New York Visit (Sunday & Monday)

(For more pictures, click the title!)

Quite on the spur of the moment (unusual for me!!!) My wife and I decided to spend the October half-term holiday week in New York. We booked through www.expedia.co.uk a fortnight before leaving, giving us just enough time to pack and prepare - Lucky we didn't need to apply for visas!

So we arrived in NYC on Sunday 23rd October after a rather lengthy flight from Manchester via Paris!. (Air France = v. good but a VERY hot stifling transatlantic flight) - Have never been too hot on a plane before!

Anyway, we arrived at the hotel "On the Ave" at around 7:30 local time planning to have an early night but a local bar beckoned so off we go to sample some Upper West Side hospitality in the shape of "Harrisons" on the SE corner of 77th and Amsterdam. Good beer, good food and a very loud opinionated (in a good way) bartender who was the youngest looking 59 year old ever apparently!!!

Beer was not as cheap as we expected - coming from the UK we were told it's much cheaper. However we found that all week we rarely paid less than a "London" price for a drink.
Anyway, Monday was a day for getting our bearings: we travelled from 72nd Street Subway to Times Square to pick up our "New York Passes". These were waiting for us at Planet Hollywood and basically entitled us to lots of discounts and free entry to many tourist attractions. From there, we had the traditional NY breakfast of any type of fried food in a bread roll and some seriously strong coffee.
From there, we wandered down Broadway to 34th Street and Macy's - very posh and far too expensive for me!!! We then did the most embarrasing thing of standing in the middle of the street, looking at a map trying to work out where the Empire State Building is. It was only 2 or 3 blocks away and massively obvious if we had only looked up!!! So we wandered past there and down 5th Avenue to a deli for lunch. Onward, via the tube (never got into calling it the Subway) to 8th Street and NYU. A lovely part of town, we walked through Washington Square Park and the Village to a rather specific location - namely the intersection of 7th Avenue and Christopher Street. This is the home of "Village Cigars" which sports a controllable webcam (www.sceenz.com) We had looked at this site before leaving the UK and so had to call in and see it. We also arranged via mobile phone (and a 5 hour time difference) for my brother-in-law to gain control of the camera and snapshot us standing outside Starbucks - he did this and promptly MMS'd the picture to us!!! How's that for interactivity!!! After managing to find a beer (and more importantly, a toilet) we headed back up the 1 line to 79th Street and our hotel.

We returned to Harrison's bar that evening for a traditional American burger with all the trimmings and a front row seat for the evening's sports entertainment on the 3 massive plasma screens. I think it was Ice Hockey on that night, or it could have been Baseball. It's worth noting how into sports the Americans are, to say it was a Monday night, there was no shortage of fans in to watch the games.

A relatively early night followed because of the impending 3 days of mad tourism that would follow! There was also news of the arrival of Hurricane Wilma from the Carribbean which (according to the dedicated weather channel) was due to mix with Tropical Storm Alpha and basically blow Manhattan away on Tuesday. We fell asleep fearing the worst...