New York, New York, New Years...

We left for new York city at about 3.30 on a bus that was mostly full… we all had to sit separately, and my seating partner was a massive black man who didn’t want to share and was spread out fairly well over the whole of both seats. So I sat right on the front edge of my seat and talked to Amber until we got to Newark airport and a few of the seats freed up so we got to sit together for the last 20 minutes of the trip… Coming into New York City was interesting; I don’t think maybe, it was just the fact that it was dusk and overcast… I don’t know… but it didn’t’ look really as big as I’d imagined it. Perspective is everything I guess. But we got in and the first thing that hit me as we squeezed thru the thronging masses was – strangely enough – how many people were there. And how many people actually spent money on stupid looking 2007 flashing glasses…

The forecast was rain, and it was pretty cold, but not too bad… we found a place to eat which was really nice, went upstairs and ordered a really nice bottle of Australian red wine, I had my second American steak… which as Amber has always told me, was very nice… I don’t know if it was THAT much better than how they do them in Australia, but it was bloody good. Then we headed downstairs and had a couple of drinks at the bar, which was quite nice…

Moving on we found a smallish bar a little way up the street that was interesting, we sat down and they had like really old books surrounding us, so we all grabbed a couple of books and had a look at them for a bit as we drank our assorted alcohols… after that we walked maybe 100 meters up the road and saw a sign that said “house of brews” we went up and it said that they have over 80 beers in stock, which for us was enough to go inside. As we walked thru the door we had just seen the sigh that said they have coopers pale, and we were all cheering, literally, the whole of the bar turned to look… we were like, ah, it’s okay, they have coopers *grin* .when I told the waitress that we were from the city that coopers is from, she said we weren’t allowed to have that then and we had to try something else. We were too drunk at that point to argue too much… well, not really that drunk, but… you know… she was hot… that was at about 10.30pm, and we had like a booth thing, and a big TV to watch the ball drop, so we decided to stay. It turned out to be a great little bar, and I would definitely say so far that its my favorite place so far in New York… to be fair, its out of 3; so… we’ll see next time if I find something else… we had an interesting guy come join us at one point… he was a pianist from Kentucky… first time in New York, very chatty, and he’d been drinking for the last 2 days or so… but, yeah, great guy, lots to say… lots of hand shaking and asking the same questions over and over… and he asked Sarah if she wanted to go home with him… but over all, he was harmless and quite funny…

The countdown was fun… we had hats. Of course Shannon and I, being our fathers sons, have big heads, so they didn’t fit very well. But they were there. We had noise makers too… but yeah, more stuff happened, but nothing so interesting that I can be bothered writing about… we left the bar at about 3.45am, at a guess… it was raining… we wandered relatively aimlessly for a while until someone suggested that we find the Rockefeller centre, which we walked past several times before realizing that they had turned the lights off of the big tree that everyone had been looking for… so then, still damp and frustrated by the blusteryness of the wind and the smallness of the umbrella handle, we walked in search of something open to eat in or have a coffee at… unfortunately we walked into the first place that was open. It was terrible, from the food, to the service to the looks we got when amber asked if she could pay by travelers cheque… rude, dirty and nasty… so that left me with a bad taste in my mouth, literally and figuratively… and we left for the bus terminal and had to wait about 2 hours before the bus was due to get in… Shannon and Sarah joined the many people trying to get some sleep on the hard tile floor, and I think I fell asleep several times while I was standing up… eventually I sat down when the bone aching weariness was too much to bear, and within about 3 minutes of my eyes closing a couple of police men walked thru telling everyone to stand up and kicking (gently of course) those that were too asleep to wake up straight away. I was up and on my feet at the first sound of a voice of authority, although it may have been 5 minutes before I actually realized that I was standing up and had taken stock of my surroundings…

The bus trip back was better… we all slept… then we got home and we all slept some more, we in at about 10.30, woke up at about 7, and then went back to sleep until about 10 the next morning… its amazing how much sleep you need to catch up on one night without any…

Right now, I am sitting in a mall in Ithaca NY, the first place I’ve found that I’ve been able to get internet so far on my trip, apart from a park bench outside the Toronto university library… about a week has passed, its been fun but relatively uneventful… if anything exciting happens, I’ll be sure to let you know… next weekend we’re planning on heading up to Toronto for the weekend… *shrugs* that’s all for now…

It’s about 5 or 6C outside, and it’s meant to snow, so I might head out into it and see what happens…