New York.... NEW YORK :D

Hey there =)

First thing to say: New York is one of the most amazing cities ever! It is busy, full of tourist (at certain places) and a lot of fun!

So, from the beginning, or other said from Boston. In the morning of March the 16 we got up, and after breakfast we left to New York. After 5 hours in the bus, and a lunch break, we went through 5 different states and finally arrived in New York.

First, we drove a bit throughout the city, on the way to Central Park, where we had our first stop. We went off the bus and into Central Park, where we started walking through Straw Berry Field, the John Lennon Memorial, since it is just next to where he died. Then we walked a bit more and went to 5th Avenue, where this amazing Toy Store is, with a walk-on-piano. It was a lot of fun!
After 5th Ave, we went to dinner in a nice restaurant. We we're in a room with another EF tour group and it was way to noisy, but at least the food was really tasty :D

For the end of the day we went to TIMES SQUARE! The most amazing play, you can be in New York. M&M Store, Hard Rock Café, Hershey's Store, Disney Store and whole lot more! It was so much fun, but since we had a long day and I was really tired, I was actually glad to get back to the hotel.

Then on the 17., St. Patrick Days :D, we left the hotel at 9, to make our way to the city. We got off the bus near Walstreet. That means we walked to Walstreet (it's so boring to see, just a building, since you can no longer get in as tourist) and the Bull. A little bit further there was the World Trade Center Site. Today, it is just a construction scene, not really interesting. Close by though was a little church, with a lot of memorial stuff in there. This church, called the St. Paul's Chappel, was used as a place for all the workers to rest. They had hunderds of volunteers, helping the workers on the site. They gave them food, a bed and also phisical and psychological assitance.

After this we went to eat lunch. So said, we went to the Rockefeller Center, we got one hour and a half to eat lunch and also hang out at the St. Patricks Parade a bit. It was a really crazy place there, since all the people came out, dressed up in green and most of them were also drunk. It was loud and fun to see. The part of the parade I saw, was actually rather boring, mostly just cops walking and some marching bands. When lunch was over, we had a tour through the NBC studios. It was fun to see the studios and Fabiola and me even go a video, isn't that awesome!?

The next thing planned, was a visit of the Empire State Building. I really enjoyed being up there and to have a view over whole New York. But we already left after 20 minutes to go get to dinner.

Where? In Chinatown :D It was really tasty, and a lot of fun getting explained how to eat properly with chop sticks. For the end of the evening we had free time in China Town, Soho and Littler Italy, actually everywhere you wanted, as long as you were back at the meeting point at 9:15. Chinatown is a lot of fun, and you always get to bargain the chunk you're gooing to buy. You usually got it cheaper, especially when you said, you wouldn't buy it, if you're not getting it cheaper xD
So after this exhausting but fun day, we were all really happy to get back to the hotel, where we could finally go to bed.

The third and last day in New York was perfect. We had really nice weather and a lot of fun, even though everybody was extremely tired.

After breakfast, we immediately left to go to the ferry to go to the statue of liberty. We went onto the island, but not up the statue, because it is expensive, and there is a waiting list to go up to the crown of ca. 30 years... so well yeah. But it was still fun, and we took a lot of pictures. After about an hour on that island, we left to go to Ellis island, the actual place where a third of the nation stopped, and immigrated to the US. They had a nice museum but we didn't really had time to look at the whole exhibition...

From Ellis island we had a ferry right to lower Manhatten where we boarded the bus and went to 5th Avenue for the second time. A part of our group went also to the Grand Central Station, the train station out of Madagaskar. It is a beautiful building!

For dinner we went to a Mexican restaurant, which had really good food. For the rest of the evening then, we had free time on Times Square, we bought some more souvenir and also got 15 seconds of fame:

When you buy something in the American Eagle on Times Square, then you could take a picture and they would project it on their huge billboard for about 15 seconds, for 2 or 3 times. It was a lot of fun!

Tomorrow we sadly have to leave New York, and also really early. But since we're moving on to Washington DC, it's all good. I'm really looking forward to go there and hopefully also see my grandparents there :D