New York City, Part 4. The Final Chapter.

As promised this is the final installment of our adventures in the wonderful New York City (and about time as we have now moved onto Washington D.C.)

So without further hesitation, lets get this slide show going!

We took this photo in the Natural History museum only because the mountain goats reminded us of Holly & Charlie climbing on the couch.

In Times Square there is a ginormous Toys R Us, and I mean it was HUGE, like at least 5 floors! It was that big it had a Ferris Wheel inside it.

These photos are for Sammy! In the store they had pretty much a whole floor dedicated to lego and a whole section of things built out of lego like the Statue of Liberty above.

They even added King Kong on top of the Empire State Building, nice touch. 

The Hard Rock Cafe in Times Square, we contemplated going in to eat their one night, and got so far as the staircase because it looked uber exclusive, so we bailed in quick fashion. 

The NASDAQ building.

I just love Laurens bib in this photo. The sacrifices you must make when wearing white and eating ribs. Totally worth it though. 

A cool panorama shop of Times Square at night, you can never get enough of these. 

If you can recall the previous post, you might remember the Milford Plaza, the swanky hotel we managed to stay in for 2 nights whilst in New York. Well on the third night they did not have any specials running, so guess where we ended up, here. The Chelsea star hotel, only 10 minute walk from the Milford Plaza but a lifetime away in terms of luxury and comfort. But what can you do, we got to stargaze at night with all the stars on the walls in our room. The only problem with this room is that window you see there on the right hand side was just above busy 30th St, which rather surprisingly had an unusual amount of police and ambulances come flying down with their sirens on all night long. Couple that with the constant unnecessary horns from the trillions of taxis and it made for a pretty sweet nights sleep. Needless to say we were pretty happy we were moving on after our one night here. Ohh and just to make the stay more pleasant, it just happened to be the day they shut off the water supply to that particular street, which was super convenient at night time. 

These two photos are some shots of Central Park, and while it looks quite large in size when you look at it on a map, its actually triple that in real life. It will literally take you at least 1.5 to 2 hours to walk just top to bottom, and that's not even the almost hour it will take to walk side to side. It was crazy big. But I guess when you have an operating ice rink, baseball field, waterfall, bridges and a plethora of rock formations, you need to have a pretty damn big park. 

The amazing thing about Central Park is that, like in this photo, you can be walking around and never know your actually in the city, let alone New York City. You can barely see any buildings through the myriad of trees, and its virtually silent, which is a surprise because I swear you can never ever escape the sound of horns wherever you go.

Funnily enough this was one of the places I really wanted to go to during our time in New York, The Apple Store. Its their flagship store located on 5th Ave cornering Central park and its literally a glass cube no larger than a bedroom with an apple logo hung in the middle of it (for a better look do a quick Google). Then you walk down a flight of stairs, almost feeling like your transcending down into Apple Heaven (which is exactly how Apple intended, of course they couldn't just be happy with a normal store). And once your down their that's exactly how it feels, literally. Its white, very white, and you walk towards that white light, and meet a hairy man in a blue T-shirt who is their to fulfill your every wish (well most anyway, Apple related that is). Minus the blue shirt, you'd be excused for thinking you had walked through the pearly gates of Heaven. The only thing stopping you from making this assumption is that there are dogs in the store! And everyone knows there's a separate doggy heaven. Ohh and the fact that it was packed, with humans that is, and surely heaven should have more room and a greater number of seats. So I bought my headphones and bailed back to reality. 

After our quick venture into Apple Heaven, we then for some strange reason proceeded to enter shopping hell. For all of you unacquainted, meet Bloomingdale's. The uber exclusive designer makes-myer-look-like-the-salvos style store, in which the attendants can literally smell your socioeconomic status and quickly determine your income, was not a nice place for the most part. Because our combined average household income was below $14 million per year, we were not eligible for service, instead we got the regular glare up and down our entire bodies as we proceeded to walk away. But, thankfully, Lauren decided to buy two appropriately priced lipsticks which awarded us the prestigious 'little brown bag'  (which is literally just a little brown bag). After we received such bag, we had attendants dote upon us, like we had been sprinkled with posh dust and the stench of middle class just whisked away ever so quickly. 

But we got that appropriate middle class smell back later that day, in the form of burger. This was the weirdest little burger place I have ever been to. It was inside the La Meridian Hotel, a 5 star luxurious hotel just off posh 5th Ave, but not just inside, like a cafe or a shop, you went down a little dark hallway following a fluorescent burger sign into a little dingy room. Enter Burger Joint. It got its name from exactly what it was, a little burger joint. It had rave reviews from our Idol Anthony Bourdain as being one of the best burgers in New York, so naturally we had to try it. Our verdicts were a little mixed though, with the burger failing to impress as much as it did with Anthony Bourdain, we were just hoping that particular show was shot years ago when the burgers were different/better, and it wasn't a reflection of Anthony Bourdain's bad taste (which is impossible, I'm going with the former explanation). 

The menu of the burger joint. Nice and simple, how you like it. Make sure you read the last part. 

The aggressively average burger in question.

The worlds biggest M & M's. 

The forever busy M & M world in Times Square, it was a bit of a wonderland. 

One of the thousands of shots of Times Square, this particular one during the day. 

The Megastore Macy's, 8 floors totaling 16 acres of designer shopping. Ridiculous. 

We almost missed it, but this is the famous Flatiron building. It was actually quite a striking building in person. 

Another serene walkway in Central Park.

Trump ice skating rink in Central Park, one of the best views you could ask for.

Look from another vantage point of the rink, and surprise surprise, the views just get better. 

Lauren insisted I take a photo of this dog as she proclaimed that it was the cutest dog she has ever seen in her whole entire life. Only to be eclipsed two days later by a dog in Philly, photos up tomorrow. 

One of the bridges in Central Park, and a stunning view of the city surroundings. 

One of the smaller lakes in Central Park.

This was my epic Beef Brisket Sandwich, which if there are any man vs food fans out there (I know there are), I got from Katz's Deli in New York. It was as epic as it looks, with a price tag to match. This baby set me back $15.95, and shaved 4 months off my life. I call that a raw deal. 

Every grown man has to do it. That's Nintendo World I'm talking about. All that childhood goodness rolled into two floors, pure nostalgic heaven. 

A timeline collection of all the Pokemon games in the history of the franchise, let the reminiscing begin. 

New York City Police Department (NYPD) buggy, if they're going to catch crims, they will do it in style.  

One day there is no snow ramp, the next there is. Things just happen like that in NYC. Ohh and it was in preparation for the SOCHI winter Olympics.

So FINALLY we have covered everything in New York City, it only took 4 blog posts. Now we can all move on, to Philly that is! We spent 5 nights in Philly during our time between visits to New York, but luckily we didn't do so much. So stay tuned for that in the next day or so while we frantically try to catch up on our posts!

So until then, we hope everyone is well and should speak to most of you in the next couple of days. 
Kristian & Lauren. 

New York City, Part 3

It feels like we have been writing about New York City forever, and that's partly because we did so damn much in that place it was ridiculous. Afterwards we literally needed a full day in Philadelphia to recover from such over-activity trauma. Whats funny though is that after all these photo's, there's still one more post to go about New York City that contains about 30 more photos, so just hang tight, we will move onto other places eventually! So without further procrastination, lets get into the good stuff!

NYPD booth right in the middle of Times Square. Which we did actually visit once due to us being ripped off, but we made such an ordeal out of the whole situation the dodgy merchants ended up giving our money back. WIN.

This was the daytime view from our luxurious Milford Plaza Hotel just around the corner from Times Square, it got even better at night would you believe it. 

While not as impressive as the photo above, this was the other view out to the Hudson river from our room at the Milford. 

As part of Kristian's birthday present I managed to get tickets to the inside of The Statue of Liberty which was pretty cool. This was our little cruise liner that took us out to Liberty Island.

The original torch from the statue.

The spiral staircase inside the statue going all the way to the crown.

 Below are various angles of the grand Statue of Liberty that we shot when taking our Liberty Island Cruise.

Unfortunately we didn't get to see any frantic rambling men you commonly associate with wall street and the stock exchange. Instead we say many businessmen frustrated by all the stupid tourists blocking every single walkway, it was entertaining nonetheless. 

Looking down a part of Wall Street near the Stock Exchange.

While our next destination really isn't and shouldn't be an essential tourist attraction due to the horrifying events that took place, you feel somewhat inexplicably drawn to it to discover the true terror, compassion and aftermath that surrounds that fateful September day in 2001, the 11th to be precise.

We decided to take a tour led by a rescue worker and a 9/11 survivor, who as fate had it, was on the 82nd floor of the North Tower when the attacks on the World Trade Center had occurred. The stories she told were gripping, terrifying, devastating and heartwarming all at the same time, they described some of the scenes as people scurried out of the buildings literally running for their lives. One of the more baffling things she noted to us is that most people working in the North Tower when the attack had occurred, had no idea as to what had happened when that first plane had struck the building; majority thought it was a small quake that hit the city or a small explosion on the lower floor. Most literally had no idea until they were either told by their loved ones or had heard it on the news, in which by this time the whole world had heard about the devastating attacks. Amidst all the stories of sadness and adversity, she described some of the most inspirational rescue operations performed to date, and some stories of the lucky ones who had, by miracle, survived the towers falling atop of them, some trapped in little cocoons of steel and metal, only to be one of 28 people later discovered alive after the towers fell.

Interestingly though, our tour guide went on to describe the extraordinary factors of the 11th of September itself, that as fate had it, saved thousands upon thousands of lives. To help you understand this, I need to explain how busy a place the Twin Towers were. On an average day, there was typically 60,000-80,000 people in the towers at any given time, split between businessmen and tourists alike. On particularly busy days this numbers soars to just over 150,000 people occupying both the Two Towers. But as it was explained to us, there were three very important, very coincidental factors that left the number of people in the Twin Towers on the 11th of September to an unusually low 17,000 on the day of the attacks. The first factor was that the night before, there was a big sports game on very late in the night (1am I think was the start time) in which many New Yorkers were vested in. As the game finished close to 4am, many workers called in sick on September 11. The second factor was to do with the school term starting. As it fell, the first day of the New York school system started on the 11th of September, so many parents were taking the morning off to take their kids to school. The third factor was to do with the local elections being held in Nerw York that very day. As it turned out, most workers tend to take the morning off to vote in their local election, and as it turned out the voting offices opened in the morning of September 11. These three factors, along with the extraordinary work of the NYPD and FDNY, led to minimizing the loss of the 9/11 attacks.

So take a look at the photo's of the memorial, which is the giant pool in place of the original tower's footprints. They were shockingly big, with the names of everyone lost inscribed into the metal surrounding the pools. What was nice as well was the fact that if it was one of the victims birthdays, they would put a white rose on their name, to signify such an important day.

These little notes were written by primary school children and included a brief description of the victims life, and a prayer for them inside. 

The white rose placed for this particular persons birthday. 

On our second last night in New York we decided to walk the High Line. I found this particularly interesting in that it was an old abandoned and unused railway line 2 stories above ground that soared over about 15 blocks along the Hudson River. Instead of leaving it as ruins or tearing it down, they have turned it into a walkway with various plants, trees and shrubs that run the whole length of the 2 mile walkway.
Below are some photos of the walkway with its beautiful scenery.

Some of the views as you walked above the roadway, this one in particular is looking down West 22nd street towards Brooklyn. 

This wasn't one of the beautiful scenes along the High Line, it was just a cool automated carpark.  

After leaving the shoe box YMCA hostel, we upgraded in style. Welcome to the Milford Plaza.

Our very nice Queen room with a view. If you look closely you'll also see that the grey blind has goodnight written on it, I thought it was a nice touch,. 

This is what happens when your exhausted after walking 10km+ in New York City all day. You resort to the most amazing burger joint which just happened to be across the road from the hotel. We chose the takeaway option and opted for The Walking Dead on cable. 

So that will be it for now, but we do have one last New York City post to upload tomorrow night then we can move on to our doings in Philadelphia.

So until then,
Kristian & Lauren.