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Despite the sheer exhaustion of 22 hours of traveling, jetlag got the better of me & I was awake at 5:00AM on Tuesday morning - 6 hours sleep + 4 or 5 bad hours sleep the night before does not a happy camper make! But I was quite impressed with the effort I made a staying awake the next day…I managed to force myself to stay in bed until 8:00AM, then ventured downstairs for breakfast. In the midst of the impeccable (ha) service I'd received the night before they'd forgotten to explain anything to me about the breakfast system, & just as I was about to pay for mine I saw a couple of girls ahead of me in the queue paying with vouchers…hmm…I enquired at the front desk & the lady said maybe my breakfast was included, maybe it wasn't, depends what room I'm in.
Me: Uh, OK, room 218.
Her: Oh, yes it is! Didn't they tell you about that when you checked in?
Me: No, no, they really didn't tell me anything…So…can I have my breakfast vouchers?
She redirects me to a different counter…
Me: Hi, just wondering if I can get my breakfast vouchers please? I'm in room 218.
Guy: They didn't give them to you at check in?
Me: No, no they didn't.
Guy: OK, just let me check…hmm…says they did give them to you at check in.
Me: No, they really didn't, trust me. (Thinking, I'm really frickin' hungry please just give me the damn vouchers).
Guy reluctantly hands over the vouchers & ushers me to the kitchen…I still have no idea what the system actually is but somehow I wind up with a bagel & a cup of tea & I am content at last :)
Later in the morning I met a bunch of other young travelers in the lobby to embark on "Jerry's Grand NYC Tour". Jerry was a quite the character: a lovely, worldly, wise old man from Brooklyn who reminded me a lot of the old man from Up…only taller. He had a perfectly straight set of dentures & when he laughed (frequently) he threw his head right back & had the strangest high-pitched laugh…quite infectious! He loved to share wisdom on all sorts of things like the importance of eating lots of fruit & vegetables, how we need to respect old ideas & inventions, & we also got a mini WW2 history lesson somewhere along the way. Jerry also had a thing for photographing interesting looking New Yorkers, although he always politely asked their permission first. Some flatly refused, but many would graciously accept, including a construction worker on the Brooklyn bridge who proudly posed for all of us for several minutes.
There was a relatively small group of 12 of us, & I met some really lovely people (Chloe & Eric, both British, both 19, made me feel very old :P haha) along the way. We started out by jumping on the tube & heading right down town to Brooklyn. We wandered through Brooklyn Heights & stopped for lunch at the waterfront after picking up food from a small deli selling lots of fresh fruit & veg. Then we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge & up past City Hall & St Peter's Cathedral (hmm…I think it was St Peter's). We saw Ground Zero, which is now halfway built & already HUGE (and apparently architecturally designed to be able to withstand another plan attack) as well as the moving memorial to the firefighters killed at 9/11. Then we walked down through the financial district, along Wall Street, past the Stock Exchange & the spot where George Washington was sworn in, before heading through Battery Park to the Staten Island ferry. We took the ferry over to Staten Island & back, getting a great view of the Statue of Liberty along the way.
By this stage it was 5:00PM, we'd been walking for about 6 hours straight, & jetlag was starting to kick in big time. I actually fell asleep with my head on the window for a while on the way over on the ferry & decided it was probably time to call it a day, considering I still had to allow time to work my way back up town to the hostel. I shook Jerry's hand & he thanked me profusely for coming on the tour with them…he would still be touring until midnight if anyone actually managed to hang in there for that long! I jumped on the red line Subway all the way back up to 103rd street (our hostel is on Amsterdam Ave & 108th street) & despite my best efforts to stay awake by reading by book I was fast asleep by 7:00PM (officially a senior citizen! :P), although I did sleep until 7:00AM the next morning, nearly 12 hours, so I'm guessing I really needed the sleep!
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