New York

New York, New York. Melting pot of a myriad cultures and ethnic groups all tenaciously holding onto their individuality whilst proudly declaring their solidarity and unitedness in this amazing city – a living organism in it’s own right. We both couldn’t get enough of the place. We’re not normally city lovers, but you can’t help but be impressed with New York. With a million ways to be entertained, fed, housed, employed and inspired, it is a landscape as awe inspiring as anything we’ve seen in nature, except this has been entirely made by man, for man. We hired some bikes and spent the entire first day riding around Central Park. We got here in January, so it was still pretty cold – actually snowed one day.

Chez is fascinated by squirrels. This one had a typical New Yorker attitude, “What….no nuts!?”

No, these aren’t ghosts skating in Central Park. I had to take an HDR image to get this photo, but you get the general idea. We’ve never been skating in an outdoor rink before so we came back later and had a crack after the sun set. It was so amazing to be skating around with New York towering above you on all sides.

This is the view from the top of the Rockefeller building at dusk.

The bright lights of Time Square.

We did the circuit line ferry trip around Manhattan to get our bearings. Unfortunately, Ellis Island was still closed due to cyclone damage, but you can still imagine that it would have been bloody impressive sight for the immigrants from England and Ireland arriving here by ship in search of a better life.

Grand Central Station.

We stayed with a girl we met in Istanbul, named Anna, at her flat in Brooklyn. Everyday, we made our way over Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan by train but it also made for a very nice walk.

Upper Manhattan as seen from Brooklyn Bridge. A bit cloudy this day. The Bridge is crammed with cars, tourists as well as locals on foot and bikes. Crossing the bridge is a pretty popular pastime, even for the locals and you can see why. Strange that we don’t do a similar thing with our Bridge in Sydney.

Can you recognise these steps? If you’re a fan of the show, “Law and Order” or “the God Father”, they should be familiar. In fact, almost everywhere we went, it felt like we were in a movie set.

Enjoying a Pastrami on Rye at the Famous Katz’s Deli. Also the location for the famous orgasm scene out of “When Harry Met Sally”. This one sanga cost $17 (including pickles) but look at the size of the thing! We shared.

Apparently, Katz became famous during the second world war when they offered the service of sending salamis to service men in the field for local families.

On the streets of Soho at night.

Central Park was also beautiful after dark

The World Trade Centre memorial.

Chez finally has a run in with the law. Notice how big the smile on her face is. Hmmm…..

We sat here on Wall street and ate the biggest muffin I’ve ever seen whilst watching all the budding Gordon Gecko’s race past with their mobile phones and brief cases. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get into the stock exchange, but we had a lot of fun just people watching outside.

The Business District.

The Arse End of the Business District. Ahhh, there was a whole bus load of pushy Japanese tourists there that day. Shame the bull wasn’t real!

Yeah, I know – too many photos of Brooklyn Bridge.

The Flat Iron building.

The things you don’t expect to find in the middle of NYC. We found this guy in Central Park Zoo. I know a lot of people don’t like zoos, but this one was really good – much better than London.

The Museum of Natural History. We gave ourselves only a couple of hours here, but we could have spent a couple of days. They actually have an entire real T-Rex skeleton.

Seems we’re always running away from T-Rexs. See Bolivia post.

We went to see two Broadway shows. This one, The Book of Mormon, cost us an absolute bomb. “The best musical of the century” – NOT. Even with the century being only 12 years old, it was still a ridiculous claim. We went to see Chicago a few days later – it was much better.

The inside of the Guggenheim.

taking a stroll along the Hudson.

Upper Manhattan from the top of the Empire State Building.

We tried to get tickets to see the Knicks at Madison Square Garden but we already had tickets booked to Mexico before the game was on, so we went to see the Nets play at their home stadium in Brooklyn. Even bought a Nets beanie!

Yep, we had to do it. Should be familiar to all the Seinfeld fans.

Incredible works of art at the Museum of Modern Art (?)

This is Anna. We crashed at her place and probably drove her nuts for 10 days. Amazingly generous person and really made our experience of New York so much better by giving us the local perspective. Thanks heaps, Anna. Our place next time!