Another 15 minutes

We got the rental car early on Saturday and headed towards Niagara Falls, it took about 7-8 hours with stops, and the GPS showed us the way to the Canadian side of the falls, the customs were no problem though, Canadians are very nice and their side of the falls gave a much better view.

We ate dinner on a restaurant by the falls and then we tried our luck on a casino, slot machines and black jack. We ended up losing about $210, but atleast we had a chance at the $13.7 million jackpot.

We couldn’t decide where to stay for the night, so we decided to take turns and drive through the night, but it was too early in the evening to head back towards New York so we headed for Toronto instead and spent a few hours there, it seems to be a very nice city and people are friendly.

With nothing special planned for today we headed towards Times Square and the museums of Ripley’s Believe It or Not and Madame Tussauds. We spent 24 bucks on Ripley’s and got dissapointed and disgusted. We decided to skip Madame Tussauds right now, and headed for some souveneir stores instead, TV merchandice and New York stuff.

We continued to Toys ‘R’ Us on Times Square which is the largest Toys ‘R’ Us in the world and looked around abit, then we walked up on Broadway and visited the location of The Late Show with David Letterman, bought some water at Hello Deli from Rupert G (known from said show).

After that we didn’t do much other than eating and watching some TV, since we have to get up early tomorrow to get our rental car and begin our roadtrip to Niagara falls.

On day four the main attraction was the Conan O’Brien show at NBC on Rockefeller Center to which we had got tickets. As usual on TV everything is much smaller in reality, but it was a very fun experience and everybody had a good time. One is not allowed to take pictures inside the studio, so we have nothing to show for it.

Before the show we got to see some old funny clips to warm up the crowd, and later also some warm-up guy came out and talked to the audience, and being the two Swedes we got some attention. That is not part of the show on TV though. The guests on the show were Al Roker and Paul Pierce. I think the show will air in Sweden in about 2-3 weeks or so (it’s aired later on the same day in US).

We also reserved a rental car for Saturday to Monday so we can go up to Niagara falls as planned.

The trip to Statue of Libert was successful, we took the ferry and had lunch on Liberty Island, took some pictures and then headed back to Manhattan, the monument access was closed this day for some reason. We skipped Ellis Island and decided to continue on to Ground Zero via Wall Street.

Ground Zero was much more of a construction yard than we expected, there were no memorials yet what so ever (other than some guided tour that we skipped). We took some pictures anyway and then continued to the east side of Manhattan on foot, saw Brooklyn Bridge and Manhattan Bridge. Then we suddenly were in China Town, what a transformation, everything was in chinese within a block. The plan was to eat dinner in China Town, but the chinese didn’t seem that friendly to tourists, there weren’t many restaurants that presented menues in English. We decided to continue on a few blocks to Little Italy, which was pretty small, but much more friendly. We had some nice home made lasagne and spaghetti carbonara there.

Then we walked back to the hotel, bought some American foods (like beef jerky and some chocolats), and watched some TV. By the way, beef jerky is disgusting…

The second day in New York City we decided to go to Central Park, among many other things. The weather was much less humid today, but still very warm and sweaty. We walked around the park abit, and visited Central Park Zoo and looked at some colorful birds and also polar bears.

After the Zoo we walked toward the Swedish Cottage in Central Park, which was nothing special too see really, but it was built by Swedes back in the day. On our way there we walked just feet behind Pierce Brosnan, who seems to get very annoyed by the unannounced camera click behind him so we walked another way.

After Central Park we walked towards Bloomingdales, and through it, stopped at Home Deopt to by some pliers so we could modify our travel power socket so it worked with the laptop charger. A worker at Home Depot named Herbert, who knew right away we were scandinavian and told us he used to work for a Swede and his parent was from Norway so he knew some words, helped us to get the equipment we needed.

Soon we were in desperate need of food, Friday’s was our salvation and we tried their cheeseburger and sizzling chicken (grilled chicken with mashed potatoes served on sizzling melted american and mexican cheese), it was pretty good eatin’, but lots of calories =).

After the much needed energy boost we headed to the UN building and Grand Central Station, which was very nice. After that we were heading home but on the way we passed Empire State Building and noticed that the line was not too long today, so we walked in, and after about a 30 minute wait in line to the security and elevators we headed on up to the 86th floor and the observatory and got some nice overview of Manhattan and beyond.

Then we headed back to the hotel, it has been a very long day and our feet are killing us, we have walked pretty much non-stop for 8 hours in this heat, so now we’ll just eat at the Italian Eatery and then chill the rest of the evening.

The first day, after settling down abit at the hotel room, we spent walking around on Manhattan. We were abit surprised of the level of stress everywhere, crazy traffic and people everywhere, it takes a while to get used to. We walked to Times Square and ate at McDonalds (it tastes exactly the same as home), after calming down abit and enjoying the AC we walked around towards Empire State Building and along Broadway. We will visit the observation lounge of Empire State Building another day, the line to the entrance was pretty long and it was too warm today to stand in line.

We were back at the hotel around 19:00 local time, and since the day is 6 hours longer for us we’re pretty tired. Im betting we will sleep well tonight. Tomorrow we will eat breakfast at Starbucks where they have free Internet access and I will write these first posts I hope. If I don’t find another Internet access anywhere (at a reasonable price) I will probably make a routine to have breakfast at Starbucks across the street and post the last days’ pictures and information, so stay tuned.

We arrived at Newark Liberty Airport and after security check we got outside and was completely struck by the unbelievable warmth and humidity, it felt so damp, we were not prepared for that. It was about 26 degrees but the humidity and the smell (sort of car exhausts, fried foods and locker-room towels mixed into one nice stink) in the air makes it very hard to stand at times.

The hotel is very big, a huge lobby, and looks promising. The first room we got however had a waterleak in the bathroom and felt abit damp, we complained about it and got another room that was pretty ok. It’s much larger and looks much better in the bathroom and walls, the view from the windows however is pretty much non-existant, and even if we could see through the windows (they’re very dirty) we would only see another wall and some vents, but who cares about that?