Up early this morning and after having breakfast we caught the little shuttle from the hotel into the city. The drivers here are insane, but I guess dealing with this traffic all the time it’s not really surprising. Anyway we got into the city in about 15 minutes even with stops – I’m just grateful that I don’t have to drive here, we might never have made it!
We got dropped off just off Times Square, and even at that time of the morning there were people everywhere. Thankfully the weather is beautiful this morning, well dry anyway, I guess we can live with the cold and wind. We had decided that the first thing we were going to do was take a bus tour around the city to get some perspective and also to cram in as much as we could in two days. Well we must have looked like tourists cos as soon as we got off the shuttle a guy selling bus tickets stopped us – I can’t imagine what gave us away, I’m sure we all looked like typical New Yorkers.
So we got on the bus and headed into New York. It’s a pretty good idea especially since it was our first time there and Mike hadn’t been in so long. We got to see New York without having to drive in the crazy traffic and we didn’t have to walk miles, and also we got some info and history about the city as we went along. The buses are hop on hop off and since the first tour guide we had was horrible, he kept yelling at the passengers, we didn’t stay on his bus too long. We got off and headed to the site of the World Trade Center. There’s actually not too much to see at the site as its all behind construction fences, but they have at least started working on the site after being idle for almost ten years. We did get to see the plans for how the site will look when it’s complete and it’ll be interesting to go back in a few years and see it for real. We walked around for a little while because the men of the group were cold and we had to buy sweaters and wooly hats for them, aww bless the big wimps. I have to admit though that once they stopped moaning about the cold the day was a whole lot nicer.
Next we headed down to the business district and checked out Wall Street and the financial district. We weren’t allowed to go inside and yell and shout and throw bits of paper on the floor, we had to settle for taking pictures outside. Then we walked to Battery Park and almost got swept away as the wind was super strong, it was actually difficult to walk at times. From Battery Park we got to view the Lady out in the water. She was quite a ways away and looked very small and lonely. We had wanted to go visit her but time didn’t permit it and we couldn’t get tickets to climb to the crown anyway, maybe next time.
We took the bus some more and traveled through Chinatown, Little Italy and back through Times Square. Then we changed buses and headed uptown to Harlem, past Central Park. This time we had a really cool dude as a guide who had lots of useful tips for spending time in New York. We had dinner at a nice Thai restaurant on restaurant row before taking the night tour around the city and over to Brooklyn. It was cool to see everything at night as it’s all lit up and there are about as many people wandering around as during the day. It was so bloody cold though. We did manage to stay on the upper deck of the bus, which was outside for most off the tour, but we had to go down into the warm before the end as all our extremities were frozen. Took the shuttle back to the hotel after the tour ended and crashed for the night after a busy but fun day.

Mike: You know what they say about a witches t__ in January?