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After navigating our way through the underground which is very similar to the tube in London... evidently it even has the same smell... we found our way to our hotel, Yotel. Actually I will start with our hotel as it really was a cool place to stay. It was just a few blocks down from Times Square and the Theatre District. The hotel itself is very new and extremely modern, with self check in (exactly the same as the check in kiosks at the airport) extremely fast wifi, a robot that works the luggage storage room and has really funky music they play in the elevators, which ranged from anything between the sesame street tune, to cyber pop and everything in between. The whole place just had a cool vibe. The rooms where still small, but utilised all of the space available by having an electronic bed that converted from a sofa to bed and room is all round, space efficient. Also each floor had a kitchen with its very own with (free) coffee machine and there was also a terrace bar and a restaurant that served Japanese fusion type meals. Honestly we could probably rave about it for ages.. anyway if anyone is heading to New York soon we would definately recommend Yotel!
After a quick break just to get our room set up, we went for a slow stroll down the road through the theatre district and checked out Times Square. My first impression of Times Square was that it was so small! I mean I (Leah) had seen it on so many movies and tv shows and in travel books that I think I was just expecting more, but also we were seeing it during the day and we knew that it was best visited at night, so after a wander round the square, which really isn't a square... but more like a triangle, we had a peak in some of the shops (Disney and Toys R Us) we went and had some dinner at Applebees, which was probably the most expensive dinner we had had throughout the US so far and we both agreed that it really wasn't worth it! So after dinner we headed for home as we were both so bug,gered from our last few days!
The next day we got up and decided that we would head further downtown, so we walked through the streets checking out Bryant Park (seeing a 9/11 tribute of nearly 3000 empty chairs to represent the victims) 5th avenue and the shopping district (which includes the worlds biggest Macy's), we walked past the Empire State Building which we could hardly fit into one picture, jumped back on the underground to the World Trade Centre Site, walked through the Financial district, past Wall Street, had some lunch at the bowling green near the Bull. We hopped on the Staten Island Ferry took a thousand pictures of the NYC skyline and Statue of Liberty, walked through Battery Park (which had another 9/11 tribute, this time flags) sat and ate some ice cream (extremely expensive ice cream actually...) saw a mouse, two squirrels, walked back to the underground jumped on a train... then... for some reason, Mark decided to jump off the train as the doors shut. Leaving us separated. Great.
Naturally I did what anyone would do an waited at the next station for him, then once two trains pulled in without him and after waiting around I thought that maybe he just stayed at the last station. So on a train I hopped to the station only to find him not there, so I decided to head back to the Hotel and wait for him there as I knew he hadn't written down my US mobile number anywhere and there was no way for me to contact him as he has no phone on him. So back to the hotel I went and just chillaxed in the aircon. Now Marks story of this adventure is a little more exciting than mine, as after waiting for ages for the next train he got off at the next station and couldn't see me (by this time I had left the platform). So then he decided that he would just get back on the train and head for what was originally going to be our next destination (Katz' Deli) after missing the stop for Katz, he then had to stay on the train until the next stop which happened to be across the Williamsburg Bridge and found himself in Brooklyn. So he waited for the next train back and hopped out at Essex St Station (Katz Deli). Once there he tried to find an internet cafe (to get my phone number with is in an email) to no avail, then turning to his last resort he rang his parents, so that they could check his email and get my phone number.. after a dodgy connection and having to yell his email password out still to no avail... so then having to find another public phone that worked (found 3 others that didn't) he finally got my phone number, to then not have a pen or paper to write it down he simply had to memorise it. After getting off the phone to his parents he tried to contact my phone which I didnt answer as it was still on silent from the night before... Meanwhile back at the hotel, I am still chillaxing and watching Avatar which has just started on telly.... 15 mins into it I hear my phone vibrating and its Mark's parents calling letting me know that mark is wanting to contact me frantically... by the way, there is still no way of any of us contacting Mark... I assure Marks parents that I am fine and that I'm sure Mark will realise at some stage that I had returned to the hotel, as I had mentioned once before to him that if I was ever to get lost, that was my plan.... half an hour later another phone call from the Schier's and still no Mark. Finally an hour and a half after I had gotten home, Mark finally walks through the door. The poor thing was so shattered and just exhausted from his adventure, he called his mum to let him know he had finally found me... a lesson learnt.. at least he now knows my US mobile number off by heart....
That evening we decided to stay in for the night and have dinner down at the hotel restaurant. It was great, With a small dish menu, kinda like tapas, we could order quite a few dishes and get to try them all! After dinner it was time for bed after all it was one of our more adventurous days.
The next day we decided to walk to Central Park. It was about a half an hour walk from our hotel, but we didn't mind as we got to see a lot of the local area, including a stack of florists where you could pick up 2 dozen roses for as little as $10US! We also hit up a little deli for breaky, were I got my first grilled cheese sandwich and Marky got a breaky roll, also we got two drinks and Mark also got a yogurt for the grand total of $6.50US!! Great start to the day! Once we got to Central Park we got harassed by some guys from a bike tour company straight up.. I suppose we certainly do look like tourists with our camera.. As usual these guys where offering you the cheapest price and actually.. 2 bikes for 2 hours for $30US wasn't really a bad price at all, so we agreed..... We thought it was a little strange that the didn't get any details off us at all for these bikes, not even our names. I suppose we just went with the flow. Anyway after jumping on them and sorting out gears and breaks we realised why these bikes were so cheap. We doubt you would even get $15US dollars for either of the bikes, you could prob sell them for parts I suppose.. anyway after struggling our way round Central Park and up some awful hills (who knew Central Park was so hilly!) Poor Marky had had enough of the useless bike he was on... which I could totally understand as even on a downhill slope his pace was so slow that he couldn't even keep up with some of the joggers motoring past him... so with his pride in tatters we decided to end the tour de central park and give our bikes back (an hour early mind you!) and headed off on foot. (Mark just informed me that it was totally due to the fact that the tires were flat and something about the gears not going high enough, it defiantly had nothing to do with the operator).
It is easy to forget sometimes that you are in one of the worlds biggest cities especially on walking through the bush trail and you don't see another person for ages. But it was easy to remember once you realise that this wasn't just any old park, it included its very own zoo, castle, boathouse, rivers, lakes, bush trails, baseball fields, playgrounds, parklands, fountains, restaurants and even its very own protest. Yep this place has it all! After spending a good part of our day wandering through most of it (we didn't feel the need to go through the Zoo since we had only just done the San Diego one a week earlier) we decided to head back downtown. We stopped for lunch outside the Rockefeller Centre, which we were both extremely impressed by, not only by the size of it but also just how clean and well kept the whole area around it is. We walked through a few of the smaller shops before heading back towards Times Square and picking up a few gifts and souvenirs and having a quick bite to eat and heading home. By this stage, it was 10.00pm and our feet were killing us, I suppose it was no wonder why as we had been walking/riding around for 12 hours and had covered a fair amount of distance. It was safe to say we were shattered! One thing we did notice about that day was definitely the police presence, it had certainly been stepped up in light of the upcoming 9/11 memorial and both Mark and I have never seen so many cops. You couldn't walk 5 metres without seeing a different NYPD officer. Also they had cut all the major roads into downtown to one lane and all vehicles passing through were being inspected by officers we even saw one with a huge rifle (as apposed to there normal handguns) and anybody that was carrying/wearing backpacks or luggage were also being searched. Also there were police cars, mounted police, dog squads, even police tow trucks just everywhere, even in all the underground stations and on most trains! In our honest opinion we certainly felt safe, not once did we ever feel in danger. It is a credit to the NYPD as they clearly were doing there job and it showed by the thousands of people that still felt safe enough to head out to times square that night.
We found it super hard to get out of bed the next morning as we were still both feeling the affects of our huge day yesterday. As today was September 11 we decided to stay out of the busy downtown areas and instead headed towards the Hells Kitchen Flea Market which was only a few blocks away from our hotel. I thought the markets were great! It had a huge range of knick knacks, mostly vintage clothes, jewelry, hats, shoes and just generally loads of odds and ends. After poking around at a few stalls, trying on the hats and searching for bargains we stopped and had a look at what items the guys from the TV show Dirty Money. After spending an hour or so poking through the talls we decided to head back (without a purchase) to our hotel and take advantage of the restaurants brunch option.
We thought the brunch option was an epic deal that we just couldn't resist, it cost $35 and that entitled you to all you can eat food and cocktails for 2 hours. They obviously hadn't counted on having someone like Mark really test the deal. As we mentioned earlier it's a small plate restaurant, small plate meaning a decent entree/not quite dinner size. I tapped out pretty quickly with the food, but it was like the waiter was testing to see just how much Mark could eat as every time he came over to pick up an empty plate he would suggest another dish that he recommended (such as crispy shrimp or the Tuna steak). In the end we had probably ordered about 12 plates of food and 8 cocktails, which at $6-$10 per dish and $8 per cocktail we thought we had certainly gotten the best value for our money!! After our massive brunch both of us felt like we wanted to go back to bed again...=p we were sssooo full and contented. But knowing that we wouldn't be back to NYC for a while we decided to walk it off, so we made our way down to Times Square to purchase tickets to go see Mary Poppins the Musical. After we bought the tickets we made our way to Union Square and then onto one of the shopping districts Downtown. After buying some presents from the Victoria Secrets shop it was time to head back to our apartment to freshen up for Mary Poppins. On our way to the show we walked past a heap of cop cars on the side of the road, Mark and I have never seen so many in our lives, we counted 27 that we walked past (as we had to go into the theatre) but there were more down the street that we hadn't counted.
Anyway, Mary Poppins was a fantastic show!!! The music, props, special effects, singing and acting were all excellent! Including the kids that were cast. We both would highly recommend seeing this show, especially if you remember watching the movie. We both had a great laugh and enjoyed the show. After the show it was time for some dinner since we hadn't eaten since our massive brunch 10 hours earlier. So we headed across the road to the Dallas BBQ restaurant. Dallas BBQ has some awesome Texas Size Margaritas and also serves Texas size dinner plates. Mark had a huge plate of Ribs and BBQ Chicken, so he was pretty content!.
As mentioned tonight being September 11 we thought we'd check to see how long the 'Lights in Tribute' would be on for, after a quick check on the net we found out that this would be the last anniversary they'd put them up on display as the new world trade centre towers are being completed they wouldn't put them up again. So we decided we had better head out, check them out and get some pics. It was nearing midnight and as we headed south on the metro, and up to the trade centre subway there were still people everywhere. We walked up to the site and saw where the new memorials are but only not too find the lights there!?! A little confused we looked around only to find the 'Lights of Tribute' were actually on top of a different building....a 4 story carpark to be precise, further to the south. So after walking past the Fire Station with its memorial nd 10 thousand police men we finally arrived in a good spot to take some photo's of the lights. We weren't the only ones to make the trip out to see the lights that night, every man, woman, kids and even dogs had headed out.. mostly armed with their cameras and tripods. Lots of people were even just taking some time to sit and chill near the lights, probably using the time for some reflection, I have admit the sight of them was very thought provoking it was truly one of the more powerful tributes I had seen. After Mark had finally gotten that perfect picture it was time to head home and finally curl up into bed about 2 am.
It is safe to say we needed the massive sleep in we both had on this day! This was meant to be the day we were to leave NYC, but we decided the day before to stay for an extra day as we still had a few places we wanted to see. So at about lunch time we finally managed to head out for the day, this time making it to Little Italy and Katz Deli (for the second time...this time I decided to stay on the train, so we made it.) This Deli is an NYC staple, you cant count the number of celebrity photos that are hanging on the walls, also it has been in countless movies and has even made an appearance on our fav show; Man v. Food. So it was a necessity that we made the pilgrimage out to it. I ordered the exact same meal that Adam off MvF had, a Reuben Sandwich that is a massive handful of shaved beef pastrami topped with sour kraut and your choice of cheese (I had swiss on mine.) Leah tried the Beef Brisket sandwich, it was a little dry, but all it needed was a little sauce. The Reuben was Delicious! The meat was really tasty and nicely cooked, the cheese and sour kraut was just enough, it wasn't over powering, just hinting that it was there, leaving the all the taste up to the delicately cut pastrami. Yum Yum Yum!!! We got some photo's so when we get some time we'll upload them too. After filling our tummies with this awesome food we end up heading home as we're both still completely bug,gered from the day/night before. It was time for us to type up some more blog, upload some photo's and even for us to reflect a little on our trip so far, as we have been cramming heaps of stuff into our days. Leah grabbed a couple of gyro's and drinks from the food kart/street vendor (for a grand total of $8) downstairs and after a watching 'The Hulk' (movie) on cable tv we hit the hay (we just needed some time to relax.)
The next day we had planned to pack our stuff after a quick breakfast and make our way down the US Post Office down the road, before checking out of our Yotel at midday and then catching the bus to Philadelphia. (I ask Leah to right this bit but she said she'd use too many expletives) Oh boy! What fun we had down the Post Office! NOT!!! What a crazy experience I mean who really would have thought it'd be so freakin difficult to send a couple of small packages back home (gee I hope they make it.) We wasted a good 2 or more hours down the post office due to the poor system they have of sending stuff anywhere. It'd be ok if the system was the smallest bit logical but seeing we're in the USA, logic this time FAILS!!! The forms and addresses you have to write on the boxes, and all the stupid questions they ask is simply a joke (the worst part is you have to pay extortionary prices for this!?!). At least the lady we had, (well I had, as Leah had left with frustration and the need to check us out) helping us was nice and helpful, but as I said the system was just rubbish.
So after the nightmare was finally over, we checked out of the hotel and headed towards the bus stop. It was only a couple of blocks away and we had 2 hours and 45 mins to wait for the bus, so luckily we walked past a laundromat and decided to do ourselves a load of washing each and have a bite to eat while waiting for it to dry. We made the bus with plenty of time to spare and when the bus came it really wasn't that busy so we each got two seats to ourselves so we could stretch out. Before we knew it, our time in NYC had come to an end = ( and we were on our way to Philadelphia and who knows what that place has in store for us!!
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