New York Day 2

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Woke up quite early yesterday (even for me) and got the subway into Manhattan whilst eating food I’d purchased in London and wasn’t really supposed to have brought into the country. I got off the train at 14th and 6th to do some sightseeing. Unfortunately I walked the wrong way for 20 minutes but did manage to see The First Presbyterian Church incase anyway cares. (I know I didn’t) When I eventually went the right way I walked most of midtown Manhattan up to the Empire State Building which was so big that I then had to walk back a few blocks to actually be able to see all of it at once.

The roads in NYC are crazy - it’s all one way for the most part and because of the grid system cars can only turn left or right when the walk sign is on for pedestrians or they’d be turning into a continuous stream of traffic As a result cars keep nearly hitting me but I’ve been informed that this happens to everyone.

I found a shop to unlock my mobile so that I don’t need to buy a new one, which is now done even though I misheard the price of $50 as $15 - although it’s still probably cheaper than buying a new phone altogether. I then sat in Bryant Park to cool down for a bit as it was about 30 degrees and I’d decided to wear jeans and a shirt - everyone in New York seems to wear jeans that have most of the legs cut off. Having then realised I was next to Times Square I wandered through there although it really is just a lot of massive adverts and chain shops.

For lunch I decided to head over to 9th Avenue to a place the guidebook recommended only to find it had been replaced with a kebab shop. Resisting the urge to just buy a kebab I wandered over to bear the Port Authority Bus Terminal and had a Chicken Parmigiana but made the mistake of ordering a whole one instead of half of one, as well as an apple turnover. I ended up eating half of it for my tea later on.

Next I got the subway down to Greenwich Village which is a bit like the Northern Quarter in Manchester but absolutely huge and had a look round some record and clothes shops whilst eating a very expensive ice cream. By this point I was pretty close to Ground Zero so went and had a look there. It’s hard to get much of a view of Ground Zero as it’s a huge building site at the moment (and obviously there isn’t that much there anyway) but it was strange seeing such a huge gap amoungst all of the huge skyscrapers.

After this I thought I’d go and get on the subway and see where I ended up - and I ended up on Coney Island, which I’d been told was a bit like Blackpool but in New York. By this time I got off the subway it was even hotter and the first thing you see is a collection of several 1980’s funfairs which are made up of rides which haven’t been renovated in 30 years and the remains of rides which have fallen to pieces. After deciding not to go on the 1 remaining rollercoaster I went down to the boardwalk to find what must have been thousands of people on the huge beaches - not what I expected from New York at all! After a walk down to Brighton Beach I returned to the subway station through some of the smaller streets, where most of the shops had Russian signage due to the fact that half of Russia now seem to live on the southern tip of Brooklyn.

I got the subway back to the hostel and had a look around online for some bars that I could go to and not be ID’d in, and as I was looking at the map in the corridor I got chatting to a girl called Lydia from Somerset who had been teaching at a drama camp upstate. She needed some directions and I needed somewhere to go for a drink so she invited me tout to a place called Prohibition with her and her friends who had also been staff at the summer camp. Even with my help we still got lost when we got off the subway but eventually got to the bar which luckily had no one on the door. Having assessed the range of beers I decided a Pilsner Urquell would a) be nicest and b) maybe make me not get ID’d, which it didn’t. However, it was $7 and with a tip on top of that I ended up paying about £15 for 3 pints - which I wouldn’t normally do but I figured that it would be unwise to try and get in somewhere else. After a while some more of Lydia’s friends turned up, most of whom were English and all of whom were really nice.

By 11 we were pretty tired so headed back to the hostel where I slept really well, and now I’m ready to go out and go to Central Park, The Rockefeller Centre and Staten Island as well as have a bit of a better look around Brooklyn.

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Comments

[Catherine Thompson]

"even with my help"
Even with your help we headed off to Belgium, when we were aiming for Normandy. And your dad always blamed that one on me!! Give my regards to Coney Island.....