So here goes...
We'd been looking forward to it for months beforehand and were super excited to be flying Virgin because 1) i'd only ever flown pretty budget except for BA to NYC many moons ago and 2) Dawne had never flown further than Spain or some-ting. D stayed over at mine the night before and we were up at 3:30am to get going! Said goodbye to Mother and my snoring Father and off we went. Was a pretty harmless drive to Heathrow even though it was raining some what, wouldn't be missing this weather! We checked in pretty harmlessly (Is that even a word? It is now.) and headed to find food. We paid about £17 for food which was extortionate but I got over it pretty quickly because I WAS ON HOLIDAY and when you're on holiday you can do crazy shit like spent £17 on breakfast. Eggs on toast and a glass of apple juice. Seems fair don't you think? It was lush to be fair.
We boarded the plane to find a complimentary blanket laid out for us on our seats, an individual TV screen where you could watch over 50 movies, listen to 100's of songs and many TV shows. You could even use a remote to message a person in another seat...if this was economy I seriously would love to know how First Class is! Probably some gold plated seat with champers coming from all angles. There wasn't as much space as i'd have liked but I was so pre-occupied with the service and the movies that I really didn't care that much. The only thing that was bothering me is the lady in front thinking it was okay to ram her seat as far back as she could so I was practically watching TV laying down. Food came and any normal person would resume the upright position but noooo! In the end I waited til she got up and went to the loo and pinged it back in place myself. No harm done. We had an array of treats on the plane, a good meals, a chocolate brownies and then later on a packet of love hearts?! Awesome! I passed the time by watching Kick Ass, Cemetary Junction, half of SATC2 and some Family Guy.
We landed in NYC and joined the long queue to actual get in to the country. We had to provide all 10 finger prints and an picture. Safety first! Real strict about using phones in the airport even though one girl thought it was best to ignore all announcement and carrying on tapping on her blackberry. Really wanted to slap her upside the head alas I refrained. We grabbed our cases, no damage and headed out to the taxi rank. $50 straight fee to get to our hotel. (Well, I say hotel, use that term loosely, more on that later.) I was excited to see the big city, however we boarded the taxi and it became clear that we may not get to actual see the big city because there was a high possibility we could perish in the taxi ride there. Our driver was an absolute maniac and a freakin' rude one at that. After pretty much everybody beeping him the whole way into the city centre I honestly thought for a moment he was just kidnapping us and taking us to a far far away drug house or something. I was relieved when we arrived outside East 73rd and York Ave apartments! We paid him our cash and the boot was open, so I sort of stood there, and decided instead of wasting time i'll just get my mahousive suitcase out myself. So heavy I just dropped it on the pavement at which point he says "If you had given me a tip I would have helped you". Well sorry mate but where I come from you tip a guy for the service, if you haven't yet provided the service how the bleedin' 'eck am I suppose to tip you?! I was fuming so I just legged it across the road with D in tow and then began the task of trying to actually get in the apartment. There was a dodgy phone that we didn't quite know how to use (we're not totally retarded that we don't know how to use a regular phone but this was NOT a regular phone, ok!)Whilst trying to figure out how to get in, we read a sign on the door which said that the building was basically liable to fall down at any moment. Awesome. Some bloke let us in, in the end and we paid our moneys and got the keys. It was conveniently on the 3rd floor of a building with no lifts to I dragged my lump of a suitcase up a spiralesque rickety staircase! We checked out our room, opening all the doors to see what's behind them as you do. Kitchen, Check. Bathroom, Check. Loo, Check. Bedroom, check. Spanish people in other bedroom, Check. WAIT WHAT. Apparently we were sharing our apartment with 2 spanish people. Ola! There was a computer in the kitchen which was handy to facebook mumma and the rest of the crew! It was all going swimmingly until we spotted a sign on the door which said that we were under no circumstance to let anybody in who didn't have a key. Why? Because criminals often pose as police to gain access to your room! Upper East Side, not as good as it's made out to be!
So after briefly going a bit insane that we'd either be a)kidnapped b) robbed or c) killed we headed straight out to the sight that is Times Square. Jumped in a cab and we soon realised we had pretty much the coolest driver ever! We heard stories of all the famous people he'd had in his taxi and about all the places he'd been, very interesting and he was very sympathetic about the rude taxi driver we previous encountered! We stood in the middle of Times Square and just sort of stared around having outer body experiences. Didn't quite know what was happening all we knew was we'd left Portsmouth at 5am and now it was 2pm in the afternoon but it was 7pm in England, we're stood in the middle of all these lights, with 1000's of other people going about their daily business. WHAT! Highly confused and not knowing what to do we took comfort in something we both knew - Planet Hollywood. The waiter was very over the top - totally loved it! We both had a pizza which was yum, something tastes better about eating pizza in New York City. After we'd finished there we just roamed around for a bit until we admitted defeat and had to actual sleep. Kept waking up more or less every hour at 4am I decided sod it and had a play on the computer. Went back to sleep about 6 and were ready and waiting to get what most girls love - SHOPPING! Yipppeeee!!
We shopped for a total of NINE HOURS. I honestly do not know how I was standing at the end of it. American Eagle Outfitters is a sweeeeeet shop, loved it! We walked around the 3 story M&M shop and just genuinely went mental with money and buying a load of immense products from various shops that we didn't need! We ate in Bubba Gump Shrimp which was my favourite meal of the whole holiday, so so good! Mischa, our waitress was such a doll, she drew us an ice cream cone on our receipt :) such a lovely lady, the whole BGS experience was amazing and we got to take home our glasses! Sadly Dawns cracked in her suitcase on the way home bad times :(
Every now and then we had to take a pit stop on the Times Square steps. The same steps that Jay Z and Alicia Keys filmed Empire State of Mind! I made the mistake of wearing flip flops which quickly gave me a blister so we embarked on a mission to find new shoes. Found some pretty purple converse which were so nice Dawn decided to purchase her own pair of floral ones! So with our new shoes we headed to the steps for a sit down and a chat. We were rudely interrupted by some foreign people who wants us to take their picture - can't you see we're in the middle of a diary entry!?
The next day we headed to Brooklyn Bridge and to get there we took the subway - an experience! Plus we realised getting taxi's everywhere was getting expensive! It is a blood long bridge so we went half way, took some piccys, called a few family members to tell them we were calling from the Brooklyn Bridge for the hell of it and walked back again. We watched some really awful street dancers which wouldn't allow to take pictures unless you paid them. Erm, not that desperate. We then headed to the Staten Island Ferry, at least something that didn't drain us of dollar! Walking down the road, minding our own business and we get what I can only describe as attacked by two people asking us to donate money to them to fund a 'trip' for their school. In all honesty I can think of better things to donate to but to get them off my back I gave them a dollar and was done with it. Caught up with Dawne only to discover she has parted with $20. She didn't know what has happened, I didn't know what had happened all we knew was that now she was in possession of 5 bags of Welch's Grape sweets. Sat in the Staten Island Ferry Terminal we decided we may as well eat them. After eating one we decided they were fruits from Satan so they went in the bin. Needed to cheer D up fast from losing cash and being poisoned so onto the ferry we went! It was a pleasant journey where we saw the lady herself, Statue of Liberty although it was jam packed on there so was hard to get a great view at times. We then went to Ground Zero as it was only round the corner. Had a browse round trinity church and the 9/11 memorial museum. Glad we didn't spent too much time in there, depressing much. So very sad :( We headed back to Times Square after that and had Macdonalds, had to be done! Saw a naked Elderly cowgirl woman trying really badly to cover up her sagging bits with a guitar - hideous! Whilst having a chill out on the red steps we did a video entry but only after we were invaded by a protest march of people demanding that 9/11 was a conspiracy. There was also one guy with some bagpipes which I did not get, but it's NYC seemed pretty normal.
11th September was here and we decided to get up a little later in order to not go home quite as early as we had been doing. My feet were literally shreds! We went to Ground Zero on 10th as we decided the 11th would have been ridiculously busy and we couldn't risk being in the middle of any trouble there may have been. There had been talking of burning a koran or something - best to steer clear of that! Instead we went to 5th Avenue and daydreamed about shopping at Cartier and Gucci and went to The Empire State building. Absolutely stunning views, totally breath taking!
We took lots of piccys up the ESB and I even had a picture with King Kong. He was much more soft and friendly than the films. We went on to Grand Central Station which without sounding really arty and gay had some beautiful architecture. That good feeling was bought down by a woman on the subway telling me the world was soon to end in may 2011. Way to go woman, you deluded mentalist. We headed to bloomingdales- if I lived there I would call it 'bloomies', as if it were my local alas I do not and cannot, boo. We looked around at all the stuff we couldn't afford, I got hounded by a lady who couldn't believe I didn't know who the lady was who made 'Juicy Couture' stuff. Dawne purchased a 'little Brown Bag' and for some reason could not get it into her brain that they were called this, we had variations of 'Medium Grey bag' and such. By the time we left bloomingdales I could have collapsed but I genuinely think I was numb from the horrific pain in my feet. We walked down to Central Park for a sit down in the glorious sunshine. It was the perfect setting; a man playing acoustic guitar, people around us just relaxing and few little doggies running about. Something lovely about seeing animals running about. There was a lake in front of us and the sky line of the buildings beside us - just stunning. We sat down read the New York Post and soaked up the sun.
After our chill our in Central Park we crossed over to FAO Schwarz to transformed back into the mind of a child. It is the most incredible toy shop! They had a Chewbacca made out of Lego! Can't get cooler than that.
The next day's highlights were The Rockefeller which we saw at night time and Ellen's Diner where you are literally sung to throughout your meal! Random songs from musicals or whatever sung by people dress up like they're come from the 50's. It was immense to say the least! We digested some greasy american grub and then headed to Times Square to pick up some last min souvenirs. Rockefeller was something else, seeing a similar view to Empire State but at night time with all the lights was incredible. I seriously need to go back to NYC - sooner rather than later! We also ate at Hard Rock Café in our time in NYC, we are such tourists! It was great though and we got to take home our glass again, always welcome!
Our last day was spent in the airport. Since the people who owned the apartments were a bit dodgy and hardly ever in we were worried we'd store our bags with them and they would either a) do a runner or b) not turn up when we wanted to retrieve our bags! So we took the decision to go straight to the airport at around midday. More confirmation came that most NYC taxi drivers are actually nice when the guy jumped straight out to help us with our cases. We tipped him heavily and you've never seen a man so happy, made us feel good! I think we spent a total of around 10 hours in the airport. I got so happy when our names appeared on the board and that we were on the third board out of 6 so must mean we're soon until Dawn crushed my enthusiasm by saying the other 3 boards were for arriving flights so we were in fact at the bottom. Nuts.
I honestly don't know how we passed the time but we some how managed it and we were then to say bye to the glory that is NYC. Made our way to the boarding gate only to be sat there for half an hour wondering what the frick is going on. Apparently we were waiting for none other than SAMUEL L JACKSON to get there so he could board first. I suppose it is pretty rad that Sam, (my mate) was on our plane but I went through the emotion when firstly I was excited he walked about a metre away from me, then felt angry we had to wait all that time just so he could get on before anyone else, and then finally filled with worry and fear that there may or may not be SNAKES ON MY PLANE! Ha, ha, ha no? I watched The Runaways on the way home and then tried sleeping, which didn't go well it was very stop and start. So we left at 10pm and it was pitch black. Arriving back in England 7am, bright sunshine. Just got rid of one mind fuck, and now there's a brand new one! Cheers! I have to say though, majorly worth it.
All in all the best trip with the best person for the job. Loved it, and love my bff. Bring on the festival in June and any other adventures we may encounter!
XOXO!
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