Ri's NYC

This is written 100% by Ri. As much as I want to I won't change a thing.

We arrived in New York on the 21st of May and got to our hotel at around midnight and once again got upgraded to a suite which was awesome. We had booked a secret hotel on the upper east side just next to the Queens borough Bridge about 5 blocks from the bottom of central Park. Due to our late arrival we slept in on the Saturday and headed for central park. One thing that we noticed straight away is that there seemed to be construction everywhere with at least one building in most blocks shrouded in scaffolding.

We made it to the edge of the park alive and thanks to my great navigating skills, we went down a road entrance assuming that we would be able to get into the park a little way in.... I was wrong. We ended up walking that full width of the park on a small footpath through under bridges with noisy traffic. Once on the other side we walked through the park looking for something to snack on and because it was a Saturday there were people everywhere. We made our way down to the lower west corner of the park and out to find something to snack on. After that a little overwhelmed by all the pushy noisy new Yorkers we made our way back to our hotel.



On our second day we made our way down towards time square. We made it to down to 52nd just managing to dodge a Polish parade on Madison avenue and found tiffanies only to be confronted by a massive Israeli Parade on 5th. We took refuge in Tiffany’s for a while and then headed out again. We had to fight our way through hordes of people for about 5 blocks south before we could cross fifth. We finally got down to times square and to the Lion King Box office only to find out that there was no 8pm show that night and the matinee was all sold out. And their were no other showings in the following days. So we stumbled home defeated.


The next day we we wend around the Museums, We got to the Guggenheim just as it opened and after that moved on to the natural history museum which had a much larger fossil collection then I had ever seen before. After that we made our way down to times square again to check out the Tutankhamun exibit. All museumed out we jumped in a cab and went down to the bottom of the island to see the statue of liberty at sunset and took a round trip on the Statin Island ferry


All in all New York didn’t shine for us as we had hoped it would be. I am writing this last bit on the flight to London after one more night it New York. We started our day in Boston with wonderful weather and a beautiful city For a change we decided to this leg by train and it was a lot cheaper. Probable would have worked out around the same amount of time as a flight if you count security time. For what we saw of the train trip the countryside in Massachusetts and Carolina. Is very nice and there are some awesome little hamlets that you go through as the train track travels pretty close to the coast. We didn’t take much of it in however as we were both stuffed and a bit fluey so we Vicky slept for about 90% and I snoozed almost as much I woke Vic up as we were approaching New york and we could see the empire state building and the city-scape. Unfortunatly the lovely weather in Bostan had shifted to dark and rainy in New york. It was just around this time as I think we were going through queens that the train stopped to wait for the signals and we heard an announcment over the loud speaker that the there was something wrong with the engine and they were unable to pull away and had no estimation of how long it might take to fix. Luckily we were only sitting there for about 20min before they got it moving again. We arrived at Pen station around 2pm and spent about 20min trying to find a lift that worked and could get us to the surface where it was still raining. Luckily we were able to flag down a cab without to much difficulty and get downtown relatively dry. This time we stayed in a place in China town a couple of blocks for little Italy. The guy at the front desk recommended a Chinese place that he ate from every day so I went out to just us some takeaway for lunch. You can tell its authentic when the write the dockets in Cantonese and I didn’t tell Vicky this but the menu had quite a variety including frog, intestines of some sort and other delicacy’s.(eeeeewwwwwww)

The adventurous eaters that we are I decided to go for the vegetarian fried rice. So we had lunch rested for a while and then headed out for dinner before going to see the Lion king on Broadway. We headed up about 10 short blocks from where we were staying to a Ukrainian dinner we had seen on a TV show about peoples favourite locals (it was actually a show on the food network - top 10 diners in the usa). The food was awesome and the soups were just what we needed after getting half soaked on the walk there which probably wasn’t the best for our flu. The reason we hunted it down was because of there Ukrainian dumplings which are apparently famous. I defiantly recommend it if only for dumplings and borsht and it was reasonably cheap as far as new York goes (Veselka). We made our way up to see the lion king with a funny cab driver named Richie who is probably the nicest New Yorker that we met. Wasn’t a fan on French tourists though. The Lion king was a good show and apart for the Crush of everyone trying to get the two toilets during the intermission it was a good experience. Afterwards though we were pretty stuffed and had to get up in about five ours to get the to airport for our flight to LONDON. There was a mad rush as we exited to I took us a block west to try and get a cab. Bad idea. I ended up standing on the side of the road, in the rain for about 20min trying to flag down a cab watching people managing to do it with no difficulty about twenty meters either side of me. So once again summing up our experience of new York. Some Good food (polite way of saying most of it was bad), good show and too many pushy people.

Well I did my best not to change his words or add bits. I just did not see the magic. I had a New Yorker HIT my window in a cab, a middle aged man! Like a toddler chucking a tanty. A city full of toddlers with their bright adds and replica filled museums. A city where you are suppose to be able to get anything anytime, but doesn't "do delivery after 7pm." But alas I must breath and not get started on this city I disliked so much (A man made me CRY in TIFFANY'S - whole other story!). Anyway we've moved on to the cities New York wished it could be. But to be like London, it's got some growing up to do. TODDLERS! (Look at that, you've reduced me to name calling)