Today we headed to the Big Apple that is New York City. We didn’t get back from the track until after 10pm making it 11:30 before we were in bed so it was another late night for us. What made it worse is that we had to wake up at 3:30am to catch the bus to NYC so we literally running 3-4hrs sleep. Not cool considering we had a pretty long/hard day yesterday. Still half asleep, we had to walk from our place to the bus station. Thought it was going to be an easy task considering we had the TomTom to help us but turns out we got lost. Luckily we were able to piece together some for of directions and we got there just as the bus was about to leave. Needless to say as soon as the bus pulled away from the kerb, I was out like a light. Next thing I knew we were in New York. We then split into 2 groups (guys and girls) and headed off to explore NYC.
First stop was breakfast. We hit up a café just outside the station and had probably some of the best French toast ever (Letterman’s watch out!). Then we decided to head down to Times Square. My first impressions of the city was that is was a lot like Sydney in the way that it is really busy, buildings everywhere, seems to be a smoggy tinge to everything… But one thing that stood out the most was the amount of advertisement all around the place! Every square inch of empty space seems to be advertising something.. its so colourful you don’t know where to look! So we went down to Times Square and saw them shooting ‘Good Morning America’ (their version of Sunrise) when a police offer came up to us (a woman) and said quite distressingly ‘Who y’all with? Who y’all with?’ so Audrey got pulled aside and came back laughing… apparently the officer had told her to tell Michaela to pull her shorts up because you could see her underwear… ha ha.
After that, we decided that it would probably be best to hop on one of the tour buses to see the attractions. We cruised down Broadway and 5th ave passing Greenwich Village, Madison square gardens, Empire State, Ground Zero and we got off at the Brooklyn Bridge. We walked over it and got some pretty good photos… it was amazing! I’m a bit of a hopeless romantic and after seeing the bridge in Sex and the City, had a sudden desire to go there lol. We then hopped back on the bus and travelled down to Battery Park past to the waters edge to try and see the Statue of Liberty. Our legs were sore from walking the bridge so we didn’t actually get to see it… bit of a shame really but we might be going back next week.
We then got off in China town to find Canal st and hopefully pick up some good fakes. We walked forever down to the street only to find no bags/purses anywhere! Bit disappointed, we walked another marathon back to the bus stop and asked the bus driver where they were. He said we were at the wrong end of Canal st and that the fakes were at the other end. So we trekked over to the otherside of Canal st. Within minutes we had dodgy people come up to us and whisper, ‘handbags, purses’ and would subtly hand us a sheet with the fakes on it. Its so suss! We had to hide the sheet and look at it whist the asian man kept a look out for coppers. Once we had selected the bags, there were phone calls made and after a couple of minutes, our asian lady left us and passed by a man and subtly grabbed his plastic bag. She walked back over to us and revealed the purses we had selected! It was sooo dodgy!!! Like someone trying to sell drugs in movies…I got a coach wallet, is alright.. plus needed something to replace the fake Louis as it got a tear down the side lol. Audrey and Kath then decided that they would like another bag but we had to change locations as there were police around so we got taken to the other side of China town to do more business. Was so illegal. China town in itself was also another experience. It was hot, as in 30 degrees plus and the fish markets were smelling, stuff everywhere… it was gross. We were all keen to get out of there to eat some proper food.
We hiked back to the bus stop (swear we walked at least 5km around China town! Feet were killing me!) and caught the bus into Greenwich village and had lunch at a little Mexican place. From there we walked another mammoth journey over to 5th ave to go shopping!! By that time I wasn’t really in the mood to do anything… was pretty much just hot and tired. The shops of 5th ave. were quite nice but all really expensive..Audrey, Mickey and Lara were stopping at basically every shop (who could blame them, the clothes were incredible) but Brodie, Kath, Dana and I weren’t too keen on spending at $100 for a shirt so we pulled ahead and trekked up 5th ave. I swear I have never done so much walking in my whole life! Honestly, I don’t reckon we sat down for more then 2-2h30 the whole day! We stopped at souvenir shops to get presents for back home... then in electrical shop to try and find Brodie an ipod (the shops were exactly like the ones in Zohan and we even got a dodgy taxi driver!).
We then headed over to the biggest Toys’r’us store you’ll see in your life (bit of a sucker for toys…) it had a ferris wheel in the middle of it! Then over to M&M World (same deal…the have M&M everything! You can even step on this plate and it tells you what M&M you are! Apparently I’m an ‘almond M&M because although I’m nutty, I still appear smooth’ or something like that lol….great. I also picked up some blue, red and white M&Ms to celebrate USA lol.. swear I’m not an M&M racist. We also sore a massive Hershey’s shop…had Baskin Robins then caught a cab to corner of 5th and 58 (because our legs were so sore) to go to Tiffany’s! We passed central park .. I really wanted to go on a carriage ride :(…But we pulled up at Tiffany’s and were surrounded by Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Dior, Prada, Gucci… everything! Def at the top end of town. Tiffany’s was amazing… but everything was so ridiculously expensive :S. We then rung Audrey to find out where they were and they sad they’d meet us at Tiffany’s because they were close by. We waited outside for 50min before getting a cab and retiring to the station to have diner before getting on the bus. Got back to good old Kutztown at around 10:30 absolutely legless… sore and sunburnt. All in all, it was a good experience although there were a lot of things I would have like to have done/ would have done differently… hopefully we get to go there again because I really want to go to Staten Island, go up Empire State and get a carriage ride in Central Park :)
Well I’m absolutely buggered and we have to ride early in the morning to go to the track and do a press interview…
Take care,
xo
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