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Published: October 14th 2008
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Seinfeld Restaurant!** Before I begin, I know it’s been ages since I’ve updated, and I’m sorry! New York was weeks and weeks ago now, so I really should have written about it earlier. So here we go.. The long awaited New York blog! **
So I arrived in New York, how exciting! I took a taxi to the hostel and was expecting it to be really expensive because the hostel was 60 blocks from the bus terminal. It only came to a little over $10, so that was cool. I asked for a bottom bunk (I was staying for 8 nights, and the bottom bunk is always better, especially when you’re there for a long time) but was told that it was impossible because they were fully booked. I got up to the room and found that I was the only person in it, so the girl at the desk was a liar. Instead of fighting an unsinkable fight, I decided to wait it out and see if anyone else came. I went for a walk down Broadway. I was so excited when I found out that the hostel was near Broadway, til I found out that Broadway is a really
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The new Yankee Stadium long street, and I was not at the glamorous end! I did manage to see the restaurant they used in Seinfeld though, Tom’s Restaurant, so that was cool!
That night the hostel was putting on a BBQ, and there was a musician there that was apparently a big thing in Central Park. He was good, the food wasn’t bad either. I met a girl named Ella (my future daughter’s name!) from a small mining town in Nevada. She was very passionate about politics, and talked my ear off about it. It was interesting because I learnt a lot, but didn’t really have much to contribute to the conversation!
I went to bed being the only one in the room, but soon met my new room mates. The first came in at about 1am, switched on the light, apologised and then left. Honestly, why do you need the light on? The next came in at about 3am and did the same thing! I couldn’t believe it, some people just have no clue! Needless to say, I had no interest in befriending either of these girls!
Friday I woke up early and met up with a group downstairs for a
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Graffitti in The Bronx tour of The Bronx that the hostel was doing. I’m not quite sure what I was expecting of the tour, but it didn’t deliver. We walked past both Yankee Stadiums; the old one, and the new one they are building right next door. Doesn’t make sense to me, but you know, it is New York! Bigger and better! We walked through the Bronx, saw the down and out buildings and houses.. There were lots of people sitting out on the streets on anything they could carry; computer chairs, kitchen chairs, foot stools. The vision of them leaving their house and carrying their computer chair to their local hangout amuses me! There were lots of Aussies on the tour, so that was cool. It’s to be expected though, there are so many Australians that are travelling, so hostels are taken over by us! After the tour I went to Times Square with Annie, one of the Aussies, she’s from Cairns and has spent the last 10 months in Whistler. Times Square is amazing. So much bigger than I could have imagined. Beau, we’re going to have an awesome time there for New Years!! Everything is lit up, even during the day.
Billboards everywhere, even the Police Department sign flashes! New York has a Hershey’s store just like the one in Chicago, didn’t bother going there this time though.. We went to the M&Ms store, which was so very cool. All the cute merchandise you could buy! There are walls full of M&Ms in every colour possible, and the store was three or four stories high. Crazy! I managed to get out of there without consuming a single chocolate, just bought a lapel pin for my collection. We did a little more shopping and had some lunch, then went back to the hostel. We were both a little buggared from walking around so much, and I needed to get ready for the baseball.
The train trip to the baseball took quite a while, but was cool cause I got to go through Queens. Shea Stadium (home of the Mets) is cool, there are escalators everywhere to take you up to the various floors. Walking isn’t necessary. The escalators were actually appreciated by me, as I had tickets in the nosebleed section! I bought myself a cute Mets hat, and sat in my seat. The game itself was actually a little dull.. I
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The M&Ms store.. Glorious! didn’t quite know what was happening, and couldn’t work out the scoring. The guy next to me ended up being from Vancouver, so wasn’t too knowledgeable, but knew a lot more than I did! There wasn’t much atmosphere, especially compared to the basketball & hockey, but it was still good to see. The best part was hearing the accents; I could tell we were in New York cos everyone was saying “hawt dawgs” and “beeah” I loved it! The Mets ended up winning, so I was relieved. Up until then, each game I had been to see had resulted in the home team losing.. I thought I was a curse!
Saturday morning I met Annie in the common room and we went off to explore Central Park. It’s only two blocks from the hostel, so it’s nice and close. I have never seen as many people on bikes, rollerblades, weird street-ski things, walking, running, jogging etc as I did in Central Park. They even have traffic lights to control the pedestrian traffic. Amazing. There are lots of nice little ponds, quite a few baseball fields, buskers, and there was even a man telling Hans Christian Anderson stories. We saw
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Shea Stadium, home of The New York Mets a protest with all these men and women going topless, protesting that we should all be able to walk the streets of New York topless. No thanks!
We walked 5th street, where there are lots of designer shops and nice hotels. We saw Trump Tower, which is gorgeous inside, went to the New York library, which is where Carrie was meant to get married in the Sex and the City movie, also gorgeous inside, and shopped a little. Then we went to the last minute ticket booth, to see if we could score some discounted tickets to RENT. We were told that although the ticket office only opens at 3, we should get there at 2 to avoid a queue. We got there at about 2:05 and the line was already massive! It grew so fast too, so lucky we were only 5 minutes later than we were supposed to be! Once the ticket booths opened, it didn’t take long to shuffle everyone through. We managed to get tickets in row A. Score! We were so excited! We went back to the hostel to shower and pretty ourselves up for the show.
We decided to go for dinner
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Baseball at Planet Hollywood because we got a voucher with our RENT tickets.. Woo, another discount! Food was nice, I had a spinach dip and Annie had a burger. Cocktails too, yummo! Then it was time for the show. RENT has been playing on Broadway for something like ten years, and it only had a few weeks left til it closed.. We got in just in time! I knew nothing about the show, but Kat never shuts up about it, so I thought I should see what all the fuss was about. It was awesome! The stage was minimal; no elaborate sets and it never changed, but it didn’t matter because you were focused on the actors.
The next morning I did my washing (woohoo!) it’s not fun but it becomes a necessity when you have no clean undies. That afternoon I went to see Mary Poppins on Broadway. Mary Poppins was one of my childhood favourites. I remember watching it almost daily with Goob and Mark. They had changed a fair amount of it for the musical, written new songs and adapted the old ones, but it was pretty good. The actors also did REALLY bad English accents. Even
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The crowd at the baseball as an Australian I was offended! I was happy, though, when Mary pulled a lamp out of her carpet bag and when she flew over the crowd with her umbrella at the end. Fun times!
Monday morning I woke up early and was off to the US Open! Yay! I had seen the draw the night before, and was excited that I got to see Lindsay Davenport & Rafael Nadal play! I got to the stadium pretty early, and scoped the area for some free stuff, like we get in Melbourne! I scored a tennis ball shaped fan, but that was it! Disappointing! The first two womens’ matches went pretty fast, and the favourites won pretty easily. The Nadal game though, so good! He was playing a guy from Germany named Bjorn Phau, and he made Nadal work for the win! There were lots of awesome rallies, and the whole crowd got behind Bjorn. Two of the sets ended in tie breaks, he did really well! Nadal won though, obviously. After the games I went and took photos of this cool globe fountain that was outside the court, hung out in Times Square for a bit, then went back
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Central Park to the hostel.
Tuesday I had full intentions of going to the Museum of Modern Art, til I got on the train and remembered that it’s closed on Tuesdays. Dang it! So I changed my plans and went on the ferry to Staten Island to see the Statue of Liberty. To my surprise the ferry was free! Nothing is meant to be free in New York! It doesn’t stop on Ellis Island (the island that the statue is on) but I didn’t mind, I just wanted some photos of it. I asked two people to take photos of me with the statue, but both turned out shitty. I’d rather just spend half an hour trying to take a good selfie! Other people just don’t care and don’t line them up in the way I want the photo to turn out. Perfectionist? Perhaps. After the ride I decided to walk down to Ground Zero. I passed Wall st on the way down, bought an “I heart NYC” tshirt (almost customary!) and saw the Bowling Green Bull statue. I don’t know what I was expecting from Ground Zero, but I could have easily walked right past it. There’s construction going on
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Inside the New York Library now to re-build the World Trade Centre, so everything is fenced off. The empty space is huge though, so it shows how big the towers really were. I went to the WTC Museum, almost didn’t cos it’s not free anymore, but I’m glad I did. It wasn’t an overly big museum, actually really tiny, but it had some cool stuff in there. I won’t bother trying to explain what was in there, but it made me cry.
That night was the night I had been waiting for, the night I had tickets for Wicked! I was really upset because I had just missed it in Melbourne, it started after I left, so was super excited when I found out it was showing on Broadway whilst I was here. It was the greatest show ever! I lovelovelove the Wizard of Oz, so there was a big chance that this could have ruined it for me. It actually made me want to watch the movie again! In case you didn’t know, Wicked is a prequel to the Wizard of Oz, and tells the story of the witches. It was funny, the actors were amazing, such good voices, the costumes and sets
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US Open, in Flushing! were gorgeous.. It was just great. Definitely my favourite show I’ve seen so far! Everyone should go see it if the chance arises!
Wednesday I had to get up early to make sure I could stay in my room. I had made two reservations here, because I was only originally staying for six nights, then thought I’d stay an extra two. Each of the receptionists couldn’t promise me that I’d be in the same bed or room. This frustrated me because I just wanted to get behind the computer and make it happen. I suggested cancelling my second booking and extending my current one, but that all seemed too hard for them. The first night I had arrived, I asked for a bottom bunk, but was told I couldn’t have one because they were full. When I got to the room and was the only one in there I was a little annoyed. I went down later once the shifts had changed and asked them to change me into a bottom bunk, which took a while because they had trouble moving reservations around. Apparently it’s impossible to do when someone has paid a deposit. People from the hotel will
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Crowd at the tennis feel my pain here surely, seriously people, work it out! Anyways, I could stay in the same room and bed, so I was happy that I didn’t have to move all my stuff.
I decided I would go down to the last minute tickets place to see if I could get a ticket for a matinee show. Mel Brooks had a new show out based on his movie The Young Frankenstein. I loved the Producers, so thought this would be good too. I got a shitty-ish ticket cos I got there so late, but I didn’t mind. The booth opened at 9 so you had to be lined up at 8 for a 2 or 3pm show. We all know that that just isn’t going to happen! Shitty-ish seats it is.. I had a few hours to kill so I wandered Times Square for a bit, checked out the giant Toys R Us store; there’s a ferris wheel inside! I bought a replacement for Calvin; a fluffy white stuffed dog holding an apple with NYC written on it. Oh how I love him. Oh how I miss Calvin! After bumming around for a while I went to the theatre.
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The globe outside the tennis centre I was talking to an Aussie lady in line who said that the show was good, and that Karen from Will & Grace was in it when she saw it. This excited me beyond belief, because I love her, but I was sad to find out that she’s not in it anymore. The show itself was good, I didn’t enjoy it as much as I did The Producers, but it still gave me a few chuckles!
After the show I ventured over to the Rockefeller Plaza (30 Rock, woo!) to go up to the observation deck. A lot of people go to the Empire State Building, but someone pointed out that it’s pointless going up there, because you don’t get the Empire State Building in your photos of the city. Good point, really! I think this was the best observation deck I have ever been on! There were two or three levels to it, and the top level was actually open air.. So awesome. You don’t realise how big Manhattan is until you see it from above either, gosh. It’s so full of high rises and there’s hardly any space left. Central Park is massive, but that’s basically the
only green part of it all. I watched the sunset and the city lights come on, as I always like to do at observation decks, so was up there for quite a few hours. I then went back to the hostel and had an early night, from memory.
Oh! Almost forgot! I think I’ve mentioned before that the men in America are a lot more forward, and have no qualms in telling you if they find you attractive. Well I was walking to the Rockefeller and this man (maybe early thirties?) looked me up and down and said “you’re exactly my type!”. I thought that was nice, but kept on walking. Not even a minute later, he comes back to me and tells me again that I am exactly his type, that he fell in love with me as soon as he saw me, and asked if I would like to go on a date with him, or just kiss him. I declined all of the above, saying that I had someone waiting for me back at home. He kinda freaked me out, but you have to give him credit for being gutsy! I could never approach someone in
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Manhattan from the Staten Island ferry the middle of the street like that!!
The next day I went to MoMa to see the Salvador Dali collection. I’m not a huge art buff, but god do I love Dali! I had no idea that he made movies as well as paintings and sculptures, and they were kinda weird. Cool to see though. I then went to a nice little neighbourhood not far from my hostel, where the Magnolia Bakery was. Annie had told me that she had wanted to go to this bakery, because the girls in Sex and the City always get cupcakes from there. It was a really cute place, and the cupcakes were nice, but I wouldn’t rave over them (that was for you, mum!). I took my cupcakes back to the hostel so I could pack my stuff up to go back to Toronto the next morning!
So that’s it, hope it was worth the wait, New York is definitely a city that lives up to the hype!
I’ll get onto writing my Toronto blog now, hopefully you won’t have to wait as long this time..
Kirsty xx
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Laura
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yay
Thanks for the update lovely! I've been missing these.. Has definitely reignited that green eyed monster in me. I'm so jealous that you're going to be partying up in Times Square for NYE!! I'm sure i'll be working haha. Miss you xx