Start spreading the news... (Beck's in the city)

I know it's been a while since I updated this, but I have a load of really bad excuses. I meant to do it in New York, but we never got a chance to spend ages in an internet cafe. So here is, a little late, what we got up to in New York City...

I arrived in New York 2 weeks ago and met up with Beck. It was (of course) great to see her after so long as I'm sure you can all imagine. The first couple of days we were in the city, we just hung around checking out some of the sights. We went to go see the wrecked globe sculpture from the World Trade Centre which was moved to Battery Park as well as taking a walk down the Esplanade to look out at New Jersey and at the Statue of Libery. In the evening we walked over the Brooklyn Bridge and back again, it gives a great view of Manhattan. Later, we got a dinner at a nice Thai restaurant, that I think that was once in a TV show I don't watch.

The next day we planned to go and see if Coney Island was just like an American Skegness. It is. We got there a little too early and it was too cold to stand around on the beach so we went for a visit at the Aquarium. The Aquarium was a good choice because I finally got to get a picture of a Parrot Fish, which is by far my favourite fish. They had a massive 3000lb walrus that (as some schoolkids kindly pointed out) was obviously a male. Once the rides were open we headed over to the rides and attractions of Coney Island. Apart from big rides and an awesome wooden rollercoaster, The Cyclone, which we rode and Beck spent most of the ride saying "Oh My God!", it was pretty much like any fairground, crap prizes, games you can't win etc. Except it is the birthplace of the Hotdog. We tried hotdogs at Nathans, the place where they have the annual hotdog eating competition, where some Japanese guy has been smashing records for 5 years by gobbling over 50 in 12 minutes. Nice.

It rained on Friday so we went to the Natural History Museum and Planetarium. We saw a pretty decent IMAX video about the Galapogas Islands and an awesome display about "Cosmic Collisions" in the Planetarium. We met up with our friends Sarah and Adam and we spent the evening at Madison Square Garden watching the Jordan All American Classic. It was basically schoolkids playing basketball in a giant stadium. Only, it's not like schoolkids from home, one of these lads was 7ft 1in and as I understand it they are going on to college on sports scholarships. It was great to go to one of the the most famous venues in the world.

Sunday morning we did something that Beck had been looking forward to for ages, we met Sarah and Adam again and went to BB King's club for the Harlem Gospel choir's all you can eat brunch. This consisted of the Harlem Gospel Choir singing gospel songs (erm obviously) and us stuffing ourselves with the all-you-can-eat buffet. Their voices were amazing, I can't say we were as moved as some of the other patrons, but they were very impressive. Beck and Sarah then found the New York Hello Kitty store and, I don't know if it was the Christ infused music or the greasy food, went a little crazy. After some more wandering around we took a trip up the Empire State Building. We managed to pick the cloudiest day ever, but we still got some great views of the city. The queue to get to the observatory floor is unbelieveable. Essentially you spend hours queueing to get in to a series of smaller queues. Then you get a lift to some more queues. We spent 90 minutes waiting to get up there, this is on a cold cloudy day. Last time beck went, it took her over 3 hours, in the middle of Winter! Still, great view though, really.

Beck had a surprise for me on Monday morning. She was right, I would NEVER guess. She'd signed us up for trapeeze lessons. These were great fun. We both did pretty well, but I ached so much afterwards. We went to get "The Greatest Cheesecake Ever" from Grand Central Station to celebrate. It was pretty damn good. We did some more shopping (this is what we did when we were doing nothing else, I even know the difference between US and UK sizing. Just kidding.)

Tuesday morning was gorgeous so we took the boat ride to Liberty and Ellis Islands. We saw the immigration museum and the statue of liberty. I've had a lot of people tell me that the statue is pretty small in real life. I disagree, it's huge, but Manhattan is bigger! It was really cool to see such a famous landmark upclose and personal and
the nice weather made up for the cloudy Empire State Queuing ride. We didn't get to go up it, but it was no big deal. Ellis Island was also cool, it was interesting to hear some of the stories from the immigrants that made the USA what it is today. In the evening we went to the Bronx to Yankee Stadium where we saw the Yankees take on the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Tampa were crap, the Yankees took them apart. We sat up in the nosebleed seats which was great because we were almost covered from the rain. We left in the 8th inning because we had to leave at 5am to catch our flight home.

Which is where I am now. Home sweet home. It really is nice to be back. I've had a great time and have really enjoyed writing about it. Hope I didn't make you all too jealous. I've changed the site so you don't need to login to make comments, so feel free to let me know you've been reading :). Once I'm a bit more settled and had a chance to go through my photos, I'm going to make a post with of favourite photos. Thanks to everyone for reading, I hope you all enjoyed reading.