Day 19 - New York Tour

Getting into our freshly cleaned clothes, we got ready and headed out to Dunkin donuts/Taco Bell. It was probably a bit too early for Taco Bell, but its never too early for coffee and donuts. Chatting to one of my workmates who has never had a Krispy Kreme before, I described the taste and texture of a KK to him because he was wondering what the fuss it. Apparently Dunkin donuts have the same donuts as KK based on my description. The only thing is I'm not a huge fan of sweet things for breakfast. The plan was we would order a sausage and cheese crossiant with a coffee meal, two donuts with a coffee meal, and an extra bagel. This is because we both wanted a donut, but we also wanted our crossiant and bagel respectively. Simple order you think? This is what happens after queueing up for 15mins

Old Dude(OD): Hi can I take your order
*both of us step up to his register*
Moishii: Can I get the two donut meal, the sausage crossiant meal and a blueberry bagel
OD: And did you want sugar and milk with your coffee?
Moishii: Yes please
Me: And can I also get milk and sugar with my coffee thanks
OD to me: Just a moment.

The OD (who is 50+) then proceeds to bring us 3 coffees, 2 donuts and a bagel but tried to charge us for 3 meals. We then repeated the order to him and he tried to charge us for 2 meals and an extra coffee. We repeated the order AGAIN and this time he charges us for 2 meals and tries to get rid of the bagel which left us with 2 crossiants and 2 coffees. This is when his manager comes along and tries to enter the order into the register again based on what OD tells him. We then get charged for 3 coffees, 2 donuts and a crossiant. This is when we start yelling at the guy that they've totally fucked up our order and we had to repeat it again. And this time, with all the food on the counter, we even had to pack our own meal. They finally got the order right but tried to screw us over with the change. We're practically ready to strangle the guy when we get out money and storm off to have our breakfast which involved processed meat, processed cheese, food colouring and piss weak coffee. I took one sip of my coffee and yelled "THIS TASTES LIKE SHIT!" and chucked it in the bin.

We promptly leave the damn place and hopped on the subway. The first stop is the Statue of Liberty. To get there, we had to get to the wharf to catch a ferry. 2 stops away, we suddenly hear a message over the PA, that if we wanted to get off at the wharf, we had to be the first 4 carriages because the platform isn't long enough for the whole subway. We quickly jump off and race to the front of the subway before almost getting our heads slammed by the doors. We pull into the subway to notice that theres a 1m gap between the subway and the platform. Not only is the platform too short, its also too far from the subway. Luckily they had built a moving platform that extended out towards the subway. I was terrified that I was going to miss the platform and end up crushed in between.

We walk towards the wharf in search of a bookstore where we pick up our tickets (Thanks to the NY Pass, we get to jump the queue). On the way I see a statue of a huge eagle in the park and commented on how I wanted a photo. I get screamed at saying we'll miss the ferry and got dragged out of the park. We see a huge line for the ferry and we made a mad dash for it hoping to get on before it leaves. We run into the departure "tent" only to see about 150 people infront of us waiting to be security checked. Theres no way we would get onto the ferry. Now I understand a security check on a plane, but for a ferry???? We practically get body searched and my watch ripped off my arm to stop the metal detector going off. We climb onto the next ferry and get to the roof. Based on the where the Statue of Liberty is located, we stood on one side of the ferry knowing that it would be the side to pull up closest to the statue. Whilst waiting for the ferry to depart, we spotted this:

4 Kids to a pram.....lets hope for their figures sake, that they are babysitters

We enjoy the warm sun and the light sea breeze, taking photos with the Statue of Liberty in the background. As we neared the Statue of Liberty, everyone jumped out of their seats trying to get photos. I guarded our precious spot by the railing and was ready to throw anyone overboard should they try to deny us of our glorious spot. I think we took about 40 photos of us and the Statue of Liberty. As we went around, we just went nuts with the camera and got photos from all angles.

We even got a back shot

We get off and decided to move away from the crowd who were stampeding towards the base of the Statue of Liberty. We went around the back of the island and took some great scenic shots of the New York skyline.



By the time we got to the base of the statue, most of the people had moved on after taking their happy snaps. Of course, we go nuts with the camera again. This was when it truely hit us. We're in New York. And we're at the base of the Statue of Liberty. We wanted a photo together to remember this moment so we asked this old American guy who was taking their friends around, to take a photo for us. This whole Americans are stupid concept.......well.....I'm not going to say anything, but you can make a decision yourself. Here we were, standing at the base of one of the most recognised icons in the world. The one place that every person visits when they are in New York for their first time. The Statue with great historic importance and represents freedom and liberty for all people, not just Americans. Now let me ask you a question. If someone had asked you to help them take a photo whilst they were standing infront of something so grand and beautiful, someone who probably came for the same reasons as you, how would you take their photo? Like this!?


Come on, FFS. I didn't fly all the way around the world to get a photo of us and a block of cement!! What the hell were you thinking you old fart? But then what was I thinking in asking an old guy who can't even bend his knees without arthritis kicking in.

We moved on and asked a young chick to take our photos instead. Without even have to specify, she immediately bent down so should could capture the entire Statue in the background...... Obviously they weren't locals.


Feeling better after getting some decent photos, we headed back to the Ferry. The next stop is Ellis Island. This is where all immigrants had to stop before they were let into New York and they keep the records to this day. Considering neither of us had relatives who ever had to go through that process, we decided to skip it and move on. Since we had time left, I dragged Moishii back to the park and grabbed a photo of the eagle. As we left, we realised that we had no idea what the statue was for. I assumed it was some war memorial thing.

That damn eagle

As we were leaving the park, we noticed a whole bunch of stalls set up, all of them selling prints, photos, water paintings and drawins of New York. We stopped at each stall, arguing whether we should buy anything, comment on how much we loved every photo/print/painting then deciding not to buy. I think we pissed a few of them off.

Next stop was Ground Zero. We caught a subway to a station close to Ground Zero. That is because the subway station for the World Trade Center was destroyed during the attack. We get off at some station and find ourselves hopeless lost as there are no street signs anywhere. We pull out the map and start heading in the direction we think Ground Zero was at. This is when we notice 2 asian chicks following us. They must've seen us pull out the map and assumed we worked out how to get there. We start walking and Moishii checks the map and insists we're going in the wrong direction. So we head back in the opposite direction with the 2 chicks following us. I then grabbed the map and realised that we were heading in the wrong direction! Doesn't this sound alot like Rhodes? We walk back in the original direction we were headed, and at this point, the 2 chicks must've thought we were complete morons and decided to ignore us and head in the opposite direction. HA! Screwed you over you biatches! MAUahAUaha 5mins later, we turn the corner to find ourselves at Ground Zero. The whole are had been fenced off and there is a huge gaping hole where the Twin Towers used to stand. The Twin Towers must have been breathtaking in size. The photo does not do it justice, but the space it used to occupy, took up about 4 blocks each way.

Ground Zero

It was Sept 12th when we visited Ground Zero, and all the memorial decorations were still up from the day before. You wouldn't have known that you were standing in the middle of the bustling city of New York. Everyone around you were solemn and silent, each dealing with their own grief of what has been lost. Even for us, who were luckly enough not to have known anyone affected by the attacks, felt the grief of the people around us. And the most despicable thing? There were a bunch of people who went around trying to sell photos of the day of the attack. Images of the aircraft hitting the towers, of towers collapsing, of death and destruction and of the grief people suffered afterwards. These people were trying to make money out of something as horrible as this. I ended up screaming at a woman who tried to get me to buy "souvenier photos".

Feeling down, we decided to move on. We tried to look for a subway that would take us to the Soup Nazi for a snack and we ended up at the Century 21 department store where we would get a free gift with any purchase (plus they had toilets). We knew we wanted to buy some DVDs to take back to Australia since they haven't release Will & Grace yet. We walk in and asked a woman where is the DVD department. she tells me its around the corner. We get there and what do we see? spindles of blank DVDs. What the hell? How is that a DVD department? We storm out of there without buying anything.

We managed to catch a subway only a few blocks from the Soup Nazi. We walk our way up there and find out that its closed! NoOOooOoOOOoo!!! Its a monday and they're still not open! The chances aren't looking in for us. It looks like we're going to have to leave New York without trying the Soup Nazi's soup. We walk around the corner and spot a cafe, we scan the menu for any soup dishes. This is when we spot Wendy's next to it. The American Wendy's is totally different from the Australian Wendys. Wendy's is a burger joint where the meat patties are square (Because at Wendy's, they don't cut corners) and they serve Chillis in a tub. This is the chain of restaurant with the whole finger in the chilli scandal. (Of course I didn't remember this at the time, otherwise we wouldn't have eaten there knowing our luck......). Thinking we weren't that hungry, we can just get a light snack, maybe a cheese burger each. As we wait in line, we see the menu and photos, and with each photo we see, we go from "I think I'll just get a Jnr cheeseburger" to "I might get the cheeseburger meal" to "Ooooh I like the look of the Single Classic burger meal" to "OMG! They have a triple cheese burger meal!!". We ended up arguing over which burgers we should order, and we were tossing up between a double cheese burger meal, and a bacon burger meal or a spicy chicken burger meal. We decided that we should try their square burgers since its what they are famous for. This took a good 5 minutes to decide what burger we wanted. Now we had to choose the sides. They have a range of sides you can choose to go with your meal. Again we started arguing over whether we should get the chilli, or the good old fashioned fries, or go healthy and have a salad. We decided to screw our health and go with the fries. Now remember, we were only after a snack. We get to the register and order our meals (for some reason we both wanted a large meal for our snack), the woman asks us if we wanted to "biggie" our meal. Without thinking, Moishii took up their offer. This is when we spot someone with a large cup of soft serve and we ordered that as well since we didn't want to line up again. When we finally got our meal.......this is what we got.....

The two exploding cups on the right is ice cream

So much for a snack hey? Moishii's biggie meal came with a 1L tub of coke and enough fries to feed a family. We barely finished our burgers, got through about 1/2 of our fries, had 2 spoons of the soft serve and basically chucked it. I'm just glad that I stuck with a Large rather than a biggie! Feeling stuffed, we decided to walk it off to Broadway. I was severly running out of memory on my camera, so we stopped by a number of electronics store to get quotes. They were trying to charge me $140 per Gig. I can get it for $100 on ebay! So much for cheap electronics in the US.

As we walked towards the NBC studios, we happened to walk past the David Letterman show and noticed that they were filming something in the back streets. We hung around for about 10mins and they still hadn't started filming. It was supposed to be some tennis sketch.

Crowds lining up for the show

We moved on and eventually found ourselves at NBC studios. We walk in and find an NBC memorabilia store. Moishii practically shoves me onto the floor and stampedes over me to get to the shelf of Will & Grace DVDs. I tackle him and make him put everything back. There was no way we were carrying around bags of DVDs, Tshirts and Keyrings! We got to the counter and signed up for the NBC tour and the Rockefeller Centre tour.

I'm exhausted from walking at this stage and managed to find a bench in the store. I plonk myself on the bench and start whinging about how tired I am and I can't believe we're going to spend the next 2 hours doing a walking tour. This is when a girl asks us if we're doing the Rockefeller Center tour. the reason for asking? she heard us bitch about how tired we were and knew that we must be doing the tour as well. The tour guide eventually shows up and gives us a wireless headphone set which saves her having to scream over the crowds. The only bad thing is, it looks like we were following a crazy woman who was talking to herself. Plus we had a 80y.o. woman on the tour who couldn't walk and we ended up waiting most of the time. The tour was a real eye opener to the history, art and architecture behind the Rockfeller Centers. If I start explaining, this entry will be longer than all of my Mykonos entries combined. So google it up if you want. But here are some photos we took during the walking tour.

Each building entrance has a unique artwork

We make our way back to the NBC store, just in time to join the last NBC studio tours for the day. They wouldn't let us take photos of the sets, but we managed to see the Saturday Night Live set, a few of the other talkshow sets, and we eventually ended up in some news set. We were standing in the middle of the set, looking around and how everything is set up whilst the guy gave us an explaination on how things work, how they make the studio look bigger, people looking shorter etc etc. Meanwhile, I was freezing my arse off. I had goosebumps on my arms and my nose was starting to run. This is when the guy turns to me and asked me if I'm cold. You think? I'm practically glued to Moishii trying to get some body heat off him before I die of pneumonia! We quickly leave the set and run into their green room set. This is where they sometimes do the news and flash the weather charts on the green screen. They asked for a volunteer and I immediately volunteer Moishii. This is when the guy signalled that I could pull my camera out if I wanted to. Here are some shots of Moishii getting his arms all tangled trying to work off a monitor.



The tour winds up and I find myself at the NBC candy store where I went nuts buying Jelly Bellys. I even found a model of the Statue of Liberty they made out of Jelly Bellys! And a whole wall of MnMs!!!



I finalise my purchase and go downstairs looking for Moishii who had his arm full of DVDs. All of a sudden Moishii spins me around and yells that I should do my hair like her. Who's her? This is "Her".


This is when he ends up laughing for 5 minutes and makes me take a photo of the chick. Feeling better now that we've shopped, we sit outside the store eating sugar and laughing at the chick more. The plan was to go back to the hotel, dump all the crap we've bought, shower and then come back out to Hooters for dinner and call it an early night. I think we laid down for a maximum of 10mins in the hotel before we headed back out. We caught a subway back towards Hooters, stopping at another electronics store. This is when I find out that the guy had a few memory sticks for $85 as opposed to the $140. I wanted to buy the memory stick then and there, and he kept trying to sell me the $140 one. When I insisted that I wanted the $85 one, he told me that its a crap brand and may not work. The thing is, I've used the exact memory stick for over a year and I haven't had any problems and I told him so. He then tells me he's all sold out and kicks me out of the store. WTF? Fine with me. I walk to another store and ask if he had the same brand of memory stick and how much. Instead of telling me, he asks me how much I've seen it for. I replied "$80". What does the guy say? "Thats a very good price, if you can find it for that price, then I would buy it". He then waves me out of the store. WTF?? Don't you people want business? I give up and walk to Hooters.

This is when we find out that neither of us really wanted to go to Hooters. I was only going because I thought Moishii wanted to see chicks in skimpy clothes and big boobs serve us. He's been before and thought I wanted to see chicks in skimpy clothes and big boobs serve us. We were already at the door and was too tired to care. As we were walking in, I noticed that most people were eating these deep fried battered chicken wings and my mouth started to water. We sit down and scan the menu.......

Me: I'm going to get the clam chowder as an entree. And I'm going to get the chicken wings.
Moishii: Well if you're getting the chicken wings, I want chicken wings as well?
Me: Well should we get 20 pieces? (I was going to order 10 pieces for myself since it was the smallest number they come in)
Moishii: Yeh but is that enough?
Me: Well did you want to get the fries?
Moishii: Yeh that sounds good
Me: But I'm getting the clam chowder as well.
Moishii: Thats ok, I'm going to order a half salad. I feel like a half salad.
Me: Half salad? Whats a half salad?
Moishii: Half a salad? Entree size?

The woman takes our order and asks us what sauce we wanted with the wings. BBQ, mild, medium or hot. We settle for the mild chilli sauce. The food comes and this is what we get.......

The Healthy 1/2 salad.....

What the hell were we doing thinking we could eat 20 chicken wings between us!? Normal chicken wings yes, but these are genetically modified monster chicken wings that has doubled their double size by being deep fried battered coating. To make things worse, we noticed that we were missing our dipping sauce. Thinking the sauce would make it easier for us to finish the food, we flag the waitress down.

Me: Hi, we're missing the sauce for the chicken wings?
Her: Oh, the sauce should already be on there
*I start poking the pile of chicken wings thinking the bowl of sauce was at the bottom*
Me: I don't think so.....theres no sauce here

The waitress then tilts the plate and points to a drop of oil on the plate "Thats the sauce there"

You may need to enlarge the photo

What the hell? We get ONE DROP of sauce!?!? She must've seen the look on our face because she quickly explained that the sauce is the chilli oil that was poured onto the plate of DEEP FRIED BATTERED WINGS. And she could add more oil to the wings if we liked. We quickly said "No no!! Its ok!! Its fine!!". She kept insisting on taking the plate back and pouring more oil onto the heart attack chicken wings. After she left, we quickly whipped out the camera to take a photo of the sauce and then laughed for a good 5 minutes before trying to make a dent in the plate of wings. The salad also barely got touched. If thats the size of a half salad, I'll be scared to see the full sized salad. The dressing it came with was probably creamier and fattier than the wings itself.

All of a sudden, about 30 asian guys walk into the place and sits all around me. Usually I would start drooling at the sight of a men buffet, but with the amount of wings infront of me, I was quickly losing my appetite. The waitress then comes out with a tray of 50 wings and tries to put it onto our table before we start screaming that its not ours! The 40 odd asian guys then jumped the waitress to claim their tray of wings. Between the 30 of them, they order close to 400 wings. We tried our best and this is all we could manage.....


Doesn't help that we had about 1.5L of drinks each.....


Feeling bloated, we planned to walk back to the hotel (only about 15blocks). We went into Hooters when the sun was going down, and when we came out, Broadway had come to life. All the lights and nightlife was just dazzling. We would stop in the middle of the street and take photos of everything around us, move another 10m and pull our cameras out again. Its true that NY comes to life at night.









By the time we were done taking photos, it was 8:30 already. We had walked for 10.5hrs and we were exhausted, tossing up between catching a cab or walking off the wings (Not that it would help), we noticed that Virgin music was still open. We thought, maybe just a quick browse.

We walked through the door and within 15secs, I get shoved aside because someone spotted a sales rack. I then noticed the TV series sales rack and stampeded over the inconsiderate person who got into my way. This is when we spot a huge sign saying that the DVD department was downstairs. We race down the escalators, suddenly full of energy. We start grabbing DVDs left right and centre. We each wanted a copy of The Nanny, Moishii started grabbing Golden Girls, Will and Grace and random movies. He was debating over whether he should buy Ellen as well, but eventually got convinced by me to get it later. We then spot a huge basket of cheap DVDs. There are 2 DVDs packaged together with a huge sign saying $7.99. We grab about 10 DVDs each when for some stupid reason, we decided to clarify with the sales dude because the DVD packs we were holding was saying anything form $25-40. The guy then realises that the wrong sign was put up and we quickly throw everything back down like it was the plague or something.

By the time we paid, we had spent an hour in there. We drag our tired bodies back to the hotel and fall into bed, unable to move. I then pull all my DVDs out and started going through them. Moishii grabs my copy of "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (Don't ask me why I didn't just buy it in Australia) and started screaming at me. Saying why did I buy "The Breakfast Club". Its "Breakfast at Tiffany's" you nong!! We then start arguing about why did I even buy that DVD when it hit me.....

Me: OMG.....I JUST SPENT $150 AUD!!!!!!!!!!!
Moishii: I SPENT $300!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*insert 5min laughing fit*

When we calm down, Moishii suddenly goes:

Moishii: Damn.....I should've bought Ellen.....
Me: Why????
Moishii: Don't know.....but I think I should've bought Ellen......
Me: Did you even LIKE Ellen?
Moishii: I don't know...
Me: Do you even remember what it is about??
Moishii: All I remember was this annoying chick who kept going "Hi Ellen!!!!!!!"

Its probably something you had to be there for.....but for a guy to suddenly sound like he inhaled helium and got kicked in the nuts at the same time whilst screaming "HI ELLEN!!!!!!" caused both of us to have the worst laughing fit to date. I had tears streaming down my face, I was laughing so hard, I literally fell off the bed and couldn't get back up. I ended up face down on the ground, clutching my kidney because I was laughing so hard, it was hurting like I couldn't breath. Some inconsiderate prick decided to film me lying on the ground crying and laughing and hyperventilating all at the same time. I shit you not.....this laughing fit went for 30mins. And even when we had calmed down and went to bed, we laid in bed, in the dark, laughing for another good hour before we fell asleep. It seems like the more tired we are, the worse the laughing fit gets......