I arrived in New York early morning after a gruelling 11 hour Greyhound journey from Toronto after much broken sleep, feeling very tired. The hotel had been pre-booked, so I went straight there and my room was ready for me. I was only staying at this hotel for 3 nights as there was a festifal in NYC that weekend, so accommodation was tight. It would involve a move to the next street 3 days later. It wasn't really a problem though. This time, I knew exactly where to go as I was now familiar with the city, so I walked from Port Authority (bus station) to the hotel, which was only about 10 blocks. It seemed like 100 blocks though in the blazing heat with 15 kilos of baggage on my back!! Later that evening, I left to go and meet Daniel at La Guardia airport, not kknowing what flight he was on or anythiing, only that he was arriving from Chicago. After waiting for 2 hours, I gave up and went back to the hotel, which was a good move as Daniel did not turn up to the hotel until about 3am following what sounded like a horrific journey. I went back to sleep and caught up with the juicy details in the morning. Without going into graphic detail, the week went a lot more smoothly having someone else to talk to and keep me sane. We went to Staten Island one day on the free ferry, went back to 'Ground Zero' (as I love a good horror story!), did a little shopping, good food and lots of beer. On the Sunday, the streets came alive with the Gay Pride parade and the buzz of tens of thousands of people watchiing the commotion. Dissapointiingly, they could have called it a political march and I would have been none the wiser as that's the message that wwas coming across loud and clear from the floats that went by. I now know who John Kerry is though!! I have to say, the British seem to know how to not confuse the messages quite so much. Once bored of the political rally that seemed to mean nothing to either of us, Daniel and I went for a few drinks in South Manhattan. When I say a few, I actually mean quite a lot. We started off in a bar which had an outside part for us to simultaneously drink and smoke freely. The bar had a club attached, so it only seemed fair that we tried that out too. I think that's where it all went a bit hazy as my memory still faulters when I try to think what happened. All I have to remember the evening was a handful of photo's (mostly of me and some random, but very pretty, lady) which I discovered the next day. Usually photo's would jog a memory, but I think we must have been so far gone that to this day it's still a mistery and will remain so. The next morning, after having no clue as to how we found the hotel safely, we stuffed our clothes into our bags and headed into Chinatown to catch our 11am bus into Boston. More interesting tales from Boston... Stephen xxx