New York New York

I arrived in New York knowing that I'd be meeting up with Mick so I was pretty excited even before I got to see the city! When I came out of the subway into the city it was amazing just to see how many people, cars and buildings were in my face...

I had a hostel booked just down the road from Time Square. The hostel was pretty nice and the location made it awesome for just seeing the sights of the city. So I dumped my bags in the hostel and went in search of Mick. He didn't have a mobile with him so I couldn’t call him so I sent him an email saying that I'd meet him at 10am and 4pm on the corner of two streets.

For those of you who know Mick, you know what happened, he didn’t show up... So back to the hotel and used my laptop and skype to call Mick's mum to get the name of his hotel. Finally I was a bit closer to finding him! So off I went to his hotel and left a message under his door saying I'd meet him in the lobby at 6pm. Again, 6pm, no show :( Hmm... I thought he'd be getting back to the hotel soon so I waited in the lobby until just after 7pm when in he walked. He was amazed to see me sitting in the lobby and instantly got excited.

15 minutes later and we were off to a New York Nicks basketball game at Madison Square Gardens. After lining up for a few minutes we were offered tickets for $20 from a scalper. So we snatched them up and took our seats. A basketball game usually has four 12min quarters so you'd think the game would go for no longer than 1.5hrs including breaks... 2.5hrs later and we were into extra time! Mick and I were getting very restless, it just kept dragging on and on and on and on and on and on...

The next few days were purely sightseeing...

We went up the Empire State Building at night which was amazing. It’s so much higher than all the other buildings. We only stayed up there for a little while because it was so cold and windy but definitely worth the shrinkage for the experience!

Next day was Statue of Liberty time... We caught the subway down to the wharfs where you get the ferry to Liberty Island. The ferry ride gave us a great view of the city from the water, its kind of weird without the twin-towers though. On Liberty Island we tagged along with a tour which was both boring and interesting.

After our harbour cruise to the Statue of Liberty it was time for a more sobering area of the city, ground-zero. At the time we visited they had just erected the first beam of the replacement building, the Freedom Tower, and the whole block is basically a massive construction zone. It’s very weird to be there, knowing that two massive buildings collapsed and so many people had died under our feet. If you look closely at the pavement and some of the neighbouring buildings you can make out small chips in the concrete, assumably from where the debris from the collapse impacted.

I stayed at Mick's hotel for the next 2 nights which was a nice change from the hostels I'd been staying in for the past month. Thanks again Mick!

For my last full day we went Museuming. Firstly though, we had to walk through Central Park. It’s actually very amazing that in such a massive city with so many building that they still have a park as big as Central Park. Its absolutely massive, probably would take an hour or more to walk from one end to the other. It's more like a National Park than a "park"; it has massive lakes, boulders, squirrels and thousands of trees along with an outdoor ice-rink.

We went to the Museum of Natural History and the Museum of Modern Art; they were both pretty interesting but got boring after a while. I can only seem to look at painting for so long before they all start looking the same...

Next day time to leave, my last day in the USA...

Off to London now!