New York, New York

After a 2 hour delay, resulting in me sitting in the plane out on the DFW runway until my butt went numb, the flight finally took off for New York.

It took a little over 3 hours to get into La Guadia airport in NY. As our plane made the approach for landing, I got treated to a very spectacular night view of the Big Apple. What can I say. It was a unique place. I guess after spending so many months in the open spaces of Dallas, the closely packed clusters of light down below was somewhat a shock to the system. Not only was this a densely populated place, it also stretched for miles and miles in all directions.

Good o' Spikey was in town so we caught up and he gave me a whirlwind tour of NY. He first introduced me to the different gangs in NY - Chinese gang, and the Italian gang.

Oh alright, he was not in the mafia or connected to any gangs as such - I was merely referring to NY's Chinatown and Little Italy. We went to La Bella Farrara for cannolis and coffees (Spike said it makes the best dessert in town and that cannoli WAS good - see bottom right picture).



Then we proceeded pass the NYSE where I posed for a quick photo with Mr. G Washington.


A walk around the block further downtown was the famous Broad Street Bull. I had to wrestle the beast for a photo. Then we were off to Battery park, located almost at the bottom of Manhattan. It was sunset and the view was breath-taking, with lady Liberty standing in the distance holding her forever burning light.



A quick ferry ride on the Stanten Island ferry allowed us to get a beautiful view of the Manhattan skyline at night. At this point, we were getting a bit peckish, so we got some famous NY style pizza.


Now that the stomachs were satisfied, we took a nice stroll back into midtown to see Time Square. It reminded me a bit of a busy intersection right outside of the Shibuya station in Japan. There were plenty of neons of broadway show billboards, ads for new cable shows and of course, the much recognised Cup-A-Soup Noodles and the Coca-Cola signs.

We spent some quality time inside the biggest ToysRUs I have ever seen - complete with its own giant ferries wheels inside! Gosh I couldn't even begin to imagine how crazy kids could get going inside that store.