazing, but nothing prepared me for how amazing it really is. It is such a cool city, and there is so much to look at and so many things to see and do in such a short amount of time.
The location of my hotel was absolutely perfect - right in the middle of Times Square on 46th Street, where all the action and craziness begins and never ever seems to end. My hotel is about 100 metres from the middle of Times Square and despite the fact that I thought the hotel would be really bad, considering the prices you pay in New York and the reviews I had seen, it was actually really great. Staff were also really helpful which was good, and because of the location I never felt unsafe, and wandered the streets all day and all night, never feeling scared at any time.
Times Square really is like a mini Las Vegas in the middle of the city. The bright lights from all the billboards and stores almost blinds you as you wander by, yet you cant help but look
up and check every single one of them. They don’t come cheap either, a Mini and Hummer Billboard which is probably about the size of 4 of our billboards at home, would cost the advertiser $1 million a month - Holy Shitballs there is a lot of money flashing in front of you 24/7. The action and people around Times Square never slows down - there are people rushing past all day everyday - its such a strange sight, yet fun and exciting at the same time. You almost don’t want to sleep cos you don’t want to miss anything.
The first night I arrived in New York, as I was on the shuttle from the Airport, I heard on the radio that the new Die Hard Movie ‘Live Free or Die Hard’ was premiering at Radio City Music Hall. After I checked in it was still light, so I decided to head down to Radio City and see what was happening. Well - everyone must have heard on the radio too cos there were people everywhere. It was so much fun. The roads were all sectioned off and the red carpet was put across the front
of the entrance for all the stars to enter the filming. From where we were standing it was hard to see who was walking up the red carpet until they got there, and there were photographers everywhere falling all over each other. I managed to get some pictures of Ashton Kutcher and Bruce Willis and the funny guy from the Apple Ads - Justin Long, although you pretty much need a magnifying class to see them. But still I loved every minute of it, and could see why everyone came along, cos it was such a buzz around the cinema.
After my first night of excitement, where I wandered the street till all hours of the morning I tried to get some sleep before hitting the town again in the morning. I hopped on a bus first thing and decided to head to lower Manhattan to check out the sights. I walked down to Ground Zero, and as expected it was really overwhelming to imagine what they all went through. The size of the site itself is huge, so it’s hard to imagine there were once two massive sky scrappers towering above the city. Also made
it easy to see why they were such an obvious target. There is also a church right next to the World Trade Centre site, St Paul’s Cathedral. It is a pretty amazing Church as it has survived not only 9/11 (despite being next to the actual site, all that was damaged was a tree), but also survived floods back in the early 1900’s and George Washington used to attend this church. The chair he used to sit in when he came to pray every week still sits inside the church. Another funny thing about all the churches in Manhattan is that all of them are also cemeteries. I think I saw about 5 of them while I was in the city, and apparently before they built the cemetery in Harlem and Brooklyn, these tiny churches were the only options.
I also took a bus over to Brooklyn, as part of the tour the guys from Bendon organized for me as my birthday present. We went over the Brooklyn Bridge and saw some amazing views of the Manhattan buildings. The guy who ran the tour was a proud Brooklyn resident, so it was funny to hear him talk
about Manhattan and compare it to Brooklyn. You could tell there is definitely a competition amongst the two neighborhoods, even though there is only a bridge between them.
On the way back from Brooklyn I wandered up through the Financial District, checking out Wall Street and all the fancy buildings. There is so much detail on all the buildings, you can see that the banks all obviously tried to outdo each other all those years ago to build a bigger and better building than anyone had ever seen before. But don’t worry if we aren’t the Donald Trumps in the world, there are even shops for us ‘not yet millionaires’ - Daffy’s (check out the picture!)
The streets of little Italy were the last part of my monstrous day. I wandered through them and watched all the people enjoying this fine city as they sat and enjoyed their yummy food. I caught up for dinner with Jo from work, which was so fantastic after not seeing a familiar face for so long. We sat in a nice restaurant in a park in the middle of the city, drank cosmopolitans and enjoyed the
sites of New York, pretending we were living the high life. After a long day, I stumbled back to my hotel with very weary feet but still excited from an amazing day, and pretty much fell into my bed to get some sleep before another big day.
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Mumma Mia
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New York New York
I must go......it looks so amazing xxxx