The Big Apple at last...
Trip Start
May 22, 2011
1
2
9
Trip End
May 30, 2011
Where I stayed
What I did
Arrive in New York
New York City, New York
Monday, May 23, 2011
Excellent we thought... wrong!!! He was the shortest, most monosyllabic, driver I’ve ever had the misfortune to be in a vehicle with and he could barely see over the dash board of the bus. For the first half of the drive he was constantly playing with his Blackberry while weaving in and out of the lanes of bumper to bumper traffic. Somehow we made it to the hotel unscathed and after prising my fingers from the sides of my chair, that I was gripping on to for dear life, I promptly fell out of the bus, but miraculously didn’t actually fall over! The only good bit of the drive was that we actually drove under the gantry trestle railway track, just like they always do in the New York movie car chase scenes.
The hotel is really nice and the staff are friendly and helpful... so far. After a quick rest and freshen up, we took to the streets of the Big Apple for the first time. Our aim was to walk to Times Square and find Smith’s Bar to look up Shaun’s friend Peter, who he used to go to West Ham games with back in the day. Well we went straight to it, pretty good at this orienteering lark...!!! Nice guy, we chatted for twenty minutes or so, then left him to his food to get some for ourselves in the restaurant section of the bar... great burgers, boy have we missed American munch!!! After we finished there we walked back through Times Square to have a quick look at Grand Central Station... wow... grand doesn’t quite cover it, what a fantastic building, we’ll be returning again to see it in the day time. From here it was back to the hotel for a rest and some shut eye.
Good news is that tonight’s weather report shows that it’ll be a sunny day tomorrow with temperatures up in the eighties and some cloud cover.
