Northamptonshire Carers finally removed my details from the internet and stopped using my material. I despise the management and trustees for what they did to me, it was unfair and damn right wicked given there were so many other options open to them but, we live and learn.

Still, forget about that!

New York City

The breakfast at Buddies was awesome, as always. Fred did a brilliant job driving us to Heathrow where we arrived in plenty of time to lounge around, have Starbucks, not buy a pretzel at Pret A Manger (giggle) and started a game of Uno we were not to finish until the journey home! The plane landed on time around 8:20, all went smoothly. Got the train over to the car rental area, Adam didn’t die, he’s getting quite good on trains now. Had a choice of two cars, a Chevy or, something else I can’t remember, we chose the Chevy Equinox.

Amazingly, within 3 hours of landing we had already driven to our hotel, checked in, dumped the luggage and then driven over to Weehawken to get the image you see above of us all standing in front of Manhattan. This would have been made a lot easier has a total idiot not have left his tripod connector at home (me). Adam had the great idea of using the roof of the car which was the only sensible thing to do but also trial and error seeing as I couldn’t actually line up the shot or set focus manually meaning it took an age to get OK pictures! Poor Daisy was desperate for a pee too! Adam might possibly have been a little nervous with this being his first drive of a left hand drive car, being around the roads of New Jersey won’t have helped that at all but, he’s an amazingly good driver anyway so he did a great job.

Adam brought his little friend along, he was too precious to come to all the amazing sights we did (his little friend, not Adam), it would have been fun taking the pictures though.

Our second day, after a healthy breakfast of Sausages, bacon, egg, pancakes, syrup, cereal etc was spent shopping! I personally love shopping with Daisy and Adam, I can totally trust their opinions and they are good and patient with me. Adam may possibly have just spent a little more than anyone else hehe.

I’m not sure who got the record for the most visits to a changing room or time spent there, it’d be a close thing!

Obviously, no visit to the USA is complete without visiting their very own …

IKEA, for the record, is actually not built in the middle of the Interstate as the GPS seemed to think it was which made finding it a little difficult!

By the end of the day it was a damn good job we had a large car the amount of bags we had!

Actually, I can’t remember what day we did what for sure so, as it doesn’t matter to anyone now, I’ll make it up as I go along but Daisy or Adam, feel free to correct it in the comments section! I think shopping was Monday with NYC visit 1 on Tuesday

Anyway, to New York City (Manhattan)

We did some weather research and there was a 20% chance of very light (1-2mm) rain. Well, they fucked that up! Soon after arriving it pissed down hard nearly all day!

The total journey time from the hotel in New Jersey to Battery Park is around an hour. There is a toll to pay to get onto Staten Island (but not off) of $12 and the parking at the terminal is another $7 plus the cost of fuel which, despite how much they complain, isn’t expensive in the US. The ferry runs at least 1 every half hour and often a lot more regularly.

We tried to include some places tourists may not always bother with like movie locations but didn’t have time for many as it was a long walk of at least 8 miles. (in the rain)

One total waste of money but we thought, what the hell, give it a try was, The Museum of Sex, hardly anything in it, not good value for money at all though, some interesting pictures of penis’s on different species.

Obviously, we also had to take shots of the more familiar places too

I’d put my really expensive camera away by this point as the rain was too heavy to risk it.

Another detour over to another familiar building …

One store we missed last time but not this was ‘Original Penguin’ which was mainly remembered by the guy serving us going into an Australian accent to say goodbye because he, like many in NYC, thought we were Aussies!

Our final destination on this day was

Times Square is an amazingly vibrant place, worth the effort to get to and, if anyone is there and at a loss of a place to eat … this is where you go:

If you know the movie ‘Forest Gump’ you will totally understand and appreciate this restaurant, if you don’t know the movie, go anyway, the food is brilliant.

Whilst there we had to do the stores so a little Macy’s, some Disney Store, Toys R Us, M&M World not to forget, Yellow Rat Bastard, look it up on Google.

We did the New York Subway for the first time ever too, it was really not that scary, except when that bloke (with the gold writing on his shorts) came through the connecting doors as we were going along, that was a little scary and we brought our bags that bit closer!

Am going to stop here, will do another blog in a few days with more