New York Happenings

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Geo: 40.7528, -73.9853

"Flight 890 to New York has been cancelled", I race to the United service desk with 100 other people behind me, only to be told about minutes later that no one was going to be on a flight to New York for the rest of today and that we should call the United call center and go back to where were staying. Well f**k, most of us have just endured a 13hr flight from Sydney, how does that work. In my case add an extra 8 hrs as I flew in from New Zealand.
So with 1 hr sleep in 40 hours, a canceled flight to New York because of the huge snow storm, no accommodation and the fact I was meant to be meeting Anna and I had no way of contacting her, it kind of made me freak out a bit.
I wasn't the only one in this position though, I was given a number to call to arrange a new flight.
We had to collect our bags and I jumped on a random bus going to an unknown hotel. It turned out to be the Holiday Inn express near Los Angeles airport. The staff were extremely helpful in letting me use their phone to contact the airline and a bottle of water, and the rooms were cheap too, $80.
The following day saw me on a flight to New York at 4:30 and as soon as I got to the airport at 12:30 it was already delayed. We finally flew out at 10pm, only after waiting 10 hours at the airport, luckily I had met another Australian couple Aleesia and Fabian from Sydney the previous day so chatting with them helped speed up time and keep me entertained.
We arrived in New York just before 6am and took a taxi through the snowy streets of Queens and Brooklyn into Manhattan and to the accommodation that I had booked for the previous two days. Luckily Anna was there so it wasn't a complete waste of a booking, I did manage to check in for the remaining 3 hours.
Now I was able to relax, I was with Anna, I was in New York and we had confirmed accommodation for the next week at Anna's cousins place. We checked out of the hostel, Swiss 1291 - Not as good as we thought for the price we paid, we headed to Matt's apartment and both crashed for 2 hours, it had been a completely exhausting 3 days of travel, and even a week later I don't think I have fully recovered as we have been out and about and walking a lot since, not much chance to rest.

Well my impression of New York at this point was amazement and excitement due to the size of the city, well Manhattan Island, high rises every where which block out the sun from the streets.
Taxi's plague the streets in its very easy grid street layout and one way systems.
After we awoke we took a walk to Central Park (not Hyde park which I always mistook for), which was only 4 blocks away. It was covered in snow, for obvious reasons, trees are bare with no leaves. Central Park is massive, very long from north to south and even wide.
I couldn't help thinking of how great this park would be in spring and summer, even autumn when the leaves change colour.

New York is something different. It's got to be one of the most ethnically diverse place I have ever been to, people from all corners of the globe, live and work here, and not to forget about the tourists either. There are many tourists as well, from all over, probably one of the most touristy places I have ever been to so far, 5th avenue, Rockerfella, Times Square and the free ferry to Staten Island which passes the Statue of Liberty. And I'm not sure if it's because it's the holiday season, but I'm sure it would be like this any day of the year.
But being a diverse city makes for an interesting city, I don't quite know how to classify the people of New York, it's a big mixture.

The first day we took it easy. We arranged to meet up with a good friend I had met in Nepal the following morning. Anna, Radek, Emi and myself met at the Ice Skating Rink in Central Park. If you are looking for a fun place to go Ice Skating then Central park is the way, compared to the Rockerfella center Ice Rink. Better views, cheaper, bigger and smaller lines. I have seen the Rockerfella Rink and it's tiny and the lines can be long.
It was a lot of fun I have to say, only my second time. We lasted about 2 hours before the hired skates got to our feet.
It was New Years Eve, and where else would you go than the world famous New Years countdown at Times Square. With a forecast of One Million people, we knew it was going to be busy. You can have the option of being there at 9am (with no toilet) but at least you will be in the middle of the action. You can book a spot at one of the surrounding restaurants at a cost or you can go as you please, but don't expect to get anywhere near the main action. We ended up being 8 blocks back.
It was an amazing experience and we had a clear view of the ball dropping. We started lining up at about 4 where we waited at 47th street, then they closed that street and kept pushing us back to 55th street. There was a bit of push and shove and the Police had a lot to deal with.
We had heard earlier while in line how you are not aloud to take any backpacks in, we had one each. We we go to the entrance got told we weren't aloud in because of our backpacks so we headed to the side and just walked in anyway, but we got to another checkpoint further down towards Time Square, and this time we were knocked back. We tried to get a few restaurants to hold our bags for a little bit of money but they wouldn't do it.
We almost headed back home to drop the bags off but decided to stay and found ourselves going back through the second checkpoint and being let in this time. I don't know why but we were glad. We slotted in between 51st and 52nd and waited 6 hours surrounded by other people. We opted to sit on the ground for a while. Finally the time came and the countdown started from 1 minute, but I have to say we were to focused on the visual countdown than actually seeing the ball drop. Woop's, maybe next time.
There weren't really any fireworks from time square, they were more in Central Park, which was behind us.
Within 5 minutes of the countdown, most people headed home or to a pub.
So there it was, New Years in New York, quite amazing.

Now at this point the weather had been pretty good, it was cold, but sunny days, but the bad thing was because of all the snow in the streets and the sun coming out, it melted the snow and turned it into Grey sludge which made it hard to cross streets. It also took away from the beauty of the city (although it was in winter with no green about), but it made it look a little more unpleasant I thought.
But the 1st of January brought out a beautiful clear blue sky, so we thought we would take advantage of this and check out the top of the rock view at the Rockerfeller center. Although as we meandered down the streets it because cloudy and hazy, unfortunately we didn't have the perfect view once we got to the top, but all in all it was still an amazing view and something that I am sure would be even more stunning and spectacular on a clear summers day.
We could still make out the silhouette of the Statue of Liberty.
We had a quick stop off at the Lego store at the base of the Rockerfella Center which was interesting, packed full of people. Not as interesting as the M&M store in Time Square, but more on that in the other blog.

We proceeded to walk the streets towards New York's Grand Central Train Terminal, impressive from the outside and even more stunning on the inside, it feels so classy inside, lovely colours and decorations including the gold against the green on the roof.
See if you can spot the "Just got married couple" in one of the photos. If it's good enough to have your wedding photos taken in then it's good enough to visit.
We walked along the same street heading east to the United Nations Building, but as we got there it immediately looked deserted, all of the flag poles were bare and the building blocked off for building renovations. Quite the disappointment.
We stopped off for a quick slice of New York pizza before taking the subway back. Now the subway I had a lot of trouble with. The lines are good in the fact that they take you pretty much everywhere, but it took us 4 goes to get it right. It may have just been us, but we always found ourselves on the wrong platform, or taking the right train but getting off the wrong stops. The ticketing system is really annoying, you can really only buy single trips at $2.50, there are no daily or hourly tickets. Which meant on the two occasions we went through the wrong turn styles on the wrong platforms means we just wasted $2.50 each. So you have to make sure you are on the right side going the right direction otherwise you have to buy another ticket.
It was confusing at the start but we eventually got the hang of it.

So it had already been an amazing 3 days in New York, we were loving it and we still had another 3 days to go, which means another blog is needed.

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Comments

[Jamie]

awwwwwwwwwwwwww