In ol' New York...

It's bloody amazing how much one can forget in the space of a few days.
I sat here thinking 'I really should update the blog with New York news'! When I thought about it, I couldn't actually remember much of it. Much of it was a blur.

Landed in New York from Miami at the time of 10.30am. I was excited because it meant I could go to the apartment, drop my bags off and have a proper New York lunch. Don't ask me what a New York lunch is but I had a hot dog from a stall in mind.

I waited and waited at the luggage carousel.

I had an uneasy feeling about the luggage because I had arrived late into the airport and my flight from Miami. I actually had a final boarding call and my name shockingly pronnounced over the loudspeaker. I was waiting for a bacon and egg roll while that happened. Off the topic slightly, it was a lousy bacon and egg roll - last time I go to a place that was recommended by Oprah in 2006!! I think it has more to do with the ingredients though - food from the US just doesn't taste as good or as fresh and natural as in Australia.

Back to the carousel - after close to half an hour of waiting, a guard told me to go to the baggage retrieval office. I discovered that my luggage had been put on the 2pm flight from Miami and would not be arriving to New York until about 4.30pm. This meant that I would not be getting my luggage till the next day. Luckily I didn't lose it with all the shopping inside otherwise smoe thief would've been a very happy camper (and eBayer!)

Caught the bus into Manhattan where there was plenty of traffic to poke a stick at. Finally arrived to Grand Central Station and left to my own devices. Since my knowledge of the subway was pretty decent, I made it to the Upper East side (40 E78th Street) to where I would be living for the next 3 nights. I loved the leafy area, the grand brownstone buildings which look like they come off a movie and the fact that it was half a block from Central Park.

I met Barbara, the lady who owns the penthouse I was staying in and shown how to use things like the air con, internet etc. She finally gave me the key and after a quick refreshing shower, I was on my way to stomp around NYC.

The day I arrived it was muggy, sticky, hot and over 30 degrees. It was so hot that a woman fainted in the subway and was cut in half by a train: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1393362/She-cut-half-Horror-Fatoumata-Diallo-21-killed-New-York-subway-passing-falling-tracks-train.html - it does get really warm down there. Perfect in winter but not so good in summer.

I traipsed around 5th Ave, Times Square, Chelsea, and just a whole bunch of streets soaking in the atmosphere. I came across the Flatiron building and was overjoyed because Arup had denied me visiting it last time I'd been there. The jerk. There was an awesome costume shop with every costume imaginable (except for a bloody White Rabbit costume!) at Union Square which I wish was in Sydney. Did lots of shopping for other people so my credit card wasn't too happy...

At night I sat in Times Square till about 11pm and thought it was the best city on earth!

Time Square (north)

Flatiron Building

Trump Tower on 5th Ave

Smoke stack from the subway below

One of my favourite buildings - Chrysler Building in background

Kokomo : Key Largo

As I am progressively becoming lazier with this post (I've already written 2 and I'm getting sleepy!), I will be very brief with this one.

8am - Meet at dive shop and fill out forms. Due to the storm the previous night, there were 4 - 6ft swells so the captain cancelled the boat. Decide to go to a sheltered lagoon instead to dive. 2 German guys decide to bail. A lovely Swiss girl by the name of Sarah decides to kick on. Get sized up for equipment and head to Flamingo hotel for pool session.

10am - Finish the pool session and start driving towards Key Lago
10.45am - Stop off and buy Subway for lunch. Am starving! They didn't have a pizza sub so I ordered a Spicy Italian instead. Was overjoyed at finding peanut butter cookies and raspberry cheesecake cookies. Guy behind the counter thought it mildly amusing that I was so excited about said cookies. raspberry is awesome, peanut butter is dry and disappointing
11.15am - Arrive at the lagoon. Put our gear on and do 2 x 20 min dives
12.30pm - Finish dives, pack up and head home
1.30pm - Arrive back at the dive shop. Sarah and I decide to buy sushi for lunch and go to the beach. Have many hours chilling out in the ocean and sand. Talked about the mystery that is men and laughed at a group of Belgium guys that were intent on picking her up. One guy asked her whether she was going out that night about 5 times. The same guy had a look of disgust when I told him I was 27. He was the old ripe age of 21. Geez.
6.30pm - Decide to leave the beach and go shopping. In particular a college jacket for Sarah's younger sister. We didn't find one but we did buy nice Venetian masks! I'm so ready for the next masquerade I get invited to!
7.00pm - Departed for dinner but agreed to text once finished and meet up for drinks along Ocean Drive.
Started packing my bags and realised that my flight was not at 10am but at 7.45am. That meant I had to be up by 5.45am. Sad face.
10.30pm - Meet up at the dive shop and stroll to Ocean Drive. Realise the place is dead because the Miami Heats were playing in some final (?). Sat at a restaurant where they were playing Lady Gaga (in joke - it seemed that now all that Memorial Day was over, all the songs that we could hear being played in every single store was Lady Gaga)
12.05am - Said our goodbyes and I tottered home with a bit too much too drink. Had an ok night sleep if it wasn't for me waking up every hour because I thought my alarm had gone off!

 

The Never Everglades

The tour kicked off to a fantastic start by being about late. Whilst I had been waiting for the tour bus to arrive at my hotel and pick me up, I noticed a number of flashing police lights in the far distance. I found out very soon there had been a gang-related drive-by shooting early that morning. As a consequence a number of streets were locked down (and for well over 48 hours!) and traffic was extremely heavy due to makeshift detours.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDs-Wp_TN2c to see shooting footage.

The drive itself to the Everglades isn't very exciting. As seen on TV, you travel along a vast highway network which from an aerial view (like the helicopter view in those police chase shows) look very impressive but when driven, are very very very boring. I even fell asleep at some parts. I did take random photos to show people on the bus that I was alive at some point during the drive.

BK HQ

Cruise ships docked in their... docking area

The dome looked interesting. I think it's a stadium

 After about an hour of driving we arrived at the Everglades Safari Park. We were to go on an air boat ride through the canals in search of alligators, followed by an alligator show.

Docked air boat at the safari park

The air boat novelty was pretty cool. It reminded of Police Academy 5. As a 9 yr old, I remember two things from that movie: one was that you could write rude words on undesired people's foreheads in sunscreen so that when they went to tan, DORK would be appear. The second thing I remembered was a bad guy chase through the Everglades on the air boat. I wasn't expecting the same type of reckless rampaging through a protected park but it would have been fun. 

View down the canal

Due to the dry season, the canals that we would have cruised along were above the sea level. We literally went up and down one canal. Some alligators were spotted so all was not lost. Surprisingly I thought it would smell swampish because of how it looked. It turns out that the Everglades is not actually a swamp but it is an extremely slow moving river.

Everglades banks

Can you see the baby alligators?

After getting off the boat, I met Justine from Perth who was also on her own. Only thing was that she was on her own in Miami till Thursday and then off to the Carribbean for 3 weeks. So so so lucky! We watched the alligator show and wandered around the park together until it was time to leave. For $3 I became a proper tourist and had my photo taken with Snappy, the resident 3 yr old alligator. 

Justine and I decided to spend the rest of the day at the beach so when we arrived back at South Beach, we promptly had lunch. Lunch was super disturbing as a bunch of drunken loud black chicks thought it would a good idea to start grinding this fellow black guy. They proceeded to pour their cocktail all over his head and then two of the girls started licking the liquid that had dribbled down his neck. For the record, one of the girls had a HUGE dimply stretchmarked ass. Ew. At some point some other random guy thought it was all fun and started tossing 1 dollar notes on the ground. Animals groped for the notes, picking it up and stuffing in places where strippers would store stripper dollars and would go even more wilder with their booty grinding. 

Afterwards Justine was saying that the expression on my face was gold. I apparently had a look of disbelief and distate on my face but it was like a train wreck - I couldn't look away! As a result I would study my salad intensely, look up at the girls and then study my salad again as though nothing was happening.

We also ended up getting rorted with the 2 for 1 drinks. To compensate, the restaurant charges one drink at $35 so even though our meals were less than $10, the bill came out to be about $90. No wonder the prices weren't on the drinks menu! There was a cigar seller nearby so we bought an el cheapo $5 cigar to try out later that evening. What rebels.

After all the excitement we finally got to the beach. It was awesome fun to just hang out there and feel safe and non-intimidated. We departed around 5.30ish so that we could freshen up and meet up for drinks and dinner around 7ish. 


Walking over to Justine's, I became caught at the start of a tropical outpouring of rain which ended just as abruptly as it started 20 minutes later. We lit up the cigar walking to dinner, took a few puffs, declared it nasty as hell and dumped it in a gutter. Luckily it was only $5.

S*%t going down during dinner

Ended up having dinner in a diner nearby as we declared ourselves grandmas and wanted an early night of 11pm. As we were eating, a whole squad of cops on pushbikes, followed by a police van and several cars came flying down the side street. Being seated outside we immediately stood up to see what was going on. It looked like a black van - you know, the ones with no windows that they use for kidnapping in movies - was being searched and two guys were being arrested.
I sculled my peanut butter milkshake, Justine downed her drink and we left our food (really dry chicken wings and I had spicy buffalo wings which considering my chilli tolerance, even I couldn't eat much of!) and had our early night.


The street was cordoned off so it meant having to go another way home.


I was kept up that night by the sounds of louts that were either coming or going to/from their room yelling down the hallway. Grrrrrrrrrr!

Miami Ghetto : Sunday Bloody Sunday

As some people have not been able to live vicariously through me (cough *Jyana* cough), I'm having an early night to recover from yet another morning flight. I must have sub-consciously have wanted to get no sleep on this trip.

Sunday started out very tame and ended even softer. I woke up in the morning with the purpose of going to South Beach Divers to book the scuba dive. Unfortunately there were still remnants zombie-ing around. I wish they were actually like zombies and didn't speak coherent words - the guys were still able to mumble out a 'Hey Chinatown' every so often. 


Afterwards I wandered along Collins St which is considered the shopping street. I found Urban Outfitters, True Religion (got the Mistys for Kitty!), Sephora, Steve Madden, GAP, Armani, Diesel etc etc. It was either Washington St or Collins St that had a cafe where you could do shisha but the thought of:
a) being a nigel
b) surrounded by idiots with one pickup line
was enough to deter me. I will have to take Gaby out to Bankstown one day to get my fix. I'd rather risk a drive-by shooting than be uncomfortable.


The Art Deco Welcome Centre was in sight on Ocean Drive. They had walking tours that outlines the history of the area which would have been fascinating had I gone on one. As such, they were booked out and I wasn't able to get any time to go on one. I did a book an Everglades tour for the next day so it wasn't a complete loss.


Did some boring basic human functions such as eat lunch and have drinks. 

Hit the beach around 2pm. I remember being in the water for well over an hour and combined with my massive frozen cocktail, I had a nap basking under the warm sun. I must have been comatose as I felt myself being awaken and surrounded by concerned beachgoers, i.e. the group that had plonked themselves almost on top of me. They thought I had passed out as I had my empty cocktail cup next to my head. After reassuring them that I was ok and that's what we do in Australia when we're at the beach, a wingwoman said to me 'You're so cute! Have you ever been with a black man?' I told her that since there was not really a lot of them back home, no I hadn't been with one and neither did I want to start. That didn't stop her keen friend from trying to pick me up grrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Rogue wave

Homies amazed that cameras can go in the water

Testing out the new Lumix camera

Looking back at the beach

I stayed at the beach till 8pm in which I decided to scoot home as I could hear the pulsing bass of some rapper. I walked past a club that had a headline which spelt 'Pray for Sean Kingston' - there were a bunch of big mammas that were dancing to 'Beautiful girl'. Irritating song.


I was so knackered that I Googled 'South Beach' and 'sushi'. Lo and behold I discovered that I could have sushi delivered to my room! abotu 40 minutes later, takoyaki balls and a massive sushi set containing salmon and cream cheese, california rolls and sashimi arrived. I was in heaven. After a diet of absolute s*&t of burgers, pizzas, burgers, pizzas and chips (and feeling like I am going to work extra hard at pole to get rid of any weight!) I could finally eat rice! And fish! And miniscule vegetables!


I pretty much fell asleep during my dinner and very happily after dinner. Luckily I didn't spill it all over my bedsheets (*cough Jyana cough*)