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USA, New York
Bye Bye Swansea
We were up early Friday morning, 23rd, (we got 3 ½ hrs sleep) for the trip to Heathrow. We left at just after 06:00am and got to terminal 5 at around 09:30 (thanks to uncle Emeil!)
I Love New York!!!
We were too excited to sleep on the flight (around 7hrs) so we watched a few films & read our NYC travel guide - thanks Christoff & Bartell. We arrived in JFK and caught a mini van with a small group of others to our hostel.The journey was quite an adventure in itself as the driver - like all the others on the roads here - was a lunatic cutting and chopping lanes all over the shop.But fair play to the man, he got us there fairly quickly and more importantly in one piece!We did manage to see some of the city on the way, and because it was dark in the late evening it was all lit up and looked amazing. We'll never forget our first sighting of the city as we came over the WilliamstownBridge, our jaws dropped - it looked spectacular.We checked in our hostel with no fuss and even got upgraded to a private double room instead of the dorm we had paid for - sweet. The hostel itself was great, clean and in a good, fairly central location in Midtown, on 8th Avenue opposite MadisonSquareGardens.We went out and grabbed a pizza (3 doors down at Pizza Suprema, the best pizza we've tasted) and were so excited to be there we went to check out Times Square which was heaving and so amazing at night- what a sight! We took a few pics and sat on the TKTS steps and took in the view & then had a much needed early night. Our room was kind of noisy as it was on the corner of the block, but we were so beat from the whole day we slept through the endless traffic and honking outside.
The five days went to fast! We loved every minute there, we both fell in love with the place! We were up & out by 8.30 every morning so we could make the most of the days, we managed to fit pretty much everything we wanted to do, though there is always something else to do & see, you could be there for months and not do it all!
We went to Times Square, Wall street (we looked for Pierce and Pierce to see Patrick ( J ) but had no joy unfortunately), Ellis Island & Statue of Liberty ferry, The American Sports Museum, The Bodies Exhibit, the Downtown, Midtown, Uptown, Brooklyn and Night Tours -all great!, American Natural History Museum (we spent hours in there!), Empire Estate Building, Ground Zero site and museum, Battery Park, Chinatown, Noho, Soho, Tribeca, Flat Iron Building, Central Park (where all the lakes were completely frozen), Harlem, Bloomingdales, Macy's, Madamme Tussauds…………. (Allan found Paul Sebastian cologne in Macys especially for Harrison and Davies, he has a picture on his phone which he'll try to download soon-it smelt rank at first but was pleasant after a while)
Ps. The map you donated to us Julie was class and we used it every day! We'll bring it home for future visits.
We were both really quite sad to leave NYC, although maybe slightly relieved as we both had developed one bad knee each(?) which we had put down to all the walking and the Baltic temperatures - very strange & painful nonetheless ( I put mine down to sympathy pains for my daddy!). Julie had warned us it would be cold we weren't quite prepared for how cold - it was f***ing freezing! The wind chill was painful! It rained the last morning and my boots flooded - very unpleasant as it has snowed the night before and I was starting to fear I'd lose my toes to frostbite. We were layered with more & more clothes each day & were still shivering! We'd love to visit there again, but next time we'll go in the summer time definitely. If we could afford it (lottery win) we'd live there in a heart beat - we urge you all to go there if you haven't been! I was sold on the idea even more so because you can take your pooch quite literally everywhere! (We were in the Puma store and a lady was shopping with her husky in the store!) Though seeing dogs on every block including two Pomeranians made me miss my pooch (mammy's boy and Spike too) very much L
Next stop Sydney, bring on the sunshine!
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