I'm having a huge headache due to the lack of sleep last night. I wrote some of the stuff that happened on our third day in NYC, but I just can't finish. I'll try to finish tomorrow and include the pictures.
Day 2 blog can be found here.
Day 1 blog can be found here.
Comments are welcome
January 2nd, 2008
Day 3
The weather was so cold on this day, it was like living in Canada all over again. With wind chill, it was easily below 15 or even 20. It was unfortunate that we chose this day to tour the statue of liberty.
We woke up at around 8 O’clock and headed out the door really early, and arrived at South Ferry station at around 9. By the time we reached Battery park and the ticket office, it was only 9:10 in the morning. The line was long and the wind was chilly to the bones. When we were close to the counter, it was announced that the monument passes were sold out, meaning we weren’t able to go inside the statue. We were saddened by this fact and decided to go visit the island anyway since we were there. It was around 10:00 when we got the tickets, and the next available boat was leaving at 11:15 to ferry us to the island where the statue sat. It was damn cold, so instead of standing around being cold, we walked around and found a Starbuck, and obviously, it was packed. After downing a venti hot chocolate, my senses slowly came back to me. Speaking of Venti, the sizes are stupid in the states (at least in Starbucks, or that Starbuck in particular). They don’t label things as small, medium and large; but tall, grande and venti. Tall is like a small but stretched out, so smaller radius, but taller (hence “tall”). Right around the corner of this Starbuck, we found a double decker tour bus, and bought tickets for two and decided to go on the tour after we return from the islands.
At 11:15, we lined up to get onto the boat. After a tight security screening, we finally got on. The bottom two decks were filled with people, so we had to stay on top, which was fucking cold as hell. Still, we took some pictures. The experience on the island would have been much better had it not been so cold. We kept on going into random buildings (such as restaurants, shops, etc.) to warm ourselves up between taking more pictures with the statue from various angles. Once we got enough pictures, we gave up the idea of going to the other island (it's just a museum there anyway). While we were on the island, we bought two bowls of soup in bread bowls... pretty awful.
After we returned from Statue of Liberty, we waited in line to board of double decker bus. We started from Battery Park, which the the South most part of New York and traveled our way up around the downtown area -- the downtown tour. The bus had a transparent plastic dome on top so we were sufficiently warm, and we were able to see the sights. The guide introduced us to various places where film makers shot various movies, like Spiderman 3 and Devil Wears Prada. As well, we were told a number of decent restaurants as we passed by them, but unfortunately, I don't remember any of the names.
We got off the downtown tour at Times Square, waiting to board the Night Tour, which is also around the downtown area (another route) and Brooklyn. While we waited, we decided to grab something quick. We went to this deli restaurant called Roxy's -- fucking biggest rip off of my life. A single burger, without any fancy toppings such as cheese and bacon, was $15. We bought burger and cheesecake. The food was decent, but the price was sky-high.
The night was extremely cold, even the dome could not keep us warm. The tour was nice, and New York is definitely different at night than in the day, but just as awesome. We went around downtown and then to Brooklyn. We stopped at this dock which the bus company advertised heavily. It was gorgeous. Although it was freezing cold, I still managed to take a few pictures (it's hard to take pictures at night. If you flash, you can't see shit, if you don't, you have to hold your camera very steady). At the same place, there was a pretty nice ice-cream store. I was too cold to have anything other than hot coffee, but my GF bought some ice-cream, and it was very good.
Here are the pictures.
A random google image of the building that I work in (bragging )
Preview:
Day 4 will be about our trip to Times Square (properly) and Empire State Building (and cold stone again). LOTS of pictures, here's one of them: