New York New York was so amazing I wanna go back on holiday Part 1

We were in New York in May, and boy oh boy was it amazing. It was like being in a movie set – a really, really, large (and very warm) movie set with lots of food all round. With calorie information everywhere also, not so good.

Being in Times Square was so surreal that it took me a while to actually realise I was in the middle of all those lights. It made Piccadilly Circus look like a poorly-funded advertising billboard. Here I am trying to cut down on greenhouse gases by using those low-energy light bulbs, but hey, it’s all OK. Who doesn’t need 30 billboards with moving pictures. Who, I ask you.

I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves (because I’m quite full after dinner and don’t feel like speaking much). Just had a lot of pasta bake, a story for another day.

Hot dog vendor. These stalls were everywhere, and they sold pretty much the same things. Wanted to try out the kebab meat with rice, but only managed to try the hot dog and salted pretzels.

These look good, but didn’t taste that great. They were really large and doughy (OK, maybe this was obvious to everyone, but I kinda thought it would be … nicer), and while the bits of crunchy salt were nice, it was also slightly weird to be eating something which tasted of NOTHING, and then lots of salt.

Watching Sex and The City (and numerous other New York based films) made me wanna try these hot dogs out. Would they be as nice as the Ikea ones, I wondered.

No, they weren’t. The sausage were kinda mushy, and the tomatoey thing on top of the sausage (some kinda ketchup onion thing) just didn’t do it for us. At US$3 a hot dog, could’ve spent it on something nicer.

See what I mean about those calories?

390 calories for only ONE DOLLAR?!?!? Sold. In fact, sold every day, as the poster suggests.

Sailors and soldiers were everywhere the weekend we were there.

Our first day view of Times Square. Big signboards, lots of lights, colour, warm heat coming from the ground, and the smell of excitement, fun and surrealism in the air.

Just like in the movies!

And because the dollar bills looked so much like the other bills (ie five dollars, ten dollars) we took so long to come up with any change at all when paying. Guess you get used to it after a while? Some people say they do have subtle differences, guess we weren’t there long enough to familiarise ourselves with it.

Insecure trash bins – prevalent in this competitive new society.

Yellow school buses in Chinatown, waiting outside a school.

Chinatown in New York – full of interesting sights, sounds, and mostly smells – but just on a much larger scale than the one in London. 

Somewhere underneath Brooklyn Bridge, near the Subway.

$1 for a burger, but HOW MUCH for parking?!?!?

And then we saw the Empire State Building, which, from the ground, took a lot of neck craning. Because there are so many tall buildings in the city, it was really hard trying to figure out if the day was just cloudy, or if we were standing underneath another tall building blocking out the sun. This building though, was incredibly tall and incredibly beautiful.

From the top of the building.

And to end this post, a view of Times Square at night.