28th September: New York Day 1
October 8, 2009
We were up and about fairly early (for us). As the hotels menu is a bit pricey ($22 for 2 eggs!!!!), we thought we’d go out for breakfast. But, as we didn’t really know where to go still, we ended up with a quick trip to Starbucks. They’ve made a good few bob of us this trip!
We’d decided we were just going to have a walkabout day, so we got more accustomed to the layout of the land. But, as the closest thing to us was the Rockefeller centre, we decided to go there first. They had a sign at the desk saying that the very top floor was not accessible that day due to filming, so we did ask if the view we were gonna get was still good before dishing up the money. I’m not too sure why the building s famous, but we paid the entry fee and got the lift to the viewing floor.
What amazing views you get all around New York. You can pretty much see every famous building, central park, the bridges etc all from here, and as such i’ve taken loads of photos, so i apologise for anyone viewing the pics, as all you’re gonna see is skyscrapers from different angles.
After a while, we started looking up to see if we could see what they were filming, as we did see microphones and camera about the upper ledge. I also seen one of those director chairs, and managed to work out that it sayed “Adjustment Bureau” on the back. So, after a quick look up on the blackberry, we found that its a new film coming out next year with Matt Damon in it. After this, our excitement levels started to rise as we could see various folk all walking about near the ledge. Lauren didn’t really want to move from her spot, and her patience was rewarded when we actually spotted Matt Damon standing talking to some folk above (we’ve got photos). Its the first famous person we’ve seen, so i was quite happy, and am now on the hunt for more folk.
After “The Rock”, we continued our wee walk down into Times Square (which is just loads of neon lights and folk trying to sell you tours and other stuff), followed by a trip to The Empire State Building.
The queues werent as bad as what i’d expected, and we paid our money to get right to the top part (which used to be the highest building in the world, but not any more. I reckon they should drop their prices now that they’ve been beaten.) This basically gave us the same type of views as The Rock, but were able to see a bit more to the south. What annoyed me was that loads of folk had graffiti’d the glass viewing panels with scratches, ink etc, so it didn’t give you the best of views. We also found here that people were just really rude and kept barging you out the way, no even attempting to stay out of the shot when taking a photo etc. The Rock was definitely a better place with better viewing (you could even see our hotel from the roof).
After The Rock, we continued to walk about Manhattan for a while, and went to see Grand Central Station. Its one of the biggest train stations in the world, and as such was really busy. Probably more due to tourists taking photos than commuters. It was pretty cool though.
That night, after all our walking about, we were nackered, so ended up just having dinner in the hotel restaurant. It was really quite pricey. It worked out at $10 for a beer (i had 1), and $15 for a cocktail. But, the pizzas we got were really good.
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