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Published: November 19th 2005
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On Wednesday, we took the train to
Greenwich Village, found the
Friends building (the exterior shot used at the start of the show) and walked to Washington Square and through NYU. Afterwards, in the strangely warm weather (21 degrees celsius), we did a little shopping on
Broadway before taking in a movie (
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang with Val Kilmer and Robert Downey Jr.) and heading back to the hostel (in some amazingly heavy rain). We grabbed a giant New York pizza on the way home.
The next morning, winter arrived in the form of the cold, crisp temperatures that we were expecting from NYC at this of year. Oddly, up until then we had been experiencing some kind of a autumn heat wave. Accordingly, we decided to freeze our butts off and take the free ferry ride to
Staten Island which affords some great views of
Manhattan,
Ellis Island and
Liberty Island (which has some strange green French statue on it). Once back on Manhattan, we were thankful to find a stall near Wall Street selling hot apple cider (non-alcoholic) which we drank in a park whilst comparing the blue bits on our extremities. We spent the rest of the morning working our way up Broadway, darting into shops whenever the pain became too much...we'd made it all the way around the world without a winter coat and there was no way we were going to give in two days from the end!
We ate lunch at a Wendy's (fantastic chilli con carne and baked potatoes) before taking the train to
Times Square where we picked up tickets for that night's taping of
The Late Show with David Letterman. They record the show at around 4.30pm to be aired later that night, but it is all recorded 'live' i.e. in one take, which is quite impressive to see. That night's guests were the shock-DJ Howard Stern, Tom Hanks (via Satelite from Vegas) and some rapping people who, one day, are going to be as big as their jewellery...apparently. After the show we ate fish at 'Planet Hollywood' before taking the elevator to the 86th floor of the
Empire State Building - just to remind ourselves just how cold New York still was.
Today, we explored Trump tower, St. Patrick's Cathedral (the other famous NY cathedral), Macy's on 34th Street and Madison Square Garden before turning up for free friday night entry to MoMA (the Museum of Modern Art). There were some cool Seurats, Monets, Van Goghs, Picassos, Dalis etc. as well as some dubious Warholes, a load of Pollocks and some very well installed installations in the contemporary section. It was fun but we were glad we hadn't paid! All day, the weather remained bitterly cold but we still refused to buy coats, although in a moment of weakness we did look lovingly at a street-vendor's 'genuine' cashmere scarves...
For our last evening, we ate in an amazing Thai restaurant in
Chelsea (the "Royal Siam") and drank New Zealandish Sav. Blanc from the Malborough region - two reminders of the past year.
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