Another 15 minutes » New York City 2008

NYC photo gallery collection

Draupner — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 16:56:45 +0000

Here are the photo galleries posted throughout my New York City vacation collected into a single album, enjoy. Also, the Conan O’Brien show attended on July 10th (day 4 of the vacation) will air in Sweden today (July 18th) on TV4+ around midnight, not that I’m on TV or anything, but anyway…

New York 2007 - day 1

3 Photos

New York 2008 - day 1

2 Photos

New York 2008 - day 1

6 Photos

New York 2008 - day 2

17 Photos

New York 2008 - day 3

12 Photos

New York 2008 - day 5

4 Photos

New York 2008 - day 6

12 Photos

New York 2008 - day 7

7 Photos

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NYC observations by a Swede

Draupner — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 16:24:23 +0000

While in New York City we made many observations about their way of life, both remarkable and strange. Here is a list of some of those observations.

The air in Manhattan smells like one or more of the following (depending on the time of day and part of Manhattan): exhausts, household garbage, poop, fried & bbq foods, sewage, swimmingpool water (chlorine), old wet towels, vomit.
Second to the NYC Taxicars (Ford Crown Victoria), the most common car on Manhattan is the Lincoln Towncar (also used by a limo service), they’re black and everywhere!
There are virtually no compact cars in USA what so ever.
Americans love cheese… served with sizzling, smuthered with or sprinkled onto any food.
Many medium size stores have more employees than customers inside the store at any one time.
The most common job in NYC, second to taxi driver perhaps, must be security guard.
It is almost impossible to find healthy foods on Manhattan, everything is fast food.
USA have the same TV shows and old re-runs as in Sweden (Friends, Simpsons, Law & Order, Star Trek, Two and a half Men, Scrubs etc).
America loves the “Judge”-shows, such as “Judge Judy” shown in Sweden. They have alot of them on every channel!
There are only black people working as cashiers in stores.
In USA they don’t maintain anything, they use it until it breaks and then buy new.
Being a pedestrian on Manhattan is much easier than in Sweden, everything flows nicely without any stops.
Most tapwater in New York has chlorine in it, that you can taste and smell.
The TV commercials in USA can be surprisingly bad and low-budget.
Americans have their AC turned down way too low, it’s freezing coming in from a hot summers day.

It’s good to be home!

By the way, I updated titles, tags and permalinks on all New York City 2008 category posts and also enabled comments on all posts.

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The tenth (last) day – Going home

Draupner — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 07:11:26 +0000

On the last day we just did our normal morning routine at Starbucks and then packed everything and checked out. We didn’t have that much money left, we donated all our coins to the homeless but we wanted to have enough bills for the taxi to Newark airport, so the guy hailing the cabs and loading our bags had to settle with only one dollar in tips, and he let us know what he thought about that, hehe. The cabdriver however was much nicer, and had relatives in Sweden, so he got the remaining cash we had.

At the airport we had to wait about 3-4 hours before we could check in, but everything went smoothly. The flight was not as exciting this time, but still it didn’t feel like it took very long, and soon enough we were back in Sweden, yay!

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The ninth day – Not much

Draupner — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 07:06:31 +0000

On the nineth day we didn’t do much, some more walking around, browsing and shopping. We had our normal lunch and dinner smutthered in cheese and watched some movies on TV. No related posts. No related posts.

The eighth day – Shopping spree

Draupner — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 12:57:55 +0000

Today we had a shopping spree at Macys, we got some nice discounts on clothes there, some clothes are only a quarter of the prices in Sweden. After lunch we walked to Times Square and saw Hellboy 2 at the movies, like everything else in US things are oversized, and so was the smallest coke at the movies, probably 0.6 litres. After the movie we didn’t do much, just some TV and then dinner and more TV.

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The seventh day – OCC

Draupner — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:19:31 +0000

We headed back to USA after midnight so we would be at Orange County Choppers in the morning, we visited their old site (deserted) in Montgomery and their new facility in Newburgh, met some bikers and shopped a few stuff. It was nice to see the bikes seen built on TV in real-life. We didn’t see any of the Teutuls though, we were told they still shoot the show American Choppers five days a week there. I took some pictures of the bikes but only publish some of them here.

We got back to Manhattan at lunchtime and got some more sleep.

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The sixth day – The Niagara falls

Draupner — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:18:18 +0000

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.

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The fifth day – Believe it or not

Draupner — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 11:15:42 +0000

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.

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The fourth day – Conan O’Brien

Draupner — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 14:54:01 +0000

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.

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The third day – Liberty Island & Ground Zero

Draupner — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 14:46:01 +0000

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…

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