This part of the series of me being in America should cover the sections from Baltimore to New York as well as the first day in New York. Unlike the previous parts I am writing all of this in one go so it may be a little more scrambled depending on how much stuff I remember.
17th August 2015
- Even though I made this room a mess it was kind of easy to pack all of my stuff, I have adapted in this Baltimore AirBnB hiding spots for my cash so it became this system where A hundred or so bucks was spread out between 4 different locations, just in case anything happened.
- Finding this bus location was pretty easy so leaving to have half an hour spare was a real ad idea as it meant standing directly in the 85+ sun so it was safe to say that i was already a sweaty mess by the time i was on the bus.
- Thank god the bus had working AC, i did not even care that the wifi did not work
- Haha so after 50ish minutes of driving the bus decides to break down. Thankfully the driver made it to a rest stop so we all had a place to escape.
- I made my first food mistake of the trip and it was getting a triple stacked burger at Wendys. I finished it but blegh tht was so much. The real trip through America has begun!
- The bus still had its AC running but i figured it would be better to sit outside underneath some trees while we wait (it was a 2 hour wait)
- So the second bus turned up but this one had working WiFi, I guess it was a good enough swap?
- I tried to start reading The Stand by Stephen King but I have this incredibly bad trait that I built up on the work bus where when im holding a book it almost becomes Pavlovian to start snoozing. I fell asleep like three times on that bus accidentally and almost dropped my phone once
- FINALLY I made it, and just like arriving at Washington D.C. I have no time to look around and I rather need to go straight to this guys house.
- The path trains are all air conditioned as well. It took an age to find this actual subway door but once I did it was an easy straight journey to Jersey City.
- The taxi driver was telling me that Jersey City is completely getting renovated, and you can see it, I would suggest it if you have time around New York to at least look around the Grove Street area.
- Finally settled in and this Air BnB guy is super nice and welcoming, it seems so far I am completely lucking out with nice guys. He is also a pretty cool artist and you can find his work at stephencimini.com. Naturally being an Artist he has decorated his house awesomely as well and it feels like a real treat to stay here, all for around £25 a night.
- Not happy with the lack of drinking I have done so far I decided to expore Jersey City and go through a few places
- Mcginley Square Pub was the first stop where I had a Rolling rock. Rolling Rock is pretty generic but whatever, the bar was cool but empty.
- After a 30ish minute walk down to Grove Street along the way I had to go to the toilet so I jumped into a random sports bar where I had a pint of Guinness. Guinness over here i the same as it is in the UK which is interesting as it made it safely across the ocean
- After that I moved on to the Barcade where a lot of the arcade machine shots will be from. Its cool to see these machines are still 25 cents a play. Also I had knockwurst there which was basically just a hot dog but with a nicer sausage and some shredded lettuce which i mistook for cheese.
- I proceeded to get pretty drunk at Barcade having quite a few drinks there. I had planned on going to lucky 7s but it appeared they had closed early due to it being a slow monday (there were only 4 or so people in Barcade.
- At least Barcade stayed open until 1:30ish but at this point im not going to lie, after an Uber I don’t remember how I got back to the house. I woke up a few times in the morning but could not deal with it and went back to bed until i realised it was almost 11:30
18th August 2015
- Waking up in a hungover drunken haze is bad enough until you realize you have already wasted a half of your only 2 days of sightseeing time in New York City.
- After rushing a plan as best as I could extremely hungover I decided to head off and BLEGH is it hot outside. This guy loves to blast the AC on constantly so its really crazy to feel teh difference when you get outside
- my plan mostly revolved around Finding Nintendo World and the Rockefeller center so I can go to the observation area and get some sweet shots
- Leaving 33rd street theres Bryant Park which is a nice outdoor area of green and a space which seems to be used for performances
- A lot of these places have really cool architecture so in the photo album you will probably see a lot of random ubilding shots (there is also one where a guy walked past at the perfect time)
- I made it to Times Square and I just had to go into the footlocker because shoes would be a great buy. American shoes are so cheap (excluding the Nikes) there were some sweet ass America themed pumas but sadly they didn’t stock anything in size 8.
- What is this madness, I go to the NHL reebok store and there are some sweet Red Wings shoes but the smallest size they have is a 9 and a half! Dammit America, people with small feet need shoes too
- In Footlocker and the reebok store I ended up just buying hats, because you can also never have enough hats.
- From Times Square my plan was to move on to Nintendo World and found Five guys and figure it would be rude to not go in (not to mention it would be the first food that I actually consume today). I kind of like Five Guys approach of asking you what you want in your burger, but I feel its too much for what you are actually getting
- Leaving Five Guys I find that Nintendo World was right opposite the place, oops. Sadly they dont have any yarnmiibos of Yohi which is a shame but they do have every single Amiibo created so far in a glass case, almost as if they knew that shit would be rare.
- Upstairs there was a cool Splatoon exhibit with some concept sketches and drawings, this part was actually really cool to look at (pictures attached in the album)
- I was about to buy some 3ds games and stuff and then realised Nintendo region locks shit, come on Nintendo, sort your region shit out.
- Just down the street Rockefeller center is located and it is HUGE, like there is so much space in it not only for a concourse of shops but workers as well. Its crazy to see how big a building like that is, not to mention everything around you just constantly towers over you in NYC. There is nothing really like that in the UK
- While I wait to go to the top of this tower I have some time so I also went to St. Patricks catheral which is really quite a superb place.
- Going through this observation business thing takes an aaaaage, turns out they sneak in some history about the building as well to hide how much you are waiting. The views were pretty cool, I liked trying to get shots to see how far up you were in scale of cars down below. The staff I noticed are all super nice, which I thought would be rare considering they are facing the public constantly all the time. Honestly I was pretty worried that I did not have vertigo or any problem like that kick in as I am not the best person dealing with heights but thankfully they distracted me enough with the elevator ride and flashy lights with projectors jammed onto the roof of the elevator, the ride up there was probably the best thing out of it all.
- A friend from the wedding told me to go to a place called Jackson Hole for a great burger and boy did he not steer me wrong. The place is nicely themed like a western bar from Wyoming and they make a huuuge 7 ounce burger which puts that Five Guys thing to shame, all for near enough the same price. It was so big I was barely able to finish eating three quarters of it.
- Suddenly out of nowhere it became night time but that was because I had been casually walking around NYC, I strongly suggest if you do visit, just walk everywhere because its much more fun to do so where you will casually stumble into places like the Waldorf Astoria or the Helmseley building. Even at night it didn’t really get that seedy. It seemed safe to walk through still.
- Boy it seems like every second place through New York is an Irish pub, and then the other building separating the pubs is a form of asian food. It’s really weird to see all these Irish pubs everywhere, In the UK which is not far at all from Ireland there is not many irish pubs at all. My guess is because when you go in it most likely just looks like a standard British pub anyway.
- OHGOD so there is a regular at the Journal Square station in Jersey City who I think has multiple personality disorder or something but he is constantly screaming and shouting. It really didn’t help that near the house I had to wait a long ass time to cross a road and I could hear him from a distance as if he was following me home or something. I started to quicken my pace.
- Time to rest with some Strawberry Mikes Hard Lemonade
I feel like even though I only started my NYC sightseeing at around 2pm I managed to fit quite a bit in even though it was only Midtown. The plan for tomorrow will be the financial district, Whitney museum, the Highline, the Brooklyn Museum and whatever else I may find (hopefully a bar or two). The net post should cover that and my travels to Washington, if they are somewhat uneventful I may jam in my travels in Washington at the same time.
Click the images to get through to the Imgur Album if you dont want to click the left right buttons on this window thing that appears.
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