Today has been a bad day, but yesterday was a good one, so I’ll start with that.

We started off with a really nice breakfast at the Brooklyn diner on west 57th street. Followed by a trip up to the roof of the Rockefeller building. I’m not usually one for doing the whole touristy thing but I have to admit that the view from the roof was pretty breathtaking.

View from the Top of the Rockerfeller Building

After that we wondered around the Central Library and Grand Central Station. Both buildings where great for just sitting around people watching. Whilst sitting on the steps outside the library a line of about 100 police cars came past, thats not an exaggeration, it did literally take about 10 minutes for them all to drive past. At first I thought i was a motorcade for a politician, but I later found out it was part of a massive rapid response thing that they do to prove that if there’s another 9/11 then they can get a huge amount of cops in one place at once. It sounds more of a PR thing to me. The station felt so familiar, there must have been hundreds of movie scenes set there, but the only one I can remember is Kapax, let me know if you can think of any others

We spent the rest of the afternoon ambling through Chinatown, Little Italy and Greenwich Village. Chinatown and Little Italy where great once you get past the first few tourist streets and get into where they locals go about there lives. Loads of tiny shops selling weird and wonderful vegetables and various unidentifiable meat products. My favourite was a little plastic box with just the words “Chicken Parts” written on it.

Greenwich village was quite a cool area. It’s quite a young vibrant place, apparently it’s where Friends is set. Everyone seemed a bit more genuine and friendly that in other parts of the city.

We ended the night in a tiny comedy club which has a special discounted rate for people staying at the hostel. I met up with a couple of others form the hostel (an Australian and a Portuguese girl). The comedy was OK, but nothing special, but the atmosphere was quite nice. I got picked on a couple of
times, but nothing too bad.

In an attempt to have a bit of a cheaper day today, we went to the supermarket and bought a few things for a bit of a picnic in central park. All was going great until a wanker snatched Lisa’s bag. I tried to chase after him, but he was a bit too fast for me.

I wasn’t really expecting the police response that we got, 7 policemen and 2 detectives who where really amazing. One of the detectives was like something out of a movie. He was half Saprano, half cop, but really helpful. he even let Lisa use his personal mobile to phone the credit card company.

It looks like Lisa is able to claim everything back on her insurance so the only thing that was lost was a sunny day in New York and if it wasn’t for the unpleasantness of it all I think I would have found in quite fun.

We’re off out now down to Broadway to watch a movie and have a drink, hopefully the new Chuck Palahniuk one, choke.

Well, I made it past the US immigration people, which was a lot less painful than I thought. it must have only been about 20 minutes from leaving the getting off the flight to walking through the arrivals gate to meet Lisa.

we decided to be cheapskates and use the airtrain and subway to get to the hostel. the ssubway was full of weird and wonderful people, but at no point did I feel like I was in any danger. We asked a guard how to get to 103rd street, but forgot to say that we wanted west not east, so we ended up having a nice little stroll through Central Park.

Just arrived in Central Park

By the time we found the hostel, got checked in and showered, it felt like i’d been awake for a week. We both felt that we should at least make an effort to go out, so we found a little cheap Vietnamese restraunt. We both spent the whole meal glazed over and whishing for our beds.

I’m writing this now on my phone from my bed. it’s 5am and I can’t sleep.

The plan for me today is to head down to Wall street and see if I can see any stock market traders crying.