The overriding theme of this edition is going to be snow, we had loads of snow. This is slightly frustrating as I haven't packed for snow.
But I'll start at the beginning. Body clock still on Uk time, I woke up at half past 5. There wasn't much chance that if I was awake Jimmy would be sleeping much longer but luckily for him he was awake anyway and my prodding of his mattress from underneath only served to annoy him (good result in my book). We decided that first order off the day should be to find a new hostel, a slightly cheaper hostel. We've decided that paying $40 for a hostel is a waste of about $20 beer money. Priorities. So we set out early, stopping first at a genuine new york diner for a spot of breakfast and coffee.
It was raining when we set off and when it started to snow, it was quite a novel experience. We wandered through it getting abit damp and scouted some local hostels, the first one was shut down and derelict (we weren't surprised at this point) and the second one was in koreatown. To say the second hostel was a dump, would be doing dumps a disservice. When we arrived at the address, we found a door sandwiched in between two shops. With no signs or information on the intercom we were unsure whether this actually was a hostel or just a crack den. We were buzzed in regardless and popped our heads round the door, it was remiscent of a building from max payne, really dark and dingey. Tipptoeing our way up the stairs, we were greated on the second floor by a korean gentleman enquiring what we looking for, when we replied the magic codeword of hostel he escorted us upstairs. The tour didnt last long when he told us it was $39 a night. $1 saving doesnt really cut it for me. So we went to look at our last hostel on the list.
Before Jimmy would even consider this hostel, I had to convince him that 103rd street, where to hostel was located, was far far away from harlem. Jimmy has now developed a genuine phobia of that place and has included it in his places he won't go near. We jumped on the subway up there (our unlimited ticket is taking a pounding) and set about finding it. In our stumblings though we came across a massive hostel, we thought we'd have a cheeky look around and pretty much made up our minds that we'd have this one. $23 a night mission accomplished. Now we could start some sightseeing.
We thought we'd have a look at macy's first (indoor = no snow), it was quite boring though, and we amused ourselves by taking taking funny photos. We decided we should do a little circuit that of 5th ave and grand central station. Very nice. We were both pretty wet by this point and my feet were actually swimming and very cold. Best course of action, dive into burger king and get a coffee. A medium coffee in burger king is a pint! I nursed it for about 40mins, and got some warmth back in me.
That evening we had signed ourselves up for a pub crawl with the hostel but when we saw the crowd (geeks and freaks) we thought we'd have a better time on our own. So we headed to a local bar recommended to us by the hostel staff. It was s***. I've not had a pint in america yet that wasnt flat. We had two in the s*** bar and decided we'd head back to the hostel via a scenic route. The snow was so bad though that we ended up taking shelter in an irish bar, it was dead but we decicided it would be rude not to have a couple of guinesses. We were going to leave but a strange thing happened it started to slowly fill up with good looking women! Talking to the irish barmen (liverpool fan but we'll let him off) we found out that it was a popular bar with students from columbia university, right result! So we decided to stay. A couple of nice girls sat down at the bar next to us and Jimmy set about trying to initiate conversation by spelling out HI with straws on the bar, it fell on deaf ears, so I went for the blunt approach of just talking to her. This was more effective and we got chatting with them. We found out she was called Alyssia and she was 18 but had a good fake ID, but we got her number and she offered to tour us round some bars today. As a result of chatting to the barmen, whenever it was my round he "forgot" to take my money, which annoyed Jimmy as he kept charging him tho! Haha. Several free pitchers later we stumbled back to the hostel and woke up everyone in our dorm (serves them right for being boring!).
Just to please JK I'll include some extra info............I had a shower and I was NAKED!! Thought that'd excite you.
More to follow....