Busy, busy city

So New Year's Eve was last night. I haven't had a channce to blog for a while, so here goes.. We saw the statue of liberty and went to staten island on the ferry (which goes past the statue without waiting in a 5-hour tour line). So that was cool. We also went to a comedy show just off Broadway which was really funny. And they didn't check our IDs to get drinks!!! So we did drink in the US underage (2 days into the holiday, no less).

We've taken a lot of photos, and done LOTS of walking. I can't beieve how much we've walked. OH! We went ice skating in Central Park just before the comedy show. It's been a long time since i've been ice skating, but i didn't fall over (came close a few times, but didn't hit the ice). We were only out there for about 45mins-1 hr because there were so many people they had to clean the ice all the time. A lot of fun though.

We've been eating terribly the last few days. Maccas and burger king mostly. Oh and we have our local pizza shop now (we've decided to call it Cat Pizza because the first time we went there (about 1am on the first night in NY) there was a random cat walking around the shop. Was cute though, so that's OK. The slices of pizza here are HUGE!! Like 1 slice is the equiv of like 3/4 of an Aus medium pizza.

their food portions are so big. OMG how much food can these people eat?! I had been warned to buy small everything, which is about the same as a large in australia. you shoul see the big cups they have for large and extra large drinks. It's like a bucket!

and I love Snapple. It's so good. It's just fruit juice (they also do flavoured iced tea). We have a corner store near our hotel that sells the BEST ice cream and has snapple. love it. The ice cream is that Haagen-Dazs ice cream from europe or something.

Speaking of Europe, we bought some US sim cards for our mobiles so we're not making int'l calls to each other all the time. they cost us $30. we went into a T-Mobile shop to ask how we check out balances, and while we were there we saw a Sidekick (sort of PDa meets laptop meets phone). Kieren wants one, but they're not supported in Australia or something. Rochelle, the lasy we were talking to, was talking about the data network being locked or something, and if we take it back to Europe it may not work.. We didn't say Austria, love. I can't believe how little most Americans know about the rest of the world. It's like they don't learn about anything at school but their own history. They have no idea where Australia is. some people didn't even know it existed.

It turns out we're being charged for receiving calls when people call us, so we're thinking we'll change over from T-Mobile to Cingular. hopefully they have a better deal.

So we had NYE in Times Square last night. We got there at about 5pm and it was already packed. there were literally millions of people. We were crammed so tight in with all these people. We had to wait 7 hours!! It wasn't raining so it wsn't THAT bad but still.. 7 hours of standing in the one position is not cool. We ended up sitting down on the road for a while because our legs were killing us. I forgot to bring my camera, too. Nor did i bring the video camera. Or my iPod. So i just had to entertain myself. Every hour on the hour we'd celebrate another city's New Year - when we got there it was Paris' turn, then Rio and somewhere else. In the crown near us, there was much talk of chicken. these people love their chicken. (KFC to be specific). We couldn't leave the crown to get food because we'd have to join the back of the group. Think of it this way: the crown started at times square (where broadway meets like 34th street or something.. We were at 50th street (there's one block between each numbered street - about 100m). Behind us would have been a good 10 more blocks of people. I wasn't about the go to the back of that. Occasionally people got sick of waiting and left, so we had a bit more room.

Once midnight finally came we saw the ball drop, everyone counted down to 0, about 15 secs worth of fireworks went off, and we left. Had it not been for the barricades stopping us from leaving, we would have been out of there by 12.02am. We ended up climbing over the barricade and leaving at 12.05 (some people had trouble lifting themselves over a short metal fence.... you know what i mean). We went to maccas for dinner, where a guy had thrown up in the bathroom and was admitting it to everybody (:S) and some other guy high on weed (we think) was talking about some comic he's written with an australian character in it who multiplies himself.. uhhuh, i'm sure you are. Crazyman.

We got to bed around 2am and had to be up at 10 to leave by 11. Packed all the bags and checked out, which is all fine. Now we're in the Apple Store on 8th ave (the big one made of glass - http://www.apple.com/retail/fifthavenue/gallery/

I dont think i've written this yet: our trip to Niagara Falls and Washington got partially canceled (the niagara bit, and they wanted to send us to philadelphia instead.. ew) so we canceled the whole thing and we're going to Montreal, Canada tonight on a bus (double ew) and land there in the morning. Then look around, stay in a hotel overnight, get another bus back to NY then to Washington on the 3rd. Another overnighter. then we'll stay i washington for the night of the 4th, come back on Ny on the 5th in time for our flight to LA. this ought to be interesting.

I'll be back soon with more. wow that was a lot of typing.