New York Holiday

First of all, screw you, ticket prices. I could’ve bought a return flight to NYC for £300 if I hadn’t waited one more day. Madness.

But I did wait another day, so I ended up booking my flights and frantically searching for accommodation on the same day, about a week before my flight out of Heathrow. Since hotels are only really cost-effective if you’re sharing a room, I looked at b&bs. As I’d expected, all the decent ones in Manhattan had been booked up, and I didn’t fancy staying in New Jersey or the far reaches of Brooklyn – cue my saviour: airbnb!

It’s a bit like roomshares on Gumtree, but more ‘official’, with user-reviews of the places/lodgers and a secure(?) payment system. It worked great for me – although I don’t know the percentage of people who’ve been scammed through it or ended up with a terrible, dirty room. Thankfully both my places were great.
I got all the advantages of a hotel but for a lot less cash, and in a great location. And both of my hosts were really attentive and keen to find places in the neighbourhood they thought I’d like. The local info & homely hospitality was definitely better than I would have expected in a hotel or b&b. I had planned to just stay in one place since I was only there for 5 days, but I took too much time deciding which place and someone booked half my stay in the East Village room. So I stayed in the East Village for nights one and two, and further up the East Side by the UN building for another two nights.

Another benefit to only being there for five days…

Only taking carry-on luggage!

 

Thankfully, the first of my 12 alarms woke me with no problems, so I didn’t have too much of an issue making it down to the seafront to get my coach.

 

coach class all the way...

During the coach ride, I spent 20minutes downloading spotify mobile, just so I could listen to this song.

…and eventually I found a slight more exciting form of travel.

on the plane

Credit to KLM/Delta, the flight really wasn’t all that bad back in economy class. There was just enough space to stop me fretting about DVT, I got a window seat instead of being stuck in the middle of the plane, and they had a reasonable selection of recent films.

Airplane food. Not all terrible.

 

This was the snack – the ‘proper’ meal (at least the veggie one) was a pretty nice, although not particularly brave choice of veg lasagne. The coffee was awful though. Should’ve gone for tea.

I saw three films on the way there:

Arthur – this is not a good film. Russell Brand is not a good actor unless he’s doing ‘Dickensian whimsy’. I feel bad for choosing to watch it.

Hanna -  pretty good. I liked Tom Hollander’s mad euro-gay childcatcher character.

Limitess  – Ok. Bonus points for Anna Friel being in it, ’cause she’s from Rochdale. Not amazing though.

Up in the air

 

Three films/seven hours later, and I was back on land.

I hardly took any pictures for the first couple of days since I didn’t want to spend the whole trip being one of those annoying tourists. I saw an Italian guy holding out an ipad with an NYC map on it, walking blindly into groups of locals. I didn’t want to be that guy…

NYC

Eventually I made my way into Manhattan. The shuttle bus I’d booked took about an hour to even turn up at the airport, and I had further subway shenanigans once I was there, but I managed to get to my first place around 8:30pm. The street I was staying on was lively & looked pretty fun, so I decided to dump my stuff, freshen up, and then combat any tiredness with some adventuring.

Some brief notes from my first couple of days:

St Mark’s Place & the East Village is a great place. Seemed like quite a young, lively arty scene. Lots of cool bars and places to eat, but no pretentiousness or attitude (at least none that I encountered).

Drinks are expensive. I’m used to £3-4 for a whisky & coke/maybe a fiver for a glass of wine, but the average price for a whisky & coke in NYC seemed to be about $10, or £6.30ish.

Some drinks are very expensive. On the first night, I ended up running under a stranger’s umbrella ’cause it was absolutely belting it down (and 27C in Brighton? Bastards…) so I made friends with umbrella lady and her crew, and we headed towards SoHo for some new bar. Didn’t find the bar, but we stumbled into Mister H instead & I got a round of four tequilas for me and my three new friends.

$61. Before Tip.

Eurgh.

Once I realised my accommodation was less than a 5-minute walk from two speakeasies, I had to check them out.

The blind barber was small & didn’t seem to have a door policy – I just walked through the (empty) barbershop and opened a slidy door at the back – and I was in the bar. Easy. Great barstaff there, and lovely people.

New friends!

The other speakeasy is one I’d heard about before. Turns out it was 2o seconds from my building’s front door, so I had to check it out.

PDT (Please Don’t Tell) is a ‘hidden’ speakeasy inside a 24hr hot-dog place. I made it my first stop that evening, since it’s often full and you might get offered a seat an hour or two later. You go into the hot dog place, and then get inside a wee phone-booth off to the side. Pick up the handset, and a phone/buzzer will ring in the hidden bar next-door. There’s a camera in the phonebooth, so the decidy-woman in the bar can check out and vet prospective patrons. Although I hadn’t made a reservation, she said there was a spare seat at the bar, and opened the door to let me through.

It sounds like I was lucky to just get in speculatively – ringing in advance for a reservation seems to be the done thing, but it worked out ok. I then ended up in the bizarre situation of drinking in a hidden New York speakeasy inside a hot dog joint, being eyed-up by a creepy taxidermy bear & chatting to the first guy I saw there. Who was from Middleton.

Surreal.

Another surreal experience happened the following day on my trek for groceries – on the way back from Union Square, and without either my camera (I was having a non-tourist day) or my phone (dead battery) I walked head-on into the NYC Slut Walk. There must’ve been well over a couple of thousand women there by the time I encountered them, marching back the way I came (not my vid). So I saw thousands of women in various states of undress, flanked by bemused policemen – but best of all I managed to get my UK-USA power adapter. Thanks RadioShack!

 

CELEBRITY SPOT No.1 – Zach Galifianakis (‘the fat one from The Hangover’)

In a shop, buying some stuff.

 

After the second night, I took my stuff up 40 blocks to my new place, next to the UN headquarters. I hijacked their wifi for about 3minutes, and felt almost like a high-level criminal mastermind. Briefly.

I dropped my bags off, and legged it outside to get a cab. Which, incidentally, proved to be much harder than I’d expected. It took me half a day to work out that although I was trying to flag cabs with the ‘lights’ on, those lights were just lighting up the advertisements on top of the cars. And the cabs were full. Fail…

 

But I made it. My host had invited me to get brunch (apparently a big deal in NYC) at Beauty and Essex. Tiny portions, but lovely food, and a big, odd-clubby vibe. The place is a nightclub/bar also so it’s quite opulent and grand-looking. And I reserved us a table through the free yelp.com app on my phone, which is bloody brilliant, so I was extra-happy with managing to get there on time. Food was good, and Bex (my host) and her friends were lovely.

Brunch at Beauty and Essex

 

Which leads to CELEBRITY SPOT No.2 – Paul Giamatti

Being interviewed for the New Yorker Festival

 

One of her friends had tickets to see Paul Giamatti being interviewed for the New Yorker festival. So I offered to buy one of the tickets and we went there after brunch. Had a great time – he’s a really good interviewee, I got my ticket for half-price, and we avoided a torrential storm that just about finished when we left the theatre. Nice.

Then back to the flat. My host was out for most of the day, but her two room-mates were waiting for me.

Sammy and Max

After my East Village adventure was over, I got a bit more touristy and had one epic day of walking all the way from my apartment on East 46th, down (through a very meandering route) to Wall St.

Danger Zone

I had to divert slightly because of this. Which I later discovered was probably this. Eek.

I was only ten or so blocks away from the Chrysler Building & empire state so I had a quick snoop around.

Empire State

Below the Empire State building

Empire State Lobby

And the slightly garish Chrysler building lobby…

Chrysler Building lobby

 

Then down towards Wall Street to check out the protests…

Chess in a park!

 

David Bowie Street

Authentic NYC steam

 

more steam

 

cabs

There was a lot of buzz around Wall St – a couple of helicopters, a fair few news vans & reporters…

Breaking news...

…and lots of police.

keeping order

signs

crowds

Hi!

zombie protest

There had been a ‘zombie walk’ that morning, so a few of the protesters were a little undead-looking.

And some of the guys working in the high-rise buildings overlooking the protest were shouting back or watching the protesters.

Bankers

more bankers

'70s zombie

 

Towards Ground Zero

I went over to Ground Zero after this since it was only a block away, but didn’t really feel like snapping a load of pictures was appropriate, so the orange ‘men at work’ signage is the closest I got to a picture of the World Trade Centre site.

 

Absolutely shattered at that point, I got a cab up to the Rockafeller Centre to visit the observation deck. I’d timed it perfectly to coincide with the clearest day of my stay in NYC, as well as hopefully coinciding with sunset.

Checking out the view

After getting out of the weird disco-lift (purple/red lights along the lift shaft and a clear roof to the lift) I saw a familiar site. Bit overcast though…

Sod off, clouds

Seriously? I do all that work to ensure the best possible view, and it’s bloody overcast and threatening to rain? Great.

Rain, rain, go away...

Central Park, in front of a window, largely obscured by rain.

Soggy tourists

Thankfully, it started to clear up a bit.

Steam from above

Before long, sunset arrived, and I did a ‘please take my photo’ swap with some nice Aussies.

Me, and the sunset

apocalyptic clouds

Eventually, the scary-looking clouds subsided long-enough for me to get some better views & pictures. It even stopped raining for a while.

That slopey tower with the green spike is the Bank of America building, and the one to the right is the Times Square Building. They both had colour-changing lit-up spikes. Which was nice.

 

Times Square, with the Paramount Building lit up orange, and the Hudson river towards the sunset. At this point I realised there was actually an extra observation level one floor up. I headed up there for a slightly better view, already going way beyond my allocated 15 minutes, but no-one seemed to be in a rush to evict us.

Empire State Building

Central Park, from the top of the Rock

Round the other side of the building, you could see over Central Park and beyond. No pretty sunset, but still an amazing view.

Sun setting

Gradually, more and more lights started to come on.

Giant iphones

And the square buildings started to look a bit like enormous iphones.

Peturbed binocular robot

Binocular bot has seen it all before.

All lit up

 

NYC night

 

I eventually left, after about an hour up there. Well-worth my $22!

Manhattan skyline earlier on

I dragged my tired legs back to the apartment and chilled with my new friends.

Sleepy

less sleepy

The view from my second place

And suddenly it was my last day in NYC. My plan to visit the Museum of Modern Art utterly failed. Apparently it isn’t open on Tuesdays. But I still managed to check out Times Sq, a little bit of Central Park, and Grand Central before heading back to the airport.

Bye!

I didn’t spend too long in Times Sq, since I’ve seen it before. It’s basically just a big pile of shiny adverts. And I hate adverts.

Buy stuff

A coffee-to-go and a messenger bag? This guy’s clearly local. He’s not fazed by the bright lights.

Business time

 

Don't Look Now...

A ghost-child? Or murderous dwarf? Or maybe an obscure film-reference that no-one will get?

Hang on, free wi-fi? Dammit. I wish I’d actually noticed that when I was there. Orange charge ridiculous rates for data use over in the states, so coffee shops were essential for my emailing/food-finding missions. Free WiFi is great. If only I’d seen it.

Tourists

Let’s all take a picture of the blurry horses.

Blurry horses

Still there

Anorak woman still there…

Blurry people

Why is he holding the phone so ridiculously close to his face? He’s missing out on all the ghost-people walking past!

CPR

‘Cops Punish Robbers’ would be better, I thought.

Times Square

Speedy Cab

yellow cab

Then onto Central Park, although it was a bit gloomy so the only pictures I took there were of this little guy.

bird

Grand Central Station was busy…

Grand Central Station Lobby

 

There seemed to be more tourists than commuters in the main lobby building.

 

Grand Central Station

busy

I stopped playing tourist after a while, and hopped on a bus back to JFK.

the coach back

Goodbye Manhattan!

Halloween cards. Just seemed a bit weird to me...

Just before my evening flight.

airport window

Much better departure lounge than Heathrow. I got ipads!!

ipads

And then back on a plane for 8 hours. Night flight was far less enjoyable than the flight out to America. Tired but couldn’t sleep, and the guy in front kept celebrating each pocket of turbulence or cabin announcement with a fart. Thanks for that.

Saw X-Men: First Class. It wasn’t ‘first class’, it was a bit rubbish.

Green Lantern - also pretty rubbish. Seems like Ryan Renolds is actually trying to do well, but the big showdown happens with virtually no lead-up and lasts for about 5 minutes. “Oh – that’s it? He killed the big space-monster already?”

Meh.

 

On the plane back. See you later NYC!

 

The End! Had a great time there, will definitely be back next year.