5 days in Gotham

Pic - Brooklyn Bridge

This will get wordy and long - so strap yourself in.

Soo.. where to start? Getting to NYC was a day wasted in-transit. I had to fly from Redmond, OR, to Portland, OR, to LAX, to JFK. Started the journey at 6am, and was at my hotel at 11:15pm.

I'd done a bit of looking around for the best way of getting from JFK to Manhattan, and given the time and how tired I was, I decided to go with a Taxi which is a flat rate of $45 plus tolls and tips. I'd read that to be wary of anyone other than an official taxi dispatcher for accepting rides, and was glad I did. As soon as you leave the terminal, guys every 10 feet or so are offering rides I must look like a tourist, coz I got asked by everyone of them :) The line was huge, but it didn't take long to clear. The driver had trouble understanding me - surprise - he was Indian, or similar. He had an interesting style of driving. Rather than just sit on the accelerator with a steady foot, he would gas it, then coast, then gas, then coast - for 30 bloody minutes. Lucky I don't get car sick! I reckon his fuel bill must be horrendous. Driving into Manhattan everything was lit up and the sky was clear - the only thing I could make out was the Empire State building. I had to point out to the driver that we were in the wrong street when we got to Manhattan and that we were about 5 avenues past where we should have been. Given it was a flat rate, I think it was an honest mistake.

The hotel is pretty good - the room is small and I mean small. I think it's about 10 steps from the door to the furthest point away. There's no shower or toilet - they're shared on the floor. Overall, it's really good. It's clean, it's cheap (for NY), it's only 3 or 4 blocks from Times Square and about 15 mins walk from Central Park. There's a small cool private park just up the street from here as well which, because of the waterfall, makes you feel like you're not in the middle of huge city. Overall I'd give it an 8./10 - the hotel that is. I'd come here again.

I was pretty shattered that night, but found a market open at 11:30, grabbed a couple of beers and pretzels (which didn't make me thirsty!) and realised I was walking around NYC at midnight - kinda bizarre and cool.

Friday

That night I passed out rather than slept. I didn't really have a plan the first day, I thought I'd just wander around and see what I could see. So I saw a heap of stuff - Rockefeller Plaza, FAO Schwarz (toy shop that has the big piano that was in the movie "Big"), the Apple Store (nearly bought an iPhone), Central Park, 5th Ave, Times Square, Broadway and a heap of other stuff I can't remember right now.

I was walking down a street and thought I recognised the bloke walking toward me - turned out it was the guy who plays Detective Stabler (sp?) in Law & Order:SVU. A bit later down the street I saw some catering vans and a lot of people with camera gear - they must've been filming there that day.

In the early evening, I was walking past some orthodox Jews when one of them asked "Are you Jewish?". I shook my head and kept moving, thinking nothing of it. About 3 blocks later, another orthodox Jew asked the same question. Do I look Jewish? I have no idea why they were asking me?

That night was "Fashion's night out" which marked the end (or start?) of Fashion Week in Manhattan. Every second fashion shop had something on - red carpets and exclusive shopping, or had DJ's in store. In Herald Square, the group Train were playing a free concert. I don't know if I've heard of them before or not, but they did play a great cover of Led Zeppelin's "Ramble On". Most of 5th Ave and the garment district was like one big street party - New York style. It was pretty cool. I nearly walked into P. Diddy (Sean Combs - whatever he calls himself these days) - except for the crowd of people around him. I'll say one thing. There are many fine looking women in New York - esp. on a night like that. I'd left the hotel at 9:15 in the morning, and got back at about 10:00pm that night. Again, I think I passed out rather than slept.

Saturday

Again, I didn't really have a plan of attack, so just started to wander around. I returned to a coffee shop that I found the day before that actually serves Flat Whites - not a big deal you might say? Well, it's about the only place that I've been to (of about 30 coffee shops - not a huge sample I know) that has them. Anyway, they make an awesome coffee and it's worth the 30 min walk from the hotel to get one each day - which I have done so far.

Today was the 9th anniversary of the World Trade Centre attacks. At one stage I thought I might go down to watch the ceremonies, but I thought it was too touristy a thing to do - I would've felt like I was gawking, so I ended up not going. All the flags in the city (of which there must be thousands) were at half mast and there was nearly a full day of coverage on many of the tv channels.

The day was shaping up to be a ripper - I don't know how hot it got, but there wasn't a cloud in the sky and was just perfect. I ended up back in Central Park for a bit, and had a better look around - went to Strawberry Fields, which is an area set aside for, and paid for, by Yoko Ono as a tribute to John Lennon - who was killed not far from here. I was expecting a huge grassed area, but it's really just a small mosaic inlaid in the ground with the word "Imagine". It was still good to see. The magic of Central Park is that you don't believe you're in one of the world's largest cities - it's really peaceful - even on a Saturday afternoon with people everywhere. I saw an area in the park that was in "When Harry Met Sally" - it would look great in Autumn.

Again I walked past another actor from SVU - this time the bloke who plays Det. Munch (sp?).

Sunday

Well, how quickly things change here - the day started off a bit grey and the forecast was for rain. So packed my jacket and wore jeans for the first time. I had booked a bike tour of lower Manhattan in the evening that was supposed to have a great outlook from the Brooklyn bridge at sunset - so I hoped the rain was going to stay away. The starting point was nearly 40 blocks away, so I thought I'd wander down there via Broadway, which is one of the few streets that aren't organised in a grid fashion. By the way, I'd always been confused by the Streets and Ave numbered naming convention in NY, but once you get the swing of it, it makes it so easy to get around. The Avenues run north and south, while the streets run east and west - the centre avenue being 5th avenue. Most of the avenue's are numbered, (like my hotel is between 2nd and 3rd), but there are some, like Park Ave and Madison Ave, that aren't. Anyway, it's much easier than trying to remember street names like Melbourne has.

In the morning I returned to "my" coffee shop with a paper and time to kill. It will probably sound cliche, but it was great to just sit in a coffee shop, sipping one of the best coffee's I've had in months, listening to some blues music while watching the rained and reading the paper. Life is good!

Around 3:30 I ring the tour guys to see if it's going ahead, they say "Yep, rain should clear by 4:00pm". The tour was supposed to start at 4:30pm. I thought they must be dreaming as it had been raining for the past 3 hours and didn't look like letting up - it was a gentle, but soaking rain.

Anyway, I show up and decide - what the heck, I might as well go. The other option was to be crowded in a museum (coz that's what everyone supposedly does on a rainy day), or go back to the hotel room. So even though I'll baulk at the slightest hint of rain when I'm at home and wanting to go for a ride, here I am on holidays in NYC and I'm about to go for a 5 hour tour in the rain! Yeah, I don't know either. Our group was 8 - but it was supposed to be 20 - some people aren't made of the right stuff obviously. One of the organisers was a bit of a salesman and assured us that the rain was just about stopped - well, it did - 2.5 hours later! The ride was pretty relaxed, and is a great way to cover a lot of ground and to get from interesting point to another. I was pretty well soaked by the time we had a break at the World Financial Centre - which overlooked the site of the World Trade Centre. There's plenty of work going on with a floor being added every 8 days (I think?) to one of the towers (now at 36 stories) with the second tower having just got off the ground.

Wandered into a shoe shop and saw a pair of Blundstones - for $145! erk.

We went through the financial district and stopped at the federal reserve. The guide said he liked to stop here as it's the closest any of us are likely to get to so much money. 5 stories below ground level there is 720 BILLION dollars of gold! Wouldn't mind a percentage of that. Later on, we were going to have a look at Wall street and the charging bull statue. However, when we got there, a fair portion of it was fenced off - which had the guides scratching their heads, then we saw another bull - a replica in front of it. There was a bit of a crowd around, so we asked a guy with a walkie talkie what was going on. He said they were getting ready to film a bit from the remake of the movie "Arthur", and that this scene was going to be Arthur crashing his Batmobile (which was there as well!) into the bull - obviously the fake one. I didn't get any photo's (because I'm a doofus), but it was a great thing to see.

We then road up the Brooklyn bridge - there's a cycle way and pedestrian path over the roadway. It's the biggest hill I've done on a bike in a long time!. The view was good, but as with the rest of the tour, the overcast and low cloud made it less impressive than it would've been. Later we road through Little Chinatown and Little Italy - which was closed off to traffic as it's the beginning of the festival of San Genaro (a patron Saint of the area). Again, this was pretty cool as it had a street party atmosphere about it.

There were a few other things we saw as well - I can't remember them all already! I'd recommend this to anyone - the bike riding isn't strenuous, but it allowed us to see a heap of things without sprinting everywhere. The guides were quite knowledgeable about the history and the ins-and-outs of the neighborhoods. Top stuff.

After this, I had to walk back the 40 odd streets to the hotel - and by now it was 9:30 at night. I've got one thing to say about Manhattan - at least the parts I've been in - it's remarkably safe. I felt more uneasy in parts of San Fran than I have in NYC. There is a fraction of the homeless/beggars in NYC that San Fran had. Even when I was walking around on my first night at midnight, the bars were full, there people everywhere, but I felt safe.

Monday - today.

I was intending to have a look at the Museum of Modern Art today, but took a long way to get up there. Of course, I hadn't read the small print in my guide book which says that it's open every day except - you guessed it - Monday! Arrgh! Oh well, I wandered though the Guggenheim which was close by, and also the Museum of Natural History, which is on the other side of Central Park - which I got to wander through again.

The day was looking good weather wise, even though they predicted rain. I thought I'd do the "Top of the Rock" which is the viewing area of Rockefeller building. You can buy a ticket to see it during the day, then later in the evening. I needed a break, so went back to the hotel for a quick nap. Yeah, there's time enough for sleeping when you're dead, but after four days of solid walking, I was knackered. Half an hour later and the rain comes - bugger. No point going up a tall building in the rain. I'll leave it for tomorrow.

Drink can be educational - inside a Snapple lid - "It is illegal to graffiti someones cow". OK?

Anyway, that's all I can remember for now - Cheers!