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I start the day with a trip to the United Nations, which has its headquarters in New York. In the queue for the tickets a German woman behind me exclaims: "But zis is ze un-guided tour, where is ze guided tour?" before the penny drops that it is in fact the 'UN Guided Tour' and much hilarity ensues. The tour is interesting, showing all the "As Seen on TV" rooms where everything and nothing gets decided. There's a meeting going on during my visit in the Economic & Social Development Council room. Our group contains a rather dumb Canadian lady who cannot believe that Canada is not in the Security Council, and looks on with an incredulous expression as the guide repeats the five members over and over.
From the UN I take a whistle stop walking tour of all the main sights in the city: The Empire State, Madison Square Garden, Times Square, Carnegie Hall and I walk onto Central Park.
I'm making my way through into the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which is impossibly large and impossible to navigate. Oddly enough, their key exhibits at the moment are a J. Turner exhibition, mostly on loan from the Tate Britain, and 'The Treasures of the V&A' which I studied next to for the past three years. I very rarely stick my tourist hat on in London, so haven't been to the Tate Britain or the V&A, so it's nice to see the exhibits here whilst I'm very much a tourist.
In the evening Sunil & I walk to see Times Square by night. It's not exactly a square but I don't think that's the point. Huge walls of advertising rise up into the sky spewing out their fluorescent light. Imagine the display in Piccadilly Circus, now make it three times as high, multiply it by four, and put it in high definition, and that's about it. It also has all the usual M&M world, dozens of ticket touts and other overcrowded tourist nonsense.
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