Saturday 6 January - New York City

Big day. And not just because it's Geoff Hollis' b'day - one of the best blokes I've ever met (Happy 35th Geoffrey!)

Up at a reasonable time to head to Grand Central Station. Most of the station is actually buried beneath a skyscraper - they built it over the top. The well-known main foyer is sandwiched between buildings. It is a magnificent old structure, immacutely maintained. As Libe said, it may remind people of Vatican buildings in Rome.

From there, we walked to Madison Square Garden. The Garden doesn't appear all that big (Boston's TD Banknorth Gardens appears bigger I think) however it has the main arena which seats 20,000 for a basketball game, and a separate theatre which seats 5,600. We couldn't get into the actual stadium, due to security and/or the fact that there was a 'Professional Bull Riding' show on that night (I assume undertaken by bullshit artists, of which I know an amazing amount of candidates). However, there's barely a night when there's not something on at the MSG (I wonder if asian food was the inspiration for its name?), so hopefully I'll get to something there. Libe already has tickets to a NY Rangers NHL game and may go to other things there. A look at the following link will get you an idea of what happens there.

http://www.thegarden.com/boxoffice.jsp

From there, we jumped on the famed New York subway system down to Wall Street. The subway itself is quite cheap ($10 for 6 trips), and the lack of maintenance spent on it allows it to be. The subway is quite dirty, and probably a few more security cameras and a decent paint job (I will give them Yappa's phone number if they requested it - I'd love to see the Americans try to understand him) wouldn't go astray. However it is used by enough people to be safe during the day, although nighttime would prove a lot more daunting and more dangerous. The amazing thing is that you can jump on a subway train, travel for half and hour or longer and still walk out and be surrounded by skyscrapers. I don't think that would happen anywhere else. (Unless you're a midget like Claire Williams, then everything would appear to be a skyscraper)

We arrived at the Wall Street district. A few points:

• It's certainly not big. Indeed, the entrance to Wall Street from Broadway (perhaps the two most famous streets in the world?) is quite small (refer photo below).
• A lot, if not all, of the main part of Wall Street is closed to most car traffic.
• Buildings of note in Wall Street are the New York Stock Exchange, The Trump Building and Federal Hall (where George Washington was sworn in as the first President). (Given the amount of money around here, surely the Vic Government can issue a pokies licence for this street?)
• It probably didn't have the same feel as it otherwise would have, given we arrived there on a Saturday and it was predominantly tourists about. It would be a completely different place on a business day I'm sure.
  

Next was the Empire State Building - the highlight of the day. It took us probably 60 to 75 minutes to get up there in all, with all the queues and elevators. But it was worth it. You felt like the king of the world (to use a well-worn quote. Nearly as worn as Barrel's pink shirt that he used to wear every Friday). The view was amazing, and words doesn't do it justice. We were 86 floors up, and anyone with a decent fear of heights best not look down too much. It was cool and windy but comfortable enough. Libe and Simone (who had joined us here) had walked around the building twice in about 15 minutes and probably could've gone back down, but I took probably an hour, which was made more exciting due to an small audio device we were given that gave us a self guided tour of the observation deck and its sights. I took approximately 50,000 photos and videos (Libe may say a higher number). Anyone who ever goes to NY must go to the top of this building!

Off to Herald Square, a triangled (why they named it a "Square" is a little confusing - must have been the Irish) meeting place bounded by Broadway, Sixth Avenue (otherwise known as Avenue of the Americas) and 34th Street. It was great to sit there for a while, and watch New York go about its business. You could almost spend a day there just doing that. Unfortunately, a Macy's store, this one which I believe to be the world's biggest department store outlet, is right across the road, and the inclination to shop for two females in their 20s was just too great.

Back to Libe's apartment, where Luke Carey (otherwise known as "Barrel", "Wayne", "King" or "Duck") and Kristian ("KL", "Lawson" (took me a while to think of those two)) came over for a few Bud Lights. From there, off to Sutton Place, a bar around the corner. Amazingly, we were able to spend the night in the open rooftop bar at this place, as it was warm enough for me to do so in a t-shirt and jeans, despite the fact it was January in New York. We left at 2am, once my 25th birthday had officially arrived in US time, and left Barrel to fly solo, as he is accustomed to do.