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Ok, I haven't updated this thing in a while so I will try to give a brief overview of the past week. Our hostel, located in an artsy part of Brooklyn, was an absolute joke. There were no signs outside advertising its presence, just an old warehouse door that was slightly ajar. We entered and it took us a good half hour to find someone who actually knew anything remotely about a hostel. It turns out that some entrepreneurial Jewish landlord had installed ten bunk beds in the loft of his apartment block, with the intent of raking in thousands of dollars a week from poor travellers with no where else to go.
Fortunately the hostel was only a few stops away from Manhattan, enabling us to get into town by nine am on the first day. As we were coming out of the subway station, someone thrust a free paper into my hand with the headline 'we nailed him' and a picture of Osama Bin Laden. What a day to be in New York city! After visiting a few notable landmarks such as Times Square and the Flateron building, until I suggested to Claire that we head down to
the World Trade Centre site to see what was happening down there.
My god, what a carnival. There were masses of people waving American flags, with numerous religious nuts proclaiming that Osama will rot in hell, and that America is truly God's country. I found one guy particularity amusing. He was being interviewed on nationwide television (WTF?) and was claiming that God had given the American people the power to quash the evil in the Middle-east, and he would also provide the American people with the means to eradicate illegal immigration, while at the same time remove Obama from presidency (because he is too liberal thinking).
Anyway, so much for a brief overview. The rest of the notable things we saw are listed below:
The Statue of Liberty: a quick ride out to Liberty Island and we were standing right under one of the most famous landmarks in the world. I must admit the Statue of Liberty is a truly beautiful statue and I'm glad I had the opportunity to see it up close. Unfortunately we were too late to get tickets to see the view from the crown.
Uptown/Downtown/Brooklyn Bus Tour: we paid about $54
each to get a 48 hour pass on these hop-on hop-off bus tours. It was interesting, and probably worth the money now that I think about it. We had two memorable tour guides; one of them kept yelling the same thing over and over: “upstairs, downstairs, wherever you are on the bus you must remain seated. Carry on Russell” (Russell was the poor bus driver). At one stage an unfortunate Spanish-speaking woman sat in her seat. I found it hilarious when she started yelling “That is my seat! My seat!! You see it is yellow and has 'tour guide' written on it!!! Stop the bus Russell, someone is in my seat!!”. Another guide was a pro-American fundamentalist from Brooklyn. He liked to shout: “We got the bastard. We finally nailed him! Rot in hell Osama!!”, and then he started singing Barry Manilow songs (apparently Barry Manilow is from Brooklyn). On that trip we finally managed to escape by walking across the Brooklyn bridge (well worth it for the view of the city). We got stopped on the Manhattan side of the bridge as a convoy of police cars zoomed past on the highway below us. Following them were four or
five executive black cars, one of which contained the President. Apparently there was a possibility that one of us could hurl ourselves over the barriers in a kamikaze-like attempt to assassinate the president (who was in town to make a speech at the World Trade Centre), therefore we were made to wait until he had passed.
Rockafeller Centre: wow, what a view. I highly recommend a visit if you are ever in New York. We opted for this building over the Empire State Building because it is supposed to have better views over Central Park. As with any American sight, they try to sell you a plethora of useless crap before, during, and after the main event.
Central Park/The Dakota Building: we walked all around this beautifully landscaped park, paying particular attention to a number of geocaches that were scattered around, and Strawberry Fields; the John Lennon tribute garden. Strawberry Fields is placed directly across from the Dakota building, i.e. the place where John was murdered. I found the tribute itself rather underwhelming, given the respect I have for the man; however, I guess that's how he would have liked it. Apparently Yoko still lives in the Dakota
building (how morbid?), although she didn't grace us with her presence this time.
Mets Game: We found an official ticket seller at Times Square who was offering cheap Mets tickets for the Friday night game versus the LA Dodgers. It turns out the tickets were twice the price we would have paid at the stadium, but we didn't let that ruin our fun. Baseball is fun to watch, especially for the crowd interactions and cliché American sport stadium gimmicks (T-Shirt cannons, audio meters etc..) but, in my opinion, it is no way near as entertaining as one day cricket. We also spent a small fortune on overpriced beer and food so it ended up being quite a costly affair.
In future, I will try to update this blog with shorter, more frequent entries. Take it easy!
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