Our day started with us going downstairs to collect some free tea/coffee from the hotel lobby, I dont really like hot drinks so i went for the ice coffee – which was fucking horrible.

We had a walk around times square and ended up eating breakfast in Hard Rock Cafe which wasnt particuarly great eating, but they had alot of cool stuff on the walls to look at (guitars from bands and stuff)

We then walked off and around, and ended up at madame tussauds (wax museum thing), it was pretty cool, although really fucking creepy. You’d be standing around and wondering who was sculptures and who are people.
Actually they have a ‘scream’ exhibit, which is actually just really dark and filled with actors who pretend to be fucking scuptures then grab you and shit.

Uhhh…. After this we walked down to the docks to buy tickets for the cruise tour, we went to the intrepid museum afterwards – which basically has a Aircraft carrier battleship, a submarine and a concord for you to look around the inside of, it was pretty kewl.

We then lounged around for a while , went to a place to get a snack and my brother ordered a hotdog and chips… We were all disappointed when a small hotdog appeared accompanied by a packet of Lays crisps.

We played around in a fountain for a little and then sunbathed it off, before going for the cruise. The cruise lasted 2 hours and went round the coast of New york with some guy yapping over the mic about all the history and stuff.

We walked back to the hotel ,where im typing this up now.
We’re going to the empire state building tonight and i think we’re going for bubba gumps shrimp for dinner. Tomorrow i’ll hopefully be meeting with cross and doing some other stuff which i cant remember.

Today we went to the rockafella center, which is basically a cluster of buildings and stuff. Breakfast Bagel for breakfast, basically just a BLT with egg.

We went to the ‘top of the rock’ which is similar to empire state building sort of a deal, ride a lift up and check out the sights from the roof (about 80 floors up or something), it was pretty cool and actually way better than the empire state building in just about every way.

Afterwards we had a look around and ended up taking the NBC Studio tour, which was a guided tour with some chirpy (and p. hot) tourguides, the tour went through the filming studios, behind the scenes in the control rooms and just a general overview of how the industry works, it was really intresting and well worth a visit.

From here we walked to Grand central station, the main train station in NYC (and that place that cyclops destroys in the Xmen film, or the place where a scripted event occurs in Crysis 2). It was pretty damn huge, and we had lunch in the food court area there – which was kind of terrible but oh well.

We travelled uptown to the American natural history museum next, which was pretty standard fare as natural history museums go (although the ‘Fare’ was significantly more than standard [$40] ). It was filled with dinosaurs and animals and some sciency stuff, pretty intresting i suppose.

Another trip on the subway (which are fucking abysmal by the way, really dirty and poorly made subway system, which is confusing to use and just pretty skanky in general) to near chinatown, I say near because the train decided partway to turn into some sort of express train which basically means it goes past all the stops you want it to go to and means you have to take extra effort to trackback go wherever it is you wanted to go…

Chinatown was really impressive, unlike the London chinatown, this place is actually a goddamn town. Loads of streets filled with hawkers, fresh fruit and all sorts of weird asian shit (including shop which exclusively sells chopsticks wtf). Dinner at ‘Peking duck house’ or something to that effect, which specializes in peking duck (derp). Good stuff, although we wasted a ton of food because we were all too full.

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Cant be bothered to upload photos right now tbh, we’ve really been zerging through NYC and as such, totally fucking exhausted. My feet ACHE :(

So today was a slower day, we had a bit of a lay in and then just shopped around Times square for a while, we saw the M&M shop, hersheys shop, and found a market which spanned about a mile…

M&M shop was HUUUUGE! And had so many different types of M&M, we actually bought some coconut flavor ones and a pack of ‘pretzel’ ones, which are apparently ‘salty,sweet and crunchy’….

This market spanned pretty much the whole of the road, all the way down (i think it was 8th avenue or something), all the way from times square to central park, which is a really fucking long way. Sold some really nice food as well, bubble tea, roast Corn on a cob, crepes, gyros and these weird pancakey cheesy things which i forget the name of.

From here we went to Central Park and rented some bikes, we rode around for a good few hours… in the BLAZING SUN.
It was seriously like 30 degrees C or something silly.

Its a very pretty, and very big park, it would be nice if it wasnt so hot and you could actually take your time riding around and taking in all the sights, as it was though it was just riding around trying to find downhill sections so that you could stop pedalling and enjoy the breeze.

Afterwards we went to mcD’s to cool off with some drinks (fuck yeah aircon) and then headed back to the hotel to shower and stuff.

Dinner at ruby tuesdays, a gorgeous steak dinner and then some more shopping afterwards where i bought some shoes from the ‘element’ shop.

A surprisingly uneventful day actually, although biking around Central Park really was a nice experience, its such a massive park  (842 acres or something i think i overheard)

Tomorrow is statue of liberty and some other things, also i think i’ll upload all of the photos when i get back to my own PC as its just way easier that way (tiny netbook screen ftl)

oh. also.

Day 4

An early and boring breakfast in McDonalds, although i had a ‘McGriddle’ which was weird, like an egg and sausage mcmuffin but with small pancakes with raisins for a bun, bizarro.
We headed to the docks via the subway and collected our tour tickets and stuff before setting off to the Statue of liberty island (liberty island? idk) by boat. There were also about 3 security checkpoints just to get onto the fucking pier where the boat leaves, the 9/11 stuff obviously really made them paranoid.

When we got to the island we went to a small cafe to get some drinks, 3 bottled drinks… $10 , conversion rate of pounds to dollars is 1.5 (aka. NYC is fucking expensive)

Then finally, the main attraction – which we already actually saw a few times from boats, the rockafella centre and just walking along the coast..

Yeah, you’ve probably seen it in pictures or on TV, it really is pretty impressive though. Really really big.

Walking through the building underneath it is a museum about the construction, architecture and whats inside and things like that, which was actually more intresting than you’d expect from a museum underneath a statue, (for example, the copper layering is 2x 2pence pieces stacked , or something like that.
We also got the pleasure of a 150step flight of stairs to get onto the podium (just underneath where she is standing), pretty nice view of the NY skyline from up there

We ‘splored a little more, then traveled by boat to staten island, which is where US immigration to NYC used to occur, it was pretty boring and exactly like you’d expect from a museum on immigration to be like. No photos because it was all crap.

Back on the shore, we saw this – which was random.

From here we went to ‘Ground Zero’ , which i hear used to be a monument or memorial, but is now just a MASSIVE construction site in the middle of a bunch of skyscrapers. They are building the ‘one world trade centre’ now, and it’ll apparently be done around 2012. We did however run into a red bull car, with hot girls outside giving out free cans of red bull. Yass.

Walked around and looked at shops and stuff before returning to the hotel due to exhaustion.
Came out at dinner and took a cab to ‘Ichiumi’, which is probably the most amazing buffet restaurant ive ever seen in my life, (and i thought golden corral in FL was good).
It was a huge japanese seafood array (as you’d expect from a restaurant whose name translates to ‘one ocean/sea’)
Those of you that read my malaysia holiday blog posts will know what comes next..

Pictures really dont do this place justice, you cant really understand just how long that fucking buffet spread is without walking it, they also do gyoza, noodles, rice, teppanyaki, fresh oysters, crabs, lobsters (2 lobsters for $10) and the drinks are bottomless, its ridiculous.
We ate until it was coming out of our ears and then walked it off slowly over 10 or so blocks in a reasonable 25deg C (at 9 or 10pm)

Not much to report on this day, we just walked around, saw an apple shop which was underground, went into the NBA shop and found out how ridiculously expensive jerkins are, saw the trump tower, went to Macy’s, victorias secret and then bought a ton of snacks to take home. We also ate at some really nice noodle shop which had the most awesome japanese decor but i didnt take any pictures of it :<