So...still in New York...what next??

After our night at the theatre we weren't up quite as bright and breezy as we would have hoped, so we made a slightly delayed start to our next day of sightseeing! We armed ourselves up with a day-pass for the subway and were on our way...to see the lady herself! Yep, time for a quick return trip to Staten Island on the infamous ferry that provides most visitors to NY with their views of the Statue of Liberty. Like the majority of people on the ferry, we did a straight return trip, sorry Staten Island, I'm sure you're lovely and everything...but....next time maybe! The ferry trip provides good views of the Statue sat out in the middle of the Hudson River and the city skyline just behind. It wasn't as big as we had maybe imagined, but impressive nonetheless and after taking a few snappy snaps we were off again...in search of some tasty luncheon in Little Italy.

Our subway map got us to the right stop no problemo...and we strode off confidently in what we both felt was the right direction. It was only after a short while had passed and we weren't seeing much either Little or Italian that Nick re-checked the map, and...oh dear...ah...it would seem that we had made a teeny tiny error on exiting the subway station and instead of heading in a NE direction we'd been going SW...oops! Somehow our directions had gone upside down! Darnit...you'd think after 10 months of travel we'd be better at this!?!?

After a quick bite to eat (we still found an Italian place so not all bad!) we mooched off again, this time in the right direction. As it was now getting quite dark we were heading to the Rockefeller Centre to see the big christmas tree, off of Home Alone 2!! It was indeed rather large, in fact, huge, and very prettily covered in coloured lights etc, although there were rather more people around it than in the film when he gets it all to himself, the lies of Hollywood!

We fought through the crowds back to the subway and headed for home, exhausted yet again and planning our last day in New York...and of the whole trip!?!

Yesterday we went a bit further North in Manhattan and went for a stroll in Central Park, which is huuuge! It's lovely, such a nice break from the busy city, and so picturesque. We just so happened to be in the area of the Central Park Zoo so felt it would be rude not to go and take a look! It was quite small but we liked it, although there was no Alex the Lion or Gloria the Hippo (or any of the Madagascar crew!), there were some very funny sea lions who would do anything to be fed a fish! We were watching them for the few minutes before feeding time, and they were absolutely besides themselves with excitement over what they knew was coming, they kept swimming around the tank then launching themselves onto the sides and almost out of it as they craned their necks to see if the keepers were on their way yet! We enjoyed watching them practice their tricks and playing, then off we pottered to see what else was around...

We decided to walk up a bit further along the park to visit the Met (Metropolitan Museum of Art) which was good but we probably didn't really do justice to as after a short time we decided this wasn't quite how we should be spending our last day, we were a bit tired for such a big museum! I did get a nice book from the gift shop though, so that's kind of as good as exploring the full museum right?!?

So after ditching the culture vulture idea, we wandered back into the bright lights of the city, down 5th Avenue past all the amazing shops, and we had a quick look in Bloomingdales, although didn't really explore, we've done quite enough shopping! We walked back through the Times Square area, it really is fab all lit up on a night, although it makes you think about energy costs etc, especially when you look up and the sky constantly has a strange sort of half-light to it from all the light pollution!

We were meant to be meeting up with a uni friend of Nick's and had half-arranged to meet in Greenwich Village but not said exactly where, so as we headed for the subway Nick went to text him...only to find the phone battery had died! Rubbish! So, with no idea where to find him and without his number, we opted to go to Greenwich Village and have a look around on the off-chance (after all, there's only so many people in NY right!?!?) and if we couldn't find him we'd at least get to see the area ourselves! Well, obviously we did not find him, but we did find a nice little restaurant in which to enjoy a tasty steak to top off our time in New York, and indeed our time travelling the world!

Now we are all packed up, I think it is an early Christmas miracle that it all went in ok, and in a few hours we'll be heading to JFK for our flight to Heathrow, which doesn't seem that real yet as we are so used to going to the airport and not going home!! We're hoping JFK is going to leave us with slightly sweeter memories of US airports than we have already, for a country that thinks it has world class customer service it is severely lacking in the aviation industry!

The US has been great, so much more fun than I imagined it would be, and New York has been a great end to our fabulous ten months. As I can't imagine we will feel the need to do a blog from back home (let's just say everything goes fine!!) we'll sign off from NY...and see you all very soon!

Thanks for reading!

Katie and Nick xxx