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.