The high's & low's of NYC life

Continuing on from last night's blog, I left you all heading out of my 4m x 3m cell primed for a good night at Comic Strip Live, a local comic haunt famous for kick starting the careers of Adam Sandler, Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock & Jerry Seinfield so our expectations were high - and thankfully they didn't disappoint - with 6 comedians having us all in stitches for the 3 hour show.

After a few beers, Jordan and I decided to call it an early night (around 12 midnight) and head back, flagging a cab we jumped in my hand landing on the seat and a NEW iPhone obviously left by the previous customer - a quick moment of SCORE! - came over me and then I rightly decided to wait for the owner to call and promptly return, which they did at around 1am.

So with all good intentions of having an early night it was well after 1.30 by the time I arrived back at the hotel and closed my eyes.

With the alarm going off in my ear I quickly registered that it was now 8am and a full day of activities were planned. My parents were also in New York (preferring to stay away from me at a different hotel?) so around 9.30am Jordan and I walked the 10 blocks to rendezvous with the "rents" and head to the highlight of the day "Liberty Island" & home of the Statue of Liberty.

After paying our fare and enduring the most highly aggressive security screening point I have ever gone through we were on our way, with Jordan and I keen to climb to the crown of the statue - OR SO WE THOUGHT!

The sad thing is, and for those looking to head to NYC, the ticket to climb the statue is different to the Liberty Island admission - and unfortunately the wait to climb is 7 days... so we missed the opportunity. The statue is quite inspiring though and a memory I will cherish for many years.





Moving on, all had been forgotten by the time the ferry reached the South Ferry terminus, with Mum, Jordan and I heading for the two remaining iconic tourist destinations in the immediate area being Wall St and the former site of the World Trade Centre (aka Ground Zero). As we walked towards Wall St we bumped into my dad who had also decided to look at Wall St so the four of us continued on.




Wall St is definitely not how i imagined it, in fact it is nothing more than a small lane connecting two streets, but as it home to the NY Stock Exchange it was definitely worth checking out. After spending about half and hour wandering around taking photos and listening to the tour guides, we decided to head for the Ground Zero site less than a 5 minute walk.











The is currently some heavy construction occurring on the site as they are looking to resurrect the buildings (at half height), including two memorial pools on the foundations of where the two towers once stood, so photos were pretty hard to get but we did wander into the memorial museum which surprisingly stirred up quite a bit of emotion for me as it told the harrowing stories of those trapped in the planes & buildings as well as footage of the firemen/police who entered the building and never returned.



















It was now pushing 2 maybe 3pm and with my stomach sending me echos Jordan, Dad and I found a little pizza place to sit and enjoy a "traditional" New York Pizza, it was quite entertaining to try and balance the 1/4 pizza slice. After lunch we said our goodbyes to Dad and headed for Chinatown & Little Italy which we found after walking in circles for a few blocks.


It really is like stepping into another part of the world when you walk down the side streets and away from the traffic, you could easily be forgiven for believing you were in another part of the world.


After doing a little shopping in Chinatown and coffee in Little Italy we found the subway held our breath and headed home.


It's now approaching 8.30pm, and we are planning to head out to the local bar next to the hotel cleverly titled the "House of Brew's" I've spoken about this place before but I am nowhere near being able to finalise my sampling of their 80+ beers.

Plans for tomorrow include (depending on when I get up)... Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and MoMA - time for a little bit of culture.

So before I head out I wanted to update you all.

Have a great day, I'm thinking of you!

James.