New York...New York...

Sorry about the long wait folks...I'm finally blogging about my arrival in the States.

July 31, 6am:
Stumbled out of the Thai Airways plane into JFK Airport. After 20+ hours in cramped and dark conditions, I'm finally in the US!!

Decided to stopover in New York as I've never been here before and wanted to see all the famous sights. So here they are-

Manhattan

Took a shuttle from the airport down to Manhattan. At first we thought it would be the quickest way, but we went all over Manhattan dropping people off at various hotels and hostels, so it was almost 10am by the time we checked in at Harlem YMCA. Not too bad, except that there was no a/c and NY was experiencing a heatwave!! It was sweltering in the small room. Washed up a little and proceeded to our first destination...

The Empire State Building!

Well, that's the view from the top. For some reason I don't seem to have a photo of the building itself. Think I was jetlagged and starting to get mild heatstroke....You have to pay a lot of money to get to the lookout point! Plus queue and queue and queue. Phew.

Eric bought himself an authentic NYC hotdog!


We than went on to take the free (which is pretty rare here!) ferry ride to Staten Island, which will bring us past the Statue of Liberty.

You get a nice view from the ferry

And that's as close as you get if you're too kiamsiap like me to pay for the tourist ferry which lands on the island itself


Got a bit hungry after that, so now it's time to check out Times Square!

This is like..one of the best ice cream places I've been to! Choose your ice-cream flavour, and then choose a variety of stuff to mix in! We got strawberry cheesecake ice-cream mixed with graham cracker crumbs and other delicious things.

Then finally went for some 'propah' food- an American BBQ restaurant!


Open face burger with baked potato and fried onions

A mountain of fried onions! and crabcakes (a little salty though)

Staggered back to the subway and to the hostel. As we checked in with security, he mentioned that we couldn't stay in our present room! Turned out that we were given a room on the guys' floor. No wonder there was only one female shower on the entire floor. After some to-ing and fro-ing, he got us to move to a double room. Despite the trouble, that was pretty good! The room came with an attached bathroom and quite wonderfully, had a/c! We could sleep well tonight... Got a plane to catch early tomorrow!

p/s: unfortunately, Eric unplugged the fridge to charge his HP (i think). The freezer promptly defrosted and the ensuing puddle soaked my backpack...which had my laptop in it. I thought it was a goner...was contemplating insurance claims and all...but apparently Apple makes 'em tough back in those days...'cos I'm still typing on it!!!

Comments

Irene Arboleda said…
Awesome photos! I got some similar ones for my December posts...spent 10 days, Christmas and New Year at NY with family. Staten Island Ferry was a great find. Should be great5 to bum around together around Greenwich area summer time. Great talking to you over the phone last night.
Irene Arboleda said…
i got an oppoosite view...and had a photo of empire state taken from top of the rocks!
bluebabe said…
yeah! I didn't realise I didn't take a photo of the Empire State until I did the blog, haha. NYC was a really interesting place, and so big! We definitely couldn't cover much in a day
Wai said…
Just thought I'd drop in and say hi. Glad to see some updates, and to see you seem to be settling in well.. how's being back in school again? :p
bluebabe said…
I just finished my first exam.... (brain oozing out of ears from overuse...) it's been mostly exciting. i'm excited to learn again, but i definitely can't cram the way i used to!!

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