NEW YORK CITY
Slept in until 8.30am this morning, very unusual for me!!!! Grabbed a quick cuppa and toast with oily American peanut butter and then made our way to our Subway stop to quickly get an all day pass then catch the train to Grand Central Station to meet up with Chris Neilson, Katie's friend from The AFL Store days who has been working here for the past 18 months or so.
Chris was rapt to see us as he has not seen anyone from home since he left, so there was a lot of catching up to do done over a coffee in a Starbucks on 42nd Street! How's that for doing things the Yankee way! We finally got moving again and made our way through the huge piles of snow the snowploughs had made clearing the streets and footpaths, carefully avoiding the puddles of icey slush that had accumulated at every intersection. Such a bloody mess! It will take ages for it all to melt and drain away - the city has waived all parking fees and the use of meters - there are still hundreds of cars stuck on the streets!
We walked a number of blocks towards Central Park stopping to look into a few stops especially the Apple Store which was packed with people buying all things Granny Smith!!!! Jase got a couple of goodies but as usual I was too tight and kept my dollars in my pocket!
Found a great bar come bistro called Mickey Mantles and had a great lunch with a couple of Stella Artois and some shared entrees including some ripper spicy buffalo wings! The placed was packed and the atmosphere was great!
From there it was across the road and into Central Park, which is covered with half a metre of snow, looking like something out a movie! There were people everywhere, all enjoying the lovely fine day and having fun in the snow and like all the others we jumped straight in and began having a ball! Some of the snow close to the cleared paths was a bit hard and crunchy but the further off the path it was untouched and soft and fluffy just like you imagine it should be and we jumped in it, threw snowballs and made a snowman as well as messing around like kids! We spent an hour or so having fun and then moved on to watch hundreds of people skating on a manmade ice rink, the actual lakes in Central Park are fenced off because the ice is not thick enough to skate on. 
The whole place was in such stark contrast to the last time we were here in 2008, when the temperature hovered above the century and everybody was lying in the park sunbaking! I remember us buying a drink and an icecream (that melted almost instantly) and sitting under the trees bloody near panting with the heat and thinking what a crap place New York was! Even after one day I certainly have a different view of the city, there are still the choking crowds of people that I still hate, but the city is so much cleaner (despite the mounds of melting snow) and it looks much more attractive. 
We left Central Park and wandered down to Times Square where the crowds were wall to wall buying Broadway Show tickets and just sightseeing! Had to fight our way along the sidewalk until we got to Grand Central Station again where we said goodbye to Chris for the time being and then caught our Subway back to Long Island.
Got some things for a snack dinner and then put up our aching feet for a rest! Such a lot of fun today - great to see Chris again and amazing to be able to mess around in so much snow!


THURSDAY 30th

Another lazy morning here in Long Island City, making some brekky, walking about 350 metres to the station and catching the very convenient Subway into 42 Street, where we went straight to Madame Tussauds. But the queue for tickets was about half way down the street and three wide, so we gave that a miss and caught the Subway down to Wall Street for a look at the famed financial area, joining all the rubbernecking tourists doing the same thing.
From there it was over to the Ground Zero site for a look at the re-construction going on. A monstrous new Transit Hub is being built right on the edge of the old site, catering for buses, ferries and thirteen lines of Subway!!!!!!! One of the new towers being built is already at about fifty stories and was having glass fitted, and the other two towers were up to five or six stories each. We walked right around the site and had a look at the Firemans Wall and also at St Pauls Church where some of the rescue effort was centred. There were many people just looking but I sensed quite a few were actually relatives of some of those lost and there were many fresh flowers and tributes along the street. 
The place still has a creepy feel to it, although I reckon that once the three new towers are completed it will lose a lot of its significance which is quite a pity!
Caught the subway back to 42 Street and were happy that a lot of the crowds had thinned out, so we stopped for some lunch, but by the time we came out three tourist coaches had dumped hordes more outside Madame Tussauds and we decided to leave it for now and after stopping at a couple of interesting shops headed for home!
When we got to our stop we walked right down to the waterfront on Long Island Sound where there has been a lot of landscaping been done, getting rid of the very old industry that had been there. The views across the water were sensational! Got some great photos of the sun setting behind Manhattan and threw a few snowballs around and then booked into a waterfront restaurant for New Year's Eve. Also found a bar which we might be able to kick on at after dinner. We are so damn lucky to have lots of stuff just walking distance from the apartment, so even though we are not right in the City we don' t have to go back in there for meals etc.
It was dark by the time we got back and we did a pile of washing and ordered a couple of pizzas from the Food Market across the road and settled in for the night. Bitterly cold outside at this time of night, so we won't be spending too much time outdoors tomorrow night!
There are much bigger crowds in NY than we expected but it new year is a big thing here so it is little wonder there arecso many tourists. A big area around Times Square is closed to traffic tomorrow afternoon, in readiness for the mob - expected to be well over one million! - and we are quite happy not to be going in there!