A city that never sleeps

There seems like so much to do in New York, and there really is! Cliched, sure, but true all the same. We arrived in to the bus station sometime in the afternoon and were aghast at how stupidly and insanely large this joint was. About 87 gates for buses. Buses EVERYWHERE. As we've already discussed the general clientele of Greyhound USA, I think you can probably appreciate why I superglued my wallet to the inside of my underpants. Strangely, for being so large, NYC is actually rather easy to navigate. The subway isn't quite as handy as the tube, but it's pretty impressive and it does run 24 hours! Broadway is every bit as movie like as you can imagine. I did look in Central Park for the pigeon lady from Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, but I couldn't find her. I can never remember if it's Streets or Avenues that go North South?

Our hostel/hotel was rather pleasant and on Broadway, which by the way is a VERY long road. So we got in, settled and went exploring. I can understand why they made Central Park so massive. They have so many people that don't have gardens or anything, all jammed into this city, so they need somewhere for them to play baseball, and somewhere to take their dogs. So it is rather community friendly and the ambience quite unique. The hot dog venders were a bit of a disappointment to me though, I was expecting thick NY accents and barrels of attitude. Sadly there wasn't any NY accent (more central asian) and they were extremely helpful and friendly! I'm not complaining, but I am surprised! We walked all the way from our hostel to times square on the first night and ended up in Toys'R'Us. I wouldn't ordinarily mention this, however, there was an INDOOR ferris wheel. That's crazy I hear you say, well wait there's more. They also have a full size(ish) Barbie fun house. I was kinda impressed and disturbed at the same time that there is Oktoberfest Barbie. By the looks of her, she'd have trouble carrying a dozen steins of pilsner in a beer tent, but she would be popular with the lads. Sarah said that people would look at me funny if I kept wearing the Optimus Prime helmet in the store, so I took it off. I didn't buy it either. But I did keep pressing the button that made the helmet say "Megatron must be stopped!". Sweet. I hope Santa reads this.

Unfortunantely it feels like we really didn't get to do much stuff while we were in NY, there is just so much to do. We did manage to get to the Met Museum of art though. I don't know anything about art, but I'm reasonably sure that if you take a piece of canvas, stretch it over a funny shaped timber frame, paint it deep blue and call it "Blue Canvas" you're not an artist, you're a knob. That said, there were some absolutely stunning pieces of art.

With so much history as well. My favourite part was the arms and armour section, they had suits of armour that were hundreds of years old, with the most ornate and intricate metal work I have ever seen. They did look difficult to get off if you needed to evacuate your bladder mid-battle. Much to my dismay they had taken the handles off some very old and beautiful Japanese swords. I meant to ask why they did that, but I forgot and/or was to lazy. After about four and a half hours of walking around we'd seen nearly a fifth of the entire place, but our legs were getting a bit tired, so we called it a day. We did leave feeling more cultured than when we walked in, that's for sure. I think I'm going to make strange shaped canvases, paint them one colour and sell them for a million dollars each, anyone interested in purchasing one, please feel free to email me through this site.

Other fun things that we did included: going to Staten Island to go past the Statue of Liberty, Crossing the Brooklyn Bridge on foot (more fun than it sounds), and uhmm.... eating lots of bacon cheeseburgers from the fast food joint around the corner from the hostel, and going to Wall Street. Got the American Psycho feeling from the place though... Wasn't nice. But a very pretty building.

Next week join us for London!

written by

haveyouseenmypassport on July 5, 2007 from New York, United States

from the travel blog: To infinity!.. and... beyond... uh.....

tagged NewYork

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