This has been a most excellent adventure...

Day 90 (Tuesday Dec 21st)
"da da da daaa, da da daaa!"

The first thing Lacey did when we woke up was call the numbers she knew off by heart to see if she'd left her phone in the car. It turned out that she had and that her phone was now back in Pennsylvania. The repair shop had left a message on it saying that she could pick up her car in Jersey. She didn't want to make the journey without a phone so after I'd said good bye to Suzy and Mike we went to the nearest T-Mobile shop and Lacey bought the cheapest phone they had. We went to the Port Authority and had some food before Lacey got a bus to where her car was as 5pm. I hadn't really planned how I was getting to Newark airport but after a quick look around I found a bus that was leaving immediately for $15. I'm sure I could have found something cheaper but I was tired and it was the easiest option.

 It was very busy at the airport and but I cut the line and went straight to the 'carry-on baggage only' check-in. I made my way towards my gate but when I got near I couldn't remember if it was 36 or 38 and the screens were down for that section. I decided to guess at 38 and proceeded through security but when I got to the gate the screens were still not working. After half an hour of figuring out what to do, with no staff to ask but with a lot of time to kill, I decided to leave that section even though I knew I'd have to go through security again. I stared at the screens for another ten minutes and when they came back up it turned out I'd been at the correct gate. Back through security I went and this time I got to go through the naked scanner, yay! It was at this point that I decided to look at my boarding pass and noticed my gate number was on there, I'm an idiot. There was quite an interesting atmosphere as more people started arriving at the gate. Half of the Virgin flights to London had already been cancelled that day and there were rumours going around that we were going to be heavily delayed. One woman was on the phone for half an hour having a half English/half foreign conversation which amused me for a bit. At one point I went to the toilet and there was a muscle-bound security guard coming out as I went in, he was whistling the A-Team theme music so I joined in, we were the coolest dudes in the airport at that very moment. There were two delays to the flight but in the end we only left an hour later than scheduled. The highlight of the flight was at the beginning where I read the safety booklet because it contained some rather funny cartoons. Other than that it was a very uneventful flight home, I watched Toy Story 3, Buried and a bit of Monsters.

THE END... until next time.

An Englishman In New York... again: Part 2

Day 89 (Monday Dec 20th) 
"I do believe you almost collided with that vehicle"

As per usual I got up at midday and again I tried figuring out what was going on with the Pittsburgh posse. I wasn't sure when I'd be meeting them so I headed downtown and went for Korean food at a place that Suzy had found online. I actually had to wait ten minutes before I could be seated because it was that busy, I suppose it was lunchtime. I ordered something which I thought was vegetarian but the woman brought me a fish as a starter. I told her I was vegetarian and she exchanged the fish for some vegetable things. On the table was a bubbling bowl of tofu soup and lots of little bowls containing different vegetables and rice. For $10 it was a lot of food and I didn't manage to eat it all, I think the hangover had something to do with that too.

After a quick chat with a stranger in the queue for the toilet I headed to the New York Public Library. I'd been here before but I hadn't ventured inside, mainly because I simply didn't have the confidence to enter a building where my only reason was to take photos and videos of where Ghostbusters was filmed. I spent about an hour walking around the building, getting lost, getting found and taking photos in rooms that had signs saying "no photography allowed". When I came out of the library I was greeted by a homeless looking guy standing on the steps singing 'Time Of My Life'.

I walked up 5th Avenue and checked out Rockafeller Plaza, it was heaving because they now had the Christmas tree up. When I reached Central Park I got some photos of the bridge where the pigeon lady was in Home Alone 2. There was a bloke dressed as Big Bird wandering around the south end of the park and taking photos with people, then asking them for money. I got a text from Lacey saying they were on their way into Manhattan so I headed to Grand Central to meet up with them. There was a group of women in Grand Central singing Christmas songs with satirical lyrics, there was a guy trying to move them on but he was failing miserably. Lacey texted saying they were still quite far away so I headed back to the Plaza Hotel which was also used as a filming location in Home Alone 2. I decided to go inside, again something I didn't have the confidence to do the first time I was in New York. There were lots of people wandering around inside so I wasn't too worried about seeming out of place. I was hanging around near reception for about an hour and then I wandered down to the lower floors where they had some shops and some really nice restrooms. At one point I overheard a family asking one of the staff about Home Alone and he led them into another room to show them exactly where some of it was filmed.... I followed. Something I noticed at the hotel was an unusual amount of handshaking and tipping. Those porters must be making a fortune!

It was about 8pm when the Pittsburgh people arrived. They'd had quite a day chasing after Lacey's car which had seen them venture to Harlem and Jersey. It was all kind of sorted out except Lacey had to stay an extra day but my cousin was kind enough to agree to Lacey staying the night at their apartment. Lacey's friends needed to get home that night and Lacey actually had a friend on his way to New York to drive the guys home. After a quick visit to Times Square we headed to the Port Authority in the hope they might be able to get a free bus ticket, something they sometimes offer to stranded travellers. Unfortunately there was no way we could have got that sorted in such a short space of time so Lacey told her friend to keep driving. We went for food in a weird fast food place where the food was slow but the music was amazing. We had a few hours to kill so around midnight we headed south and had a walk around Wall Street, then we decided to do the Staten Island ferry round trip. We didn't get back to Manhattan until about 3am and we immediately got the subway back up to midtown to meet Lacey's friend. It was his first time driving in New York but he agreed to drive Lacey and I up to my cousin's place........ big mistake.

I tried to direct him but the one way system confused us a bit and some roadworks totally three us off and caused us to run a red light and almost get crashed into. A few seconds later we heard a police siren and we were pulled over. The cop said "You almost got f%ckin' ploughed!" and he wasn't happy with the fact there was one too many people in the car. He took a long time back at his car and then proceeded to give Lacey's friend a ticket for almost $200 for having too many people in the car. He let us off with running the red light otherwise it would have been a total fine of about $400.

We finally made it back to the apartment at about 4am and said our good byes. I was pretty hungry so we stopped at the 7/11 and I got some veggie tofu noodles. Once again I struggled to remember which apartment it was and when we finally got up there Lacey realised she'd lost her phone. We hoped she'd left it in the car and after eating we went to bed.

An Englishman In New York... again: Part 1

Day 87 (Saturday Dec 18th)  

"Mrs Claus has positively identified the kidnappers as Martians"

I got a couple of hours sleep and was woken by my alarm at 5.15am. Vanessa drove me to the airport and I got my flight at 7.30am. I had a four hour layover in Denver and other than having a cheap burrito I did absolutely nothing. I arrived at LaGuardia in New York at about 8pm and got a bus through Queens, across to Manhattan and got off at 125th St. where I got the subway down to 86th. I grabbed some food at Subway and then walked to Suzy and Mike's apartment. I'd planned on surprising them but I couldn't remember which one their apartment was so I called Mike who said they were actually at a restaurant around the corner. I walked there, they introduced me to some of the staff (including a pretty waitress called Sarah) and then bought me a beer. We were there for less than an hour catching up and then we went back to the apartment where I fell asleep watching the 'Santa Claus Conquers The Martians' episode of MST3K.

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Day 88 (Sunday Dec 19th)
"The Bitchin'mobile made it all the way to Manhattan and then died"

I woke up around midday and spent most of the afternoon trying to figure out what was going on with Lacey. She was driving from Pittsburgh with a few friends to spend a couple of days in New York but I couldn't get a clear idea of where she was or when she was arriving. Eventually I got a call from her saying that her car had broken down and she needed rescuing. I went down to where they were parked to help them figure out what to do. I really wasn't much help because I've got no idea what to do when a car breaks down, let alone a car breaking down in Manhattan. They managed to find a company to tow the car to a repair shop but when the guy turned up things seemed generally odd. Once he'd taken the car he just said they'd call the next day. Lacey was very worried and thought she'd never seen her car again.

Everyone was hungry and I sort of remembered where there was a Chipotle so we spent half an hour finding that. I had my usual lovely veggie burrito but Lacey's friend Ally wasn't happy with the quality of the chicken... I've never eaten their meat so I'm taking no responsibility for suggesting Chipotle. Nobody was really in a good mood so we decided to find their hotel in Queens. We got to Queens with no problem but it turned out the station was about a half hour walk from the hotel. I stayed with them at the hotel for a little bit and then headed back to Manahattan before midnight.

I'd decided to pop my head into the Irish pub called Gael's that I'd been to three months previous and that if there was someone there I knew then I'd stay for one drink. It turned out Aiden, the bearded Scotsman, was working there now, he'd been working at the Scottish bar when I was last in New York but had been fired in strange circumstances a couple of days after I'd met him. We chatted for a while about what had happened three months, how all the other bar staff that I'd met were doing and we were also chatting with an NYC cop about various current affairs. Six pints of Belhaven IPA later and I stumbled back to the apartment but forgot how to use keys so I had to wake Mike up to help me. Sorry about that...