Day 32-34 - NYC - 1st-3rd Jan 2008

I'm running around 15 days behind right now. And my memory isn't to be relied upon at the moment so I'll give my best shot with the rest of NYC with the notes I currently have, which are running about 50 words a day. So depending on how much my photos tell me, these entries might be a bit short.

Here we go.

---

Day 32 - 1st Jan '08

Ahoy we're finally into the new year and we started off by getting kicked out of our rooms and moving into new ones. Our new rooms were only slightly bigger than our old ones but now at least I had a bed. A shared bed, but a bed nonetheless. Settling into life in Tribeca (where supposedly Robert De Niro also lives) I basically lived off the 2 24 hour markets a block away from the hotel. Soup, pound food, bagels with cream cheese and of course all the general supplies, fruit and water. It's so brilliant having markets which never close. Craving something at 1am? No problems.

So after starting the day with some soup and bread I headed off to Bryant Park to skate in the early afternoon. I've probably mentioned it before but Bryant Park has free ice skating...like OMFG. I got there and there was hardly a line and I got in pretty quick, but problem is that it was packed to the rafters. Although you couldn't skate really fast because of the people, and despite the fact that all the people have made the ice very choppy, it was still nice dry ice, none of the wet crap in Sydney.

At 17:00 they cleared to ice to Zamboni it. 20min later I was one of the first people on and although I got told to slow down, my god was it cool. The feeling was absolutely sensational. Fresh ice, middle of New York, flying and then SCHhhhhh STOP. Skategasm.

When I had enough I went back to the hotel and was told that Megan would bring back dinner. So I waited hungrily for a long time and ended up with Pho, which is totally fine except for the fact that raw beef was put on top of noodles which were separate from the now warmish soup. Fine if I had a microwave but I didn't want to take my chances with the raw beef, especially when half of Megan's clan was sick with some viral crap. So a very soupy dinner was had along with a tv menu of Kill Bill 1 & 2 and the new Superman.

---

Day 33 - 2nd Jan 2008

I went skating in the morning after a bagel with cream cheese...Mmmm. I'm going to get back to Sydney and totally be craving that. It was cold and about 10 people were on the ice which should have been fantastic except that after about 20min the blisters I received from last nights marathon session started playing up and I couldn't go for any longer. Which sucked. Anyhoo.



I trotted up to the Avenue Q box office and managed to get quite good discount tix to tomorrow nights show. Then I headed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art which was fantastic baring a few things.

- random exhibitions which closed early
- dickhead staff
- the sea of people

Museums really start sucking when there are way too many people, and there where way way too many people. But on the plus side I saw a lot of Picassos, Miros and Monets...Mmmmm awesome. And they have an entire Egyptian Temple rebuilt inside it. Like Whoa. They had an entire wing of Rembrandts but then I wasn't really a big fan so I passed through pretty quickly. Andy Warhol's huge portrait of Chairman Mao was however, brilliant.



Came back to the hotel and had expensive Japanese for dinner near the hotel.

----

Day 34 - 3rd Jan 2008

Today was FREaking FReezing....-9C. I walked out with Megan's cousin Michelle and it was so cold we had to run most of the way through the city. It was so cold water froze from the fire hydants and I cold feel my thermal pants cracking when I walked. In other words, it was BLOODY COLD!!!.



So the day went like this, cream cheese bagel, nintendo world, get top of the Rock tix for later and then to the Natural History Museum.

The Museum was freaking awesome. Much more friendlier than the Met, cause largely it was aimed at kids. As a big kid myself I absolutely loved it. I went totally giddy at all the Dinosaur fossils and went around embarrassing myself shouting...OMFG STEGASAURUS...and the like for most of it. The other stuff was generally creepy dioramas but sure hell beats the Australian Museum which I think has like butterflies and that's it.



We met up with Megan and her Dad at the Top of the Rock at around sunset. Going up it doesn't seem that high but it is. And of course it was freezing. The good thing was that all the outside decks had perspex walls stopped some of the wind. It was nice cause we got to see the sunset and also NYC at night. And it was pretty bright.



Got back to the hotel via the Rockefeller and got some pretty bad pound food (it's like a buffet but you get what you want and then they weigh it and it's like 6 bucks a pound) from the market and then Megan, Tracey and I headed to Avenue Q on Broadway.

Since I've already seen the bootleg I new what was pretty much going to happen but it still didn't diminish the awesomeness of this musical. You will never look at puppets again and I also had a brief freakout moment when I realised by this time next yeah I'll just be like Princeton, 23, with an Arts degree and no purpose. ARRRGH.

---

More photos are here http://picasaweb.google.com/LJK131/RestOfNYCLotsOfMuseums