the bad things are that you have to sleep in a room with millions of other people, with no space, in bunk beds, with acrylic blankets and often pretty festy bathrooms. but the good things are that they are (usually) really cheap, often in great locations, and you meet great people such as these...
that's paul, tim and pete, 3 lovely english boys who'd travelled to New York for their friends' wedding. but not just them - the bride, groom and everyone else all travelled from from england, crazy! sounded like they all had a brilliant time.
and that's carly, kellie and paul again - just after he came back from the wedding held at the very swanky rainbow room. carly and kellie were visiting for a few days from florida, kellie has plans to move to ny permanently in a while.
i caught the train along the Hudson river to visit the Dia Gallery at Beacon, its an old biscuit factory converted into a vast gallery space, very serrrious modernist work, absolutely amazing exhibition space. the train ride was great too, beautiful autumn colours
i love train stations in general, but this one relay takes the cake - Grand Central Station - its just breathtaking.
as was the Chrystler building...
had dinner at the famous Katz's Deli, a brilliant Jewish deli/cafe opened in 1888 that serves the best pastrami and pickles around.
here was my corned beef sandwich - was huge - this is only half of it! brett, the pickles are for you haha...!
after your sandwich you can "send a salami to your boy in the army" - this is for real! you can actually get them to send a whole salami to your son/husband/whatever serving in the forces wherever in the world
next day i spent with Martin, lovely dutch guy also staying at the hostel. we walked up through central park and went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
here's Martin in a very familiar pose!
the Met has an absolutely amazing Egyptian collection, so fasctinating and really well displayed.
the Met building also gives a great view over central park to the Manhattan skyline
never get sick of the squirrels, even though they're everywhere! so incredibly cute - here's us trying to coax one close enough for a photo...
then we caught the subway down to lower manhattan island and to the financial district and wall street. this is the NY stock exchange. again, not shy of displaying the flag
this is ground zero, site of the former World Trade Centre towers. its really spooky down there, eerie. there's still just a big hole in the ground, no-one can decide to do with it i think. we went to the memorial exhibition place, which was very moving. it had artifacts and all sorts of things recovered from the site, lots of stories from those involved, films and stuff - but i did wish that the exhibition wasn't so emotive, and that it was left to speak for itself.
at sunset we walked over the Brooklyn bridge and back again, great views back to the lower manhattan skyscrapers...
tbc...
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