Notebook and Pen

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Today was our last day we had to use our New York pass and we'd saved one of the world's most famous attractions until now, the Empire State building.

As we'd already been to the Top of the Rock at night we wanted a daylight view of the city today and so naturally decided to go at the busiest time possible, at sunset.

Before this though we still had some smaller things on our list, such as taking a view of the city from the water too whilst riding the Beast, a large speedboat, big enough to carry around 75 people up the river Hudson and back while soaking them in the process.

Finally getting the hang of this good timing stuff, we arrived at the ticket office just before the boat was about to set off, and got ourselves seats behind a man who had taken a rather expensive looking camera on board, in the hope of getting some good photos of the skyline.

He may have been a good photographer but he clearly wasn't very sensible, having sat in one of the marked 'extra wet seats'. I'm guessing he spent most of the ride thinking about how expensive his camera was and why he chose a bumpy speedboat to ride whilst desperately trying to shield the camera from the splashes.

Back on dry, and today very hot land, we tried our best not to look like we'd just been caught in a tropical storm (again) and dried off on our walk back to Broadway to buy tickets for the Lion King with our 10% discount that comes on the pass for our last night in a couple of weeks time.

Just around the corner from the theatre is Hearshy's, the place you go if you want to spend four times the normal price on a bar of chocolate, but the free samples and 'factory worker's' hat you are given on the way in makes it a worthwhile detour off the edge of Times Square, as well as M&M world opposite, where we found 6 bags for $3 in one of the offer bins dotted around the shop, before enjoying them while sat on the red steps watching Times Square buzz around us.

When the plastic steps became just a bit too uncomfortable to stay sat on any longer, plus the fear that they might melt and make us part of them if we stayed in the sun much longer made us move to Bryant Park, which has now easily become one of my favourite places in the city.

Here we polished off the last of the M&Ms while talking to a local who had the exact same voice as Bob Monkhouse before walking up to the Empire State to begin our hour long queue to the top, which considering the popular visiting time, wasn't too bad.

Although our passes only allowed us to the 86th floor, it is possible to pay an extra $15 for the additional remaining floors, though I imagine space to stand is even more in demand up there than the 86th and with the same view, only smaller, and so stuck to what we could get for free, a regular motto of the trip, it seems.

If the view from the ground in central Manhattan doesn't allow the height of the buildings to sink in, the view from the Empire State will do. Looking east to Brooklyn and Queens highlights just how flat these areas are in terms of building work, and how Manhattan towers above everything around it.

The west view, overlooking the river and New Jersey is where a good spot needs to be secured in order to watch the sunset, which we were lucky enough to gain, even if it was a bit of a squash.

There seems to be a routine for being up the Empire State Building at sunset: a quick walk around each side before watching the sun go down over the river (and taking many, many photos), before shuffling back to the north side to see the most popular view before it gets fully dark.

How successful you are in completing this routine depends entirely on how polite you are to the people around you.

Despite the friendly atmosphere of the block party yesterday, we were still keen to get back to Fitz's apartment before it got too late, so grabbed a slice of pizza before getting on the subway and went back for a night of discussing American vs English fish and chips.

This morning started off with a scene that could have been mistaken for thinking what we had in front of us was the last remains of food we'd see before we got home, and in a way it was. As we were regretfully leaving Cazzamia today a double effort was made to consume the majority of everything the luxury breakfast offered us before we limited our options to a cream cheese bagel or overpriced individual cereal bowls again tomorrow.

Since we arrived in New York and saw Manhattan hostel prices, we've been searching for Couch Surfing hosts around the city and finally received a reply from an American/Irish guy who went by the name of Fitz.

Though glad to be back in Manhattan and closer to what was beginning to feel like home, we were reluctant to leave Cazzamia, what had rapidly become the best hostel of the trip, not to mention the comfiest bed too, especially as we learnt our host lived in Northern Manhattan, in the neighbourhood with a reputation, Harlem.

Although first impressions of Harlem didn't give us anything to worry about, we were still thankful that while figuring out which direction to walk in we were approached by a woman who obviously knew the area, and knew that we obviously didn't. An educated guess that we were Couch Surfers, and she introduced herself as Fitz's girlfriend, and led us to his apartment up the street.

Meeting Fitz told us exactly what his references had told us: he was extremely welcoming, if slightly eccentric, but with stories that could be told all day about his adventures and people he knew. Due to this we were keen to go and meet some of his friends at a party later so went out and tried to fit in as much as we could before then.

Our first stop was at the Television and Radio Museum further Downtown. I'm sure a visit here would be more than worthwhile but its unconventional way of displaying its artefacts as a timetable of short films and television episodes throughout the day meant it was here and nowhere else if we chose to stay, having to view the items we wanted at a particular time.

Unfortunately there was still so much to do we had to leave this one behind, and opted for a tour of the Brooklyn Brewery instead, located in the trendy area of Williamsburg, now home to many artists and young professionals.

For once our timing was perfect and we joined the back of a group just about to begin the tour, conveniently stood nearest the bar to use our tokens once the tour ended. I chose my complimentary beer to be a light drink, supposedly with hints of vanilla, while Dave opted for the original Brooklyn lager. Unfortunately my lack of beer knowledge taught me only that mine was more bearable than Dave's, but a free drink is never to be dismissed in a city where an hour's pay would only buy you one bottle, and enjoyed the beer garden feel of the warehouse.

Back in Harlem later on Fitz gave us one of the classic New York experiences we had yet to divulge in: a yellow taxi. This was more to do with how late we were to the party more than our benefit, but still, we weren't complaining, especially when we were pleasantly surprised by the price of around $11 for driving five of us, (only slightly illegally) all the way from 135th to Pier 66 in Chelsea.

Aside from extremely rude bar staff, and just as extremely priced drinks ($9 for a coke and bottle of Corona) and slightly industrial air, the pier party made an interesting location for a weekend meet-up on 'The Frying Pan', the name of the boat sat alongside the pier, illustrated by a 6' tall frying pan we stumbled across and was rather impressed by after a few drinks.

The benefit of attending parties hosted by complete strangers is the variety of people you get to meet and how interested they all are in meeting you. From this night alone we met Kevin, an ex-work colleague of Fitz, who now works at the largest Cathedral in New York and invited us to a complimentary tour in exchange for conversation and some stories about our home town.

After feeling like we'd exhausted the bar for as long as our budget would let us, we made the slightly nerve-wracking trip back to Harlem, with the only reactions to our presence being a few teenagers staring in amazement at the four white people walking through their streets in the middle of the night.

A walk around the corner onto 133rd St however painted a different picture, this time being our turn to be amazed as we found the end of the road blocked off by the police, stopping cars entering what was far from the gun scene we'd heard about, but instead a gathering of neighbours from the whole block, barbequing, drinking and dancing around the fire hydrant the fire dept at the end of the street had opened for them.

As tempted as we were to join in, we were reassured the block party would still be going on this time tomorrow night, and so opted to listen to the community spirit from the apartment as we went to bed, knowing that we had found yet another example of something that would be almost unheard of back at home.

After a much more relaxed morning spent in the beauty salon getting all 20 nails done (and seeing my feet the cleanest they've been in months) we helped Ali & Matt to the train station for their journey to the airport after a 6 month world trip. Jealous jealous jealous.

20 minutes later and we could use our train cards again and headed into Manhattan for the Museum of Modern Art, or the MOMA as it's known here. I've never seen such a crowded art gallery before, and because of this we didn't get a good look at everything but still were glad to have managed a brief visit.

Our next stop was to what is probably the most intelligent thing to have put on the pass, a free ice cream at Dylan's Candy Store. Dylan is the daughter of Ralph Lauren, who gave her the money to open her own store which in no way represents any health advice given to food outlets in recent years. Still though, it was nice to go somewhere and just see prices on the walls rather than calories cleverly disguised as prices for once.

We also stumbled across an admittedly bored worker of the store, who's shift had landed him on the fudge sampler counter. An exchange of conversation for as much fudge as we liked seemed a fair deal for all of us and so stayed there for a considerable amount of time longer than most other customers.

Being surrounded by bubblegum and jelly sweets for a while doesn't really leave you in the mood for museums, so instead we paid a visit to FAO Schwarz, the toy shop featured in Home Alone 2, which was just around the corner.

I could call it the toy shop for big kids who grew up when the best toys were around, because for once we weren't the oldest people there, far from it, and not that many people had kids with them either.

Dave enjoyed a good session of exclaiming lots of 'there's that one!.....and that one!.....and that one!..', while referring to The Turtles figures and lego collectibles and I was quite at home in the human-sized Barbie house, home to displays of all the classics (couldn't find Winter Action Barbie, though).

As one shop leads to many the rest of the day was spent along 5th Av, only this time we had Spot and Elmer with us. (YouTube later!)

Today began with a tour of Madison Square garden, led by someone who was obviously petrified he was going to lose somebody and have to tell his boss there was a lost tourist somewhere in the stadium.

The tour included getting to hold a shoe belonging to a basketball player (how exciting) and a presentation and photo opportunity with a 'real life' cheerleader. Even the teenage boys didn't look that impressed.

We did however get to see the stadium itself, from the top row of seats and decided that seeing a concert from the cheapest seats would still give you a pretty good view. Knowing this and also knowing Britney Spears was due to play at the end of the month we (read 'I' as 'we') thought it was worth asking about, despite thinking it would have sold out a long time ago.

I'm not exactly Britney's biggest fan, but when you get a chance to see the new Madonna at the world's most famous venue, you don't exactly spend too long thinking about it. Even more so when just as you're about to get your card out for the $155 seats, the box office worker mentions tickets for $39. Britney Spears for roughly 25 quid, this almost made up for missing Muse's tour going on sale.

A quick visit to a small museum to fill time and we carried on to the Museum of New York. This is advertised to give the impression of displaying the city's current culture, but was entirely focussed on the inhabiting of the island and the history of the civilisation on it, which Dave enjoyed at least.

Without much else open with enough time to get to before it closed we went back for the hostel to cook a rare healthy meal and had a just as rare early night, only to be woken up by Ali and Matt when they got back from a show, several Corona bottles in hand. Oh well, not a bad way to be woken up I suppose.

A so thought well planned day today started off by throwing the schedule overboard when our visit to the Statue of Liberty took four hours in total, making the rest of the day a bit of a challenge to get through. I

'd like to say it took four hours due to how interesting the island is to visit, in actual fact tickets to enter the statue's crown were sold out until November and so we could only admire the statue from the base of the island, and spent the majority of the time waiting for boats. Luckily though I was wearing my foam statue crown to keep the sun off me while everyone else remained hot and jealous.

After finally arriving back in Manhattan we headed to our second attraction: Bodies, The Exhibit. This goes under a different name in the UK but having missed the chance to see in Manchester and London we decided free entry was a good excuse to go now, that plus the fact that either there are a scary number of these exhibits around the country or even scarier, it has been following us to almost every city since San Diego.

As Bodies was located at South St Seaport we decided to take one of the harbour boat tours and get some sunset photos of the skyline, plus more overpriced drinks aboard a Clipper. A Clipper with a motor that is, though the sails were put up for a completely windless trip for show anyway.

A few attempts of parking the boat (is the term 'parking' still used for boats?) later, though you'd think this might be a lot easier than normal with a motor, we went back to the hostel for Ali & Matt's last night here and spent the night enjoying another classic 18'' NY pizza, this time accompanied by much cheaper beer from the shop on the main road.

After a couple of recovery days including a much welcomed continental breakfast, 18 inch pizzas and a lot of sleep, we were ready to start making the most of the city again and today began our 7 day pass to New York's attractions.

The New York pass is a fast track way to see all of the main tourist points of the city, plus a useful queue jump to most places to avoid wasting the week in long lines. Our first stop was the Natural History Museum, located down the side of Central Park.

As far as museums go, it was a pretty good one, but could go either way of the scale of extremes of opinion depending on personal interest. I personally wanted to see the famous dinosaur skeleton, a few other small exhibits but mostly a quick look around the main parts before moving on to get around as many things as possible. Dave on the other hand, loves this type of thing and could have spent all day reading about evolution and rock formation, which there is a lot of.

As much of a compromise as we could find and after a quick sandwich in the park we moved onto the NBC Studio tour. Playing the part of a news anchor, watching demonstrations of special effects make-up and the day to day running of a news studio, much more my sort of thing, no endless fossils here. We could even get the autographs of people we'd never heard of if we wanted to.

We'd arranged to meet Ali & Matt to visit the Top of the Rock and had a couple of hours to kill so dipped into Madame Tusaud's to meet Brad, Hugh, Leonardo and some other friends, which turned out to be one of the day's best attractions. Plus, we were successful in meeting the President finally after the last failed attempt in DC.

Although the Rockefeller Centre has the best view of the only non-lit up place in the city, Central Park, we went for this observation tower at night to get the best view of the Empire State building, which wasn't the only thing we got to see with a great view. A lightening storm had started just before we arrived at the top, and although it was fairly distant, still would have made some great photos if I'd have timed it right (everyone got bored of my attempts after photo 250 something and made me go back down so we could go for a drink instead).

Some more overpriced cider later and we'd successfully fitted as much as possible into our first sightseeing day, round two tomorrow.

Another mild hangover led to another lazy day in the park, but what else is summer supposed to be for? Plus we had to save our energy for another party tonight, where our friend's hostel owner from Queens was taking us before we moved over there tomorrow.

A few hours sunbathing later and we made our now semi-regular trip over to Cazzamia, the Spanish, family run hostel Ali & Matt were staying at. Without having much info about tonight's party, other than it was going to be held on a rooftop (reason enough to go) we turned up at the hostel a couple of hours early before going back on ourselves slightly as we made the lengthy journey back to Manhattan, to Alphabet City.

The one significant thing about the party is that it was being held to raise money for charity, and therefore the host was charging everyone $20 entry. The four travelers of us decided this was ridiculously steep within milliseconds, but having already agreed to go we reluctantly said goodbye to $80 we'd never see again (though we did actually unsuccesfully look for it later on when no evidence of any charity became apparent).

The rooftop part of the party was definitely the highlight, and after quickly drawing attention to ourselves after establishing our small group as the 'fun group', we had a small gathering of people keen to learn some English drinking games. With drinking games comes getting drunk, and with getting drunk comes the urge to climb onto the next part of the roof, closed in by a small wall with enough room for 5 or 6 people to hide out for a while and get a better view of the skyline in the distance.

Here we met Pete, a young professional who had found a rental bargain through a friend and was living in one of the nicest parts of Manhattan almost for free. For this Ali decided he deserved some punishment, and inflicted another game involved crushing an empty beer can using only your forehead, ending only when everyone in the group gave in, and/or made their head bleed. Americans are such wimps.

Another early morning trip on the subway and we arrived back at the hostel just in time to pack the bags and check out. Turns out we got our $20 worth after all.

Another visit to the library today (mostly to use the internet this time) enabled us to find out about a weekly Couch Surfing get together at a bar near Union Square which was on tonight.

We also mastered the art of finding ways out of paying for access to the events guides on the internet and found a free writing class was taking place in Bryant Park, just behind the library later on this afternoon, which I attended out of interest and met some people, all who individually lived in New York but had never spent a full summer there and were now learning to take advantage of living in a city with so many free events.

This finished with just enough time to grab a slice of pizza in the exact way a New York pizza should be eaten, as we were told later into the night: extremely greasy, on a paper plate and standing on the street before running for the subway. Job done.

Though we are meeting lots of new people everyday in NY, we hadn't yet been successful in finding a Couch Surfing host and were spending a lot of the remaining budget on overpriced hostels, so mainly wanted to attend the party for potential contacts.

The most expensive bottle of cider I've ever bought and an accidental intrusion on a private party for someone's leaving night later and we eventually found ourselves kitted out with name tags (which usefully served as discount entitlement to the bar), free Chinese food and a lot of new friends. One of them, I forget his name (ok, they weren't best friends) owns a website to which he publishes spontaneous acts of entertainment from the public, and also organizes and films them, which he was doing tonight.

After carefully waiting until everyone had drunk enough to join in, he talked everyone into leaving the bar and forming a line in pairs across Union Square. From here each pair would dance as randomly as they could to the speakers he'd set up out of nowhere and ultimately try and encourage as many passers-by to join in as possible.

Not many did, still though it was the most random thing we've done in NY so far and there's no denying everyone had a lot of fun becoming internet video stars.

I hope we won't regret it when we see the video...

If this morning taught me one new thing about New York, it is that the Wall St bull has a stupid name. Three end to end walks up the street and no bull in sight, though an inflatable giant rat holding wads of cash offered some alternative.

It was surprising (and lucky) how short Wall St is, but some good photo spots of Brooklyn bridge at one end and the NY Stock Exchange at the other end made it interesting to walk down still, though probably unnecessary to do three times.

Not far from the top of the street is the Ground Zero site, which a travel website correctly described as having shamefully little to see in regard to the development of a memorial. A building site wall sectioning off the area is all there really is there now, though we were later told if we wanted to imagine the heights of the towers we just had to take the neighbouring buildings and double their size upwards.

From here we took the subway up to Soho, which on first and last appearances is a thousand times better than London's area of the same name (and not just because it's home to America's only Topshop, which, by the way is double the price of the Topshops at home).

During our walk through Soho we found a shop named Evolution, which our Chicago host, Rick told us about and recommended we visit, which we did, having thought we may as well as we'd accidentally found it anyway. Home to real human skulls for sale, five million year old fossils and an entire wall display of real butterflies, plus countless stuffed animals of every species imaginable, it made an interesting visit even if we didn't come out with any gifts to take home.

The one thing about Soho which isn't all that great (apart from property prices, I had to look) is the way it leads directly into Chinatown with zero warning. One minute you're surrounded by designer boutiques and unique bars and cafes, the next, market stalls and men following you until you show some interest in buying fake handbags and watches (why, when the real things are a few streets away?).

Thankfully Chinatown led to Little Italy as quickly as it had appeared out of nowhere, and though we were still being hassled at least now it was by restaurants instead.

Later on the tour of Soho continued, where I treated myself to something I've wanted for a while, and had a slow walk back through Washington Park where it may be actually possible to see every type of dog known to man, before eventually giving up on the walk and finding a subway station instead for an attempt to retrain ourselves to sleep before sunrise.