The travels of Tim and Megan: New York, New York: Part 1

Fans, we have just returned from an amazing 4 days in New York.

Saturday

We had a very early flight on Saturday morning, during which Megan slept for about 6 hours of the 7 hour flight time!!! We were greeted in New York with a guy at Immigration who obviously hated his job and his life. He was extremely rude to us and called us idiots because we weren't standing in the exact spot we were supposed to be standing (not sure how we were supposed to know exactly where to stand, or what difference it made!). He looked like your typical psychopath, who has bodies in his freezer, and he was wearing some dashing blue rubber gloves, which clinched him the title of a class A nutter. Anyway, Megan complained to his supervisor on our way out. Ha ha.

Our hotel, the New Yorker, was great. It was in a perfect location, right across the road from Madison Square Garden (where Muhammed Ali fought Joe Frazier in 1971 and lost - Ali stayed in the New Yorker hotel that night!). It was also just a few blocks from the Empire State building, Times Square and not too far from Central Park either. After checking in at the hotel, we set off in search of the Circle Line boat cruises and, after getting a little lost, we arrived in the right place and got ourselves on to a three-hour cruise around the entire island of Manhattan.

The cruise was brilliant. It was a good way to get our bearings and find out where things were in relation to one another so we could plan our next few days. The commentator was very informative, pointing out all the obvious sights, such as where the Twin Towers had stood and how massive they were, the Chrysler building, the United Nations building, the Empire State building (which was constructed in just 14 months in 1930-31), Yankee Stadium, and so on, but he also had lots of other interesting information, like showing us apartment blocks where various celebrities had purchased an apartment, or a floor of the building, for $30 million-odd etc, and he even showed us the lamp post next to where John Lennon was shot! Tim was very interested to hear that his favourite Yankees player, Derek Jeter, has an apartment in the big black apartment block just behind the United Nations building in central Manhattan...worth a lot of money. The highlight, though, was seeing the Statue of Liberty up close. Very impressive!

After our cruise, we headed for Times Square, where we stood on the crowded footpaths watching the enormous TV screens stuck to the side of buildings, showing live baseball and advertisements for all sorts of things. We were sucked in by the huge billboards, bright lights and flashes of colour, which I'm sure make you want to buy things...things you don't want or need, just for the sake of buying things. We had fun in the Virgin Megastore, where Tim got a photo with The Simpsons! We also found a New York Yankees store, selling almost everything you could think of with the famous NY logo on it...you could even buy a Yankees American football!

We pulled ourselves away from Times Square and had a couple of drinks at our hotel bar before getting some dinner at TGI Friday's. Solid American food - burgers with chips, extra cheese, loads of sauce. Just what we wanted after a big day.

Sunday

On Sunday morning we got up early and headed to a famous bagel shop, H&H Bagel, that Megan had heard about. We grabbed ourselves a couple of bagels each (and Tim grabbed a photo with Bert and Ernie outside) and sat in Central Park to eat them, how very New York of us! Central Park was very nice. We wandered through a small part of it and found the Jackie Onassis memorial reservoir - Tim thought that she probably deserved something better than a reservoir. It was however, very pretty and very peaceful. We were stunned at the massive number of people out running, cycling, roller blading, etc through Central Park early on a Sunday! We felt a little lazy to be strolling leisurely amongst them.

From the park, we headed for the shops of 5th Avenue. First stop was a pit stop at Trump Tower, where Donald was very nice and let us use his flash toilets!!! Trump Tower was pretty impressive, with its Trump pizzeria and Trump ice cream parlour in the lower lobby and some Trump clothing stores in the upper lobby, which you get to by using the Trump escalator, to the left of the Trump water feature. We had to wait around until 12pm for Tiffany & Co to open its doors, so we wandered up and down a few blocks, by-passing the stores like Prada and Louis Vuitton, but we did have a look at the Disney store!!! Four floors of everything Disney. Very fun, but a little overwhelming after a while, especially with several hundred over-hyped children running around!

Once Tiffanys had opened, we joined the crowds and had a look. The staff were very friendly and didn't seem to mind the dozens of tourists asking questions about the stock and even trying some things on, despite the fact that very few of them were ever going to buy anything! Megan had been looking forward to visiting Tiffanys for years, and she had a great time checking out all of the beautiful necklaces, rings, bracelets, etc. Tim's highlight, however, was getting a photo of the US Open tennis trophy, which was on display in the corner.

Soho was next on our list of places to visit. Soho, we discovered, is short for "south of Houston Street"...we did not know. We found a nice little cafe for lunch, where Tim had American hot dogs, extra ketchup and mustard, very nice! We enjoyed looking around the shops in Soho, partly because most of them seemed to have air conditioning, which made a very pleasant break from the 30 deg temperatures outside. Having lived in London for a few months, we are not used to such extreme heat!

From Soho, we made our way down to Ground Zero, where the Twin Towers had once stood. It is so difficult to imagine how massive they must have been. Most of the surrounding buildings are around 50-60 floors high, which is huge, but these were only half the size of the Towers. We couldn't see a lot of what was going on at Ground Zero, as they had some netting around the outside, but the foundations of the new Freedom Tower (expected to be finished in 2011) were well under way. The Freedom Tower, will be around the same height as the Twin Towers, but only 60 floors will be used; the top half will be decorative with a spire-type thing at the top. There was a billboard explaining that they plan to have a memorial next to the Freedom Tower, with two hollows cut into the ground, representing the two towers, with fountains in the middle and the names of those who died in the September 11 attacks written on the walls inside the hollows.

We returned to Soho that evening for drinks / cocktails at a place called Bar 89. It was very nice, and Megan was extremely impressed with the bathrooms. The toilets had clear glass doors, but when you lock the door, the glass turns frosted so that you can't see through it anymore...technology eh! We found a cool little restaurant for dinner, but after dinner we were pretty tired after our long day of exploring, so we called it a night.