1st Day Downtown

So we've completed our first 24 hours in the US. We've had a very busy and very long day. As I've written before we were up very early. We left the apartment at 9.30, and headed over to Times Sq. To do this we had to navigate our way round the extremely complex subway system, which is bloody hard to get around. It's pretty quick though, even if the cars themselves look like tin foil boxes! It's strange to think that Americans are supposedly not as intelligent as us Brits and have short attention spans, but can use the subway with no problem!

We got to Times Sq, after detouring past the Chrysler Building and through Grand Central Station. My initial reaction to Times Sq was 'wow' but I quickly decided that it was loud, bright and looked good, but there wasn't really any substance to it. There was almost so much there that there was in fact nothing. I have a picture of an example of it, but I didn't bring my camera cable to transfer pictures. I may look to purchase one from a Radioshack tomorrow. We went to Virgin Megastore, which is closing down, and the M&M store. We walked round some more, and then headed to Macy's. Ridiculous. It's a department store, with 8 floors, and so why is there no floor plans or maps anywhere? I got very annoyed about this and this shortened our stay. During our trip to Macy's I noticed a group of Irish clothes (picture to come) celebrating 'St. Patty's Day' - bless the Yanks, getting that wrong. New Yorkers seem to have an unhealthy obsession with Ireland. Nearly every store had something Irish in it somewhere.

We headed from Macys to the Rockefeller Centre which was very cool but by this stage we'd be out for 5 hours and were knackered, so we will head back there at some stage. I had a fantastic cheeseburger at the Rockefeller. Yum Yum.

We headed home and haven't done an awful lot since then.

I have learnt a number of things in my time here (Yep, just 24 hours)

1) As mentioned, the New Yorkers are mentally obsessed with Ireland and the Irish.

2) Every item of food or drink are sold with a calorie counter. I saw a burger today that was 2700 calories (the average man should intake 2500 a day!)

3) After 4pm, everyone can put their 'garbage' on the streets outside their house or work. So walking down the streets at about 10pm means you have to contend with lots of rubbish!

4) The toilet bowls have more water in them than English toilets - making it impossible to piss quietly - and when you flush the water empties and then the bowl is refilled. Exciting honestly!

5) The electric sockets look rubbish, and really unsafe. Anything plugged into them looks like they could fall out.

6) There is a $1 dollar note, and 2 different types of $1 coin. Silly.

7) The sirens on the emergency services vehicles are crap, really weak and pathetic sounding. If an English siren says 'Get out the way!' the American ones say 'Could you please move if you don't mind please?'

8) There is an obsession with the word 'gourmet'. We both a thank you card today that was made by the 'gourmet card company' - how can a card be gourmet?

9) The prices quoted on the shelves are without tax (which I guess is about 8 or 9%) and so you work out how much stuff costs and then there's the tax added on! Again, for a supposedly less intelligent nation, this seems strange. It also means you have bloody silly prices such as $3.34. Stupid.

Anyway, I've eaten far too much today and am off to bed. Knicks at Madison Square Gardens tomorrow! Night!