New York

So this is what New York is after all. The bright lights, the tall skyscrapers, the vibrant energy, the indefatigable spirit. During Thanksgiving weekend, I had the chance to experience all these in the Big Apple, the center of the world (among all the places I have been to in my entire life, I can say that it indeed deserves the moniker). We went to the usual suspects: Times Square, Broadway, Maddam Tussad's museum, the United Nations, Wall Street, Ground Zero, NBA Store, Rockefeller Plaza, Fifth Avenue, Battery Park to view the Statue of Liberty, Trump Towers, M&M Store, Giant Toys R Us, and the best McDonalds in the world (seriously, the one in Times Square was just awesome... I must say it is better than a lot of the restaurants and cafes I have been to - with the interiors, music and ambience) What made it fun was the fact that we had to plan our itinerary, with our friends from New York suddenly unable to bring us around due to unforeseen circumstances.

To boot, when we wanted to check in in the hostel at 1130pm, WE WERE TURNED DOWN BECAUSE WE DIDN"T HAVE PASSPORTS OR STATE IDs. During Opening Days we were told the Harvard ID can get us places, and do magical stuff for us, but apparently that night it did us no good. So, in the middle of Harlem at 1130pm on Black Friday, we made calls just like the Obama campaign doing phone banking to countless hostels in New York City. Call after call we got rejected. We started contemplating on where to sleep that night: the subway, the airport, or just a McDonalds. Haha luckily in the end after about an hour we finally found one in Times Square. So we traveled across town to our hostel, and retreated to our beds around 1230... excluding the talking cock of course.

Too lazy to post pics again. So here is a link to my facebook photo album.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=62937&l=7f425&id=620781495