New York part 1

We got up at 4am to catch the bus to Heathrow. Not so fun.
Our flight was 8 hours long and kinda sucked. We flew with United airlines and they weren't the best airline we'd flown on.
What was amazing though was the view from the window of the plane. As we got close to Canada (you need to fly over Canada to get there) Esther looked out the window and went "Oh, Owen look!". I looked down and discovered that the ocean had frozen over! It was one big sheet of ice with cracks in it where you could see the water. It was great.
Customs in Washington was really easy (even though I still had my departure card from my last trip there still in it), so it meant we had lots of time to get to our flight to New York. That flight we went in what was easily the smallest place I've ever been in. It only seats 60 people.
Our first reactions to New York was a bit fun. We were driven to our hostel and on arrival found fire engines and police in the street and lots of kids hanging around, making the place look really shifty. Turns out there had been a fire in a building nearby and school had just been let out, so all was good in the end.
We went into town and took a good look at Time Square with all it's lights and things. It was a lot bigger than I thought, which was a nice surprise.
We wandered into the Toys R Us store, had a look around in there then went outside again. While we'd been in the store it had gotten very dark, but the lights from all the billboards were so bright that if you didn't look up at the sky you'd never realise it was night. Crazy times.

On our first full day in New York, we got up nice and early for our free breakfast of bagels and jelly. Setting out we first went to the Empire State Building. On the way up we were constantly hounded by people trying to get us to buy maps, go on extra rides, buy a photo of ourselves and blah. It was crazy! All we wanted to do was go up to the roof. Up on the roof though the view was brilliant. Because I live in Sydney, the height of the building didn't phase me so much, but the view from the top was awesome. Esther and I took heaps of photos up there.
Next stop was to CBGB's, and old punk venue that unfortunately got shut down before I got a chance to see it in real life. It's where bands such as The Ramones and Blondie started out. It was sad to see it shut and up for sale. The old sign out the front has even gone.
Next stop was up the street a bit to see a mural painted for Joe Strummer when he died. It was featured in the 'Redemption Song' video clip. That was pretty sad too as he is my favourite musician and he died before I got a chance to see him play. He even toured Australia 6 months before I turned 18 and only played 18+ shows. But yeah, seeing the mural was very sad, but very cool.
Catching the train downtown, we hopped off at the Brooklyn Bridge and went for a walk across it. It was pretty good too and we took lots of photos. We didn't walk all the way across because after getting half way and very cold, we figured that the other half would be the same, so we just walked back.
The World Trade Centre site was the next place we stopped by. It was really strange to see where they stood, especially after seeing them on TV so much. I stood there for quite a while imagining the buildings there and all the events that had happened. Pretty sad stuff, but totally worth going and visiting. We don't have any photos of that, its really just now a construction site as they've taken down all the memorials now.

Today we went on the Staten Island Ferry so we could see The Statue Of Liberty nice and close without having to pay. It was very small, but pretty cool to see with our own eyes. On the way to the ferry we walked via Wall Street and saw the Stock exchange. There was also a man outside it with a VERY big gun incase someone tried to attack the building. Crazy stuff.
After a long adventure that involved getting Library Cards for the New York State Library, we met up with all of Esther's American friends that she made in Manchester who were all on exchange too. There was Kevin from Boston, Sarah from South Dakota and Jon from upstate NY. We ended up in Time Square again looking in all the different shops such as the M&M's shop, Hershey's Chocolates Shop, the Virgin Megastore and other assorted places.
Sarah had gotten us all tickets to see a Broadway Stand Up Comedy show. We turned up at the place got seated and sat through the most unfunny comedians I've ever heard. The host even tried to have a go at me because I wasn't laughing, and when he got no response from me got even more annoyed, so that was brilliant. I was pretty bored by the end and didn't like it, but I'm glad I at least went to see something.