Little Australia

A mate of mine from Uralla, Brad, was over for a visit, and he had organised for a group of Uralla people over here to meet up for a drink. So yesterday I caught the train from work to London to meet up with everyone. I had booked a hotel room for the night because it was going to be a big one!

We all met up at a pub in Earls Court where Kate was living (another Uralla person) and had a drink before heading off to the Walkabout in Shepherd's Bush.

Once we were there we all proceeded to drink far too much and listen to some really bad music (two words - Bon and Jovi). Towards the end of the night my cousin, Paul, and his girlfriend turned up. I had not seen him for ages either, so it was nice catching up with all these people.

We left around 2am and walked back to Earls Court (I was staying around the corner in Kensington). Man did I have a hangover this morning!


Brad and Kate


Paul and his girlfriend


All of us!

Brussels

A friend of mine, Melissa, from Canberra recently moved to Brussels to start work with the Australian Embassy there and thought it might be nice to have a mini reunion of all the Canberra people currently living in Europe. So for the past few weeks Melissa has be busy organising for us all to go to Brussels to catch up.

Pat, another Canberra bloke, also few into Heathrow yesterday for a holiday here in Europe, so I met him at the airport before we both boarded our flight to Brussels.

To say Pat looked exhausted when I met up with him would be a bit of an understatement. He had been travelling for over thirty hours and was in need of a good sleep. Luckily our flight to Brussels was on time.

Melissa met us at the airport and we went straight to our hotel where Pat had a nap and Melissa and I walked around. She had just arranged a place to live, but could not move in for a couple of days, so we walked passed that and generally just explored an area of the city that I have not seen before.

We headed back to meet Clem and Saskia who were staying in the same hotel and Cathy, who also lived in Brussels. We let Pat sleep a little longer while Cathy took us to this lovely patisserie near where she lived. The waiter made us order in French, which was interesting, but we all managed to get what we wanted, so it was all okay!

We headed back, got Pat up, had a few drinks and then headed out for some dinner. We then went to a couple of bars before heading to one place called Havana. It was bloody busy inside, and the bouncers just kept letting more and more people in to the point where it was impossible to dance or even move. So we went to leave, but the bouncers stopped us at the door. Apparently the custom in Brussels is to tip the bouncers as you leave a place (well for blokes anyway). So we gave them a couple of euros and got out of there. We then went to a few more bars, before getting back to the hotel around 4am.

The next day Pat, Melissa and I went into the Grote Markt (the centre square) for some food. They had a food market on, so we grabbed some interesting (read not all that nice) food, and sat down and watched the action.

It was then time for me to head out to the airport to fly back. Pat and Melissa were off to Switzerland to do some hiking, while I had to go back to work (I know what I would have rather done!).

New York, Day Five

Today was our last day in New York and it also coincided with the fourth anniversary of the September 11 attacks. We thought there would be so many people that getting to the World Trade Centre site would have been next to impossible, so we watched some of the coverage on television before checking out.

We caught the subway and then walked over to the United Nations site to have a look around. We were actually quite lucky because this was the last week the UN would be open to visitors before the World Summit was due to begin. So we had a coffee in the cafeteria and wrote postcards before booking ourselves onto the tour. Unfortunately we had to wait a bit for the tour which meant this was the only thing we could do for the day before rushing back to the apartment to pick up our bags and then catching the train back to Newark airport.

The tour was pretty cool. Seeing these places of history on television in real life was amazing, and hearing the history and rivalry behind a lot of the daily workings from our guide (who spoke seven languages!) was interesting. I pretty much took over the end of tour question time asking a heap of questions, but then no one else seemed to have any (yes I did give them a chance!).

We then had a quick look in the shop and then headed back to Penn Station for our trip to the airport. We made the train with a few minutes to spare and luckily got to the airport in time. Unfortunately the airport was absolute chaos. First off you had to check in and then line up again to hand over luggage. It was a pretty silly system and took pretty much the entire two hours we had before the plane was due to depart.

After grabbing a quick bite to eat we boarded the plane and returned to sunny old England! For anyone interested New York should be a must see destination! I will definitely be returning.



The Secretariat Building.



General Assembly Building.



View of the City.



The Security Council.



A Statue from Hiroshima (notice the bomb scares on the back).



The General Assembly.



Funky Art!



More Funky Art!

New York, Day Four

Peter kept harping on about how good New York Pizzas were. So once we left the hotel we headed over to some authentic pizza place to try them out (Peter had been there before). It was a dodgy looking place, but seemed to be fairly busy (that could be the Lonely Planet effect though). We went in and saw that the pizzas were so oily and greasy I knew that I would not be able to stomach one. Peter scoffed down two slices (the amount of oil coming out of those slices was amazing), while I sat there and looked on in disgust. To make matters worse he ordered a root beer to go with it (another vile drink).

After he finished we went to get something to eat for me. I thought a sandwich would be in order so we headed over towards Grand Central to see what we could find. Could not really find much (it was a saturday), so I ended up heading downstairs at the station where they had a food court. I ended up getting a ham sandwich (you can see the results below) that must have contained about three pigs. In the end most of the ham had to come off because it was just too salty, and once I did that the sandwich was quite nice!

We then headed back over to the library cause they apparently had a copy of the declaration of independence, but we could not find it anywhere, so we looked at a exhibition of old maps instead. From here we grabbed a juice from Jamba Juice (now I reckon that could be a good pickup joint there, the ratio of women to men was about 5:1!) and sat in a park for a while, before just walking around enjoying the less crowded city.

Next on the agenda was the Metropolitan Museum of Art (or the Met) which was uptown. It is a pretty impressive museum, which would normally take hours and hours to go through, but because it was summer they also opened the roof as a bar, so we looked around the museum for about three hours by which time I had museum fatigue, and headed up onto the roof for a drink and views of the setting sun over the city (highly recommended if you are there at the right time of year).

We caught the subway back to the apartment to work out what we were going to do for dinner. By this time we were both exhausted, so we just wanted something simple that involved no effort. In the end we chose a burger place reasonably close which had an amazing 50 something different types of burgers to choose from (you could even order online for home delivery!). It was a pretty cool place and a good finish to the day!



Would you like some sandwich with your ham?



Rockefeller Centre.



Inside the Met.



View from the roof!

New York, Day Three

The plan for today was to explore Lower Manhattan and then catch the free ferry across to Staten Island. So we caught the subway to Lower Manhattan and basically just walked around.

In this area are all the government buildings, along with Wall Street and the site of the World Trade Centres. We got to see all of them, and the amount of security was absolutely amazing. We were at the World Trade Centre site and we somehow got caught up in a procession being led by Giuliani, Pataki (the New York State Governor) and Bloomberg (Mayor of New York). We were eventually told that it was for family only (being so close to the anniversary of the attack), so we moved out of the way and watched everyone pass.

We also walked by the Woolworth Building, which was pretty cool. There was a sign out the front saying to walk in and look at the lobby, but it must have been out of date because the women on security quickly shooed us away!

We stopped to check out the Stock Exchange and the big gold bull before heading to a deli to grab some lunch. We then headed to the Staten Island ferry terminal for the trip to Staten Island. If you are visiting New York, you really should do this. The trip is free, but you get some pretty good views of Manhattan and Liberty Island (where the Statue is). Once we got to the island we just walked back into the ferry terminal for the return trip.

We then walked for a little longer, got some good views of the Brooklyn Bridge, before catching a subway back up to the Empire State Building. While it is a New York icon, it is a very ugly building. The Chrysler building (finished just before it) is much nicer, but not as famous.

We caught the elevator to the top and basically stayed up there for sunset. It was pretty amazing and I think I got some pretty good photos. Again, if you are ever in New York, schedule your Empire State visit for dusk so you can see the sunset and all the lights in the city!

From here we headed out for a bite to eat before heading back to the hotel.



Little Italy.



Street Scene.



The Court House.



City Hall.



The Woolworth Building.



World Trade Centre Site.



More of the World Trade Centre Site.



Wall Street!



The big bull!



Statue that was originally on the World Trade Centre site.



Brooklyn Bridge.



Lower Manhattan.



Statue of Liberty.



More of Lower Manhattan.



From the top of the Empire State Building.



From the top of the Empire State Building.



From the top of the Empire State Building.



From the top of the Empire State Building.



From the top of the Empire State Building.



From the top of the Empire State Building.



From the top of the Empire State Building.



From the top of the Empire State Building.



From the top of the Empire State Building.



From the top of the Empire State Building.



From the top of the Empire State Building.

New York, Day Two

Picture it - you are in New York, one of the most exciting cities in the world and the person you are travelling with wants to go to the Apple Store - yes that is right, the Apple Store! Luckily is was fairly close to the hotel and it allowed me to check out some more of the Village and also see the SoHo (South of Houston Street) area.

After that we headed up to Grand Central Station which was pretty cool - a lovely old building. Peter said last time him and Jules were there some bloke came up to them and gave them a bit of a tour which sounds alright! I had to settle with having Peter for a guide which was better then nothing I guess...

We then headed over to the New York Public Library and quickly poked our head in before heading up to the David Letterman Studios to pick up our tickets for the taping. Taping was due to start at 4, so after picking up the tickets we had about 30 mins to get back to the hotel, get changed, have something to eat and get back up to the studio (yes we could have planned it better). In the end we had to forego eating and we were late back up to the studio, but it worked out okay because they put us at the front of the line!

Like most studios, the inside was smaller then it looks on tele and it was pretty cold. Some bloke came and told some jokes to get us all going before Dave came out to say hello. Today on his show we were lucky enough to see Jennifer Lopez and a tennis player I had not heard of - James Blake. Both guests were entertaining and the entire show was pretty cool (including Dave's lame unfunny jokes). All in all it took about an hour to tape and I think they whittled it down to about 40 mins when they broadcast it.

From there we headed over to Bloomingdales to check it out. I bought a shirt and Peter gloomily walked around the shop (he could have at least pretended to be interested like I was in the Apple Shop), and then over to Macys. Both were fairly average, especially when compared with Harrods or Selfridges, but everything was so much cheaper which made up for it.

We then headed over to a restaurant near Times Square for a late dinner. Here is a tip, if you are not use to eating big meals like me, you do not need to order entrees (starters for those in the UK) or desserts as the main meals are bloody huge! It makes eating out pretty cheap as well. Because all the staff rely on tips, the service in all the restaurants we went to was excellent! Totally unlike here where you can sit around for about 40 mins waiting to get your table cleared or get the chance to ask someone for the bill!



Inside of Grand Central Station.



Street Scenes.



New York Public Library Steps.



Inside of the Library.



Late Show Studio (again!).



Radio City!



I guess space must be at a premium!

New York, Day One

Having started a new job a couple of days ago (more about that in another post), and them having nothing for me to do, I arranged to take a week off. So yesterday I talked to Peter and we booked a trip to New York! Unfortunately Jules could not come with us.

Anyway, we flew out of Birmingham on Continental for a rather uninspiring flight to Newark airport in New York, before catching the train into Penn Station in the city. From here we walked down to our hotel which was in Greenwich Village. After exhaustive searching and worrying when trying to book it, the hotel turned out to be pretty cool. A one bedroom apartment on Bleeker Street, fairly close to a couple of subway stations giving us easy access to the rest of the city.

Anyway, we dumped our bags, freshened up and walked back uptown to Times Square and from there to Central Park. The city (well just Manhattan, cause I did not get to the other parts) is absolutely fantastic. It has a vibe an energy that seems lacking in a lot of other places.

Oh, I forgot to mention, while looking around in Times Square, a woman from the David Letterman Show came over and asked us if we wanted to attend a taping (which of course we did), so we scored tickets to tomorrows show which sounded pretty cool!

After walking around Central Park, we headed back down fifth avenue (past all the posh shops) back to Times Square (which was pretty cool at night). It was about 8:30pm (or 2:30am British Time), so we were both fairly tired, so after grabbing a bite to eat at Applebees (a chain restaurant), we headed back to hotel to get some sleep.



The Flat Iron Building.



Empire State!



Street Scene.



Times Square.



More Times Square.



The Fuzz....



More Times Square.



Late Show!



Central Park.



Central Park.



Central Park.



The Posh Plaza Hotel.



Times Square by night...



All the pretty lights.