Advertisement
Today we dedicated the whole day to sightseeing and tried to tackle as much of New York’s famous landmarks as possible. As New York is spread across such a huge distance we decided to purchase a bus tour ticket which allowed us to ‘Hop-on Hop-off’ across the city at sites and attractions that we wanted to visit.
The ticket cost us $49 each and was valid for 48 hours. As Kim didn’t see the Egyptian exhibit at the Natural History Museum the day earlier, our first drop off was The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The suggested price to get in was $20 each, but as we were only interested in the Egyptian section Kim managed to haggle us both in for $10!!! James was well impress. Within the first 2 mins we had both been told of by the security guys because James kept forgetting to turn his flash off and Kim couldn’t help touching all the priceless artefacts that dated back 3000 years! After taking loads of photos of mummies and tombs we got a short taxi (The famous Yellow cabs like of the movies, they even have TV’s and GPS in the back) ride to Central Park zoo.
We didn’t know what to expect as we had heard mixed reviews of the place, but we were very impressed. They had a great range of exotic birds and reptiles in the tropical section which we took loads of pictures of the as you can see below. The main attraction of the Zoo were the two polar bears that seemed so fluffy and cute that Kim was tempted to dive in with them to give them a cuddle.
We then jumped back on the tour bus and headed in the direction of Times Square, which really is mind-blowing. There are giangantic flashing advertising boards everywhere, yellow cabs honking theirs horns, impressive theatres with endless amount of touts trying to sell us ‘The best seats in the house’ and on every corner there were the NYPD with sub-machine guns. This impressed James so much that he went into the nearest shop and bought himself a T-shirt with NYPD on it….grrrrrrr! A short walk around the corner was Macys - the biggest department store in the world. James said that we could only go in on one condition, that any purchase had to be below $20 and we were no
longer than 20 mins in there…..For those of you that don’t know Kim is a big fan of Jessica Simpson and was amazed to discover that she had her own shoe range out. It was at this stage that James started tugging on the invisible piece of fish-line towards the exit (You guys know what I mean). The only thing that prevented us from leaving was when we caught sight of a Ben and Jerry’s counter with a huge range of un-discovered ice cream flavours, such as Cake Batter and Chocolate cheesecake….lets just say that we left a few pounds heavier, as usual in Kim’s case.
Next on the route was Maddinson Square Garden which was one of James’s highlights. However while he was trying to take in the atmosphere of some of the greatest sporting events that had taken place, he kept getting distracted when Kim kept saying “whats so special about this place?”…..So he sent her back to Macys for 15 mins.
We walked 2 blocks around the corner to The Empire State building and took loads of amazing photos, but we didn’t go up because a) Kim was being a wimp and b) James was
being too tight to pay the $20!
Next on the route was Ground Zero and the financial district of New York. There isn’t much there apart from a huge building site but it was still quite moving and emotional just being there, especially with some dude playing pan pipes in the back ground. We also visited a nearby fire station that had lost half their crew on September 11th.
We had a walk around Wall Street and tried to get into Tiffany’s Jewellery shops but the security guard took one look at us and said they were closed…..I am sure he was being discriminative against us because we looked grubby and James feet were black!
After walking around the financial district for a good hour, Kim was starting to get slightly annoyed at the number of times James kept saying “Kim will you just stop and get a photo of me and this building” or “Kim, go climb that wall and I will get a funny picture of you”……lets just say 220 photos later James had to put the camera away, otherwise Kim would have smashed it into the nearest building she could find.
We were also on
a mad hunt for the famous golden bull sculpture that everyone goes on about, once we found it we had to fight with about 50 Japanese tourist to get our photo taken….it took some time, but we finally muscled our way in.
On our last legs we thought that we would do one final land mark which was Brooklyn Bridge. James had been looking forward to seeing this all day, but wasn't taking any notice of Kim who was trying to give him the correct directions to the bridge and insisted on asking every copper on the corner how to get there.
The bridge is very impressive and as described before it seemed a little surreal being there as we had seen it so many times in movies and photos. Again James went into crazy snapper mode and was taking photos of every angle he could find. Our favour photo has to be the one of the four nuns staring out to sea. Ha, Priceless.
By this stage we had been sight seeing for nearly 12 hours, and decided it was time we better rest our poor feet and get some food, so we jumped into a cab
and headed to China town. We had a quick walk around all the tourist shops that were selling Louis Veitton handbags, Bobby Hilfiger jeans and Mike trainers all at ‘out standing’ prices according to the shop keepers. While we were walking down the street, we stopped for a split second to read a sign about a foot massage and before we had time to blink the owner was dragging us in. We thought ‘why not’ as we had been walking all day and deserved a rest so after agreeing on a price of $10 for 15 minutes we went in. James was getting increasing annoyed because the guy wouldn’t stop goading us for more money and as it was meant to be relaxing we nearly walked out. The cheeky git even tried to charge James double because his feet were so dirty!! After they had finished we paid the $10 and they started demanding a tip, when we refused they started to raise their voices and said that we had too so we coughed up $1 and ran out. I think we will wait until we are in Asia for our next massage.
After this we went for a
Cantonese meal and got the 30 minute sub ride back home and crashed out for the night. We both slept like babies that evening despite sharing a room with two spanish guys that came in at 5 in the morning!!!
Sight seeing Day - Part 2
Well Kim was up nice and early and all ready to go…James thinks he might have been wrong about Kim and expected that he would have an hour to laze around in the mornings while she gets ready but nope not this girl…she is up and out within twenty minutes not caring that she hasn’t got any makeup on or that she hasn’t even brushed her hair from getting out the shower!!! We went for breakfast at the usual place for omelettes…we now have names for our little growing bellies…it makes putting on weight less painful!!!
We then hopped on the Gray Line Sight Seeing bus on 93rd Street…now the problem that Kim has found with James is the fact that he just doesn’t listen to her…James is quite surprised with Kims sense of direction. On a number of occasions James has ignored Kims advice on which way to go and
has ended us up in the wrong place on a number of occasions. We sat on the top of the bus dodging the traffic lights and the tree branches which are only a foot above your heads and got sun burnt to a crisp. We travelled through Harlem saw the Apollo theatre where all the greats including Michael Jackson, Frank Sinatra and Dianna Ross have all played at in their early days. We also passed Bill Clintons office, Donald Trumps building where they film the American version of the Apprentice.
The aim of today was not to spend much money but our first stop was Bloomingdales. Kim loves Juicy Couture so she wanted to see what prices were like in America compared to the hundreds that you pay in Harvey Nichols. James managed to pull her away from a ‘chillout tracksuit’ (girls you know what there like) that she had seen valued at £120 (UK prices £500+) but when we got downstairs she caught site of a Juicy Couture purse valued at £40.00 (UK prices £150+) James could not stop Kim from buying this purse as she was in her element and so excited. James couldn’t watch!!!
The
next bit was amazing…in our search for the toy store out of the movie Home Alone we came across a toy store called FAO Schwarz from the movie BIG which was made famous by the 30 foot Big Piano. Obviously we couldn’t leave without have a go, so we joined the queue along with a crazy pack of screaming 7 years olds and pushed our way to the front (James started shouting at this one kid cos he jumped on his toes). This happened to be James’s highlight of the day and he was rather impressed with the TUNES he was producing. Also in the toy store was an amazing Harry Potter section where we both got dressed up, Kim got to create her own Barbie, an amazing lego display and a doll section (for those of you who that don’t know, James is proper freaked out by dolls and especially when Kim got rather attached to one of them!!!
We then got back on the downtown bus to Times Square and headed all the way down to the port to board the ferry to Statton Island to see The Statue of Liberty however we had been sat on
the bus for an hour and a half as the traffic we got a few photos and then just ended up sitting on the decking…James wanted to do a scene from Titanic but Kim kindly declined. Kim was convinced that part of the statues arm/flame had fallen off…..
We got back on the bus to head back to the hostel and ended up with a tour guide which spoke like he was out of the mafia…quite comical as he described the tour but then got a little aggressive when we didn’t give him a tip. The Americans are great but when you don’t tip them they openly ask you for it. They are only paid a very minimum wage and rely on the tips heavily for income…for a backpacker tips just aren’t in the budget however Juicy couture purses are!!!
At this point we were very tired but went next door for a Thai meal. Kim still hasn’t realised what travelling is about as she ordered a cocktail at £4.50. We have just said that we would put America down to an experience regarding money.
Last night we had two Spanish guys staying in our room which
were gone when we got back as they made Kim feel a little nervous as when she woke up this morning she got a full view of this guys y fronts lets just say he was heavily packaged!!! Kim has been very apprehensive each night about who is going to be coming into the room at night whilst she is asleep but last night two lovely Australian women were sharing our room, very chatty mid 30’s and full of travel information bout Aus and New Zealand.
It’s the 4th July (Independence Day) tomorrow and we are going to chill throughout the day in central park and make our way to the East side of the rive for the fireworks.
It will be nice to relax after 3 mental days of sight seeing!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.117s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 8; qc: 56; dbt: 0.0761s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
sally
non-member comment
I'm so jealous!
Oh my god.......you guys look like you are having an absolute ball! I'm so jealous.....I love NYC! Look forward to the next installment and dont forget to go to cherry hill in central park!