New York

I arrived at New Yorks Penn Station and spent a bit of time trying to work out how to get to Hotel Alexander where I was staying.  I eventually found where I had to go and found how to buy a ticket.  I had picked a hotel because the reviews for the hostels in New York didn't look encouraging and many of them seemed to be in poor locations.  Hotel Alexander was a few blocks walk from the 96th St train station and the line went straight down to downtown.

The first day I spent time finding where everything I wanted to see was and had a quick look at Wall St.  I found it a bit of a disappointment, I think partly because you couldn't go in anywhere because of security concerns.  I say an obstructed view of the Brooklyn bridge, saw the Statue of Liberty and Empire State Building at a distance.  After I had found where I had to get the ticket to go across to the Statue of Liberty, I walked back across the park to the "Charging Bull".  The bulls is not actually on wall st but is  a short walk away.  There was constantly crowds around the bull, getting photos of themselves with the bull.  The bull had several places where the bronze was much more polished than the rest of the bull from where people had touched the bull when they were getting their photo taken.

During the following days I went and was an audience member of the "Late Show with David Letterman", Went to the 86th and 106th floors of the Empire State building, visited the Museum of Modern art and the Top of the Rockefella building, Climbed to the top of the Statue of Liberty and looked out through the crown, Saw the site of the World Trade Center had a play on the big piano in FAO Schwarz, walked from one end of Central Park to the other end, went to Time Square, became familiar with the New York subway system.

On the 30th I went to the Ed Sulivan theater and signed up to be an audience member.  It is a lottery who will get seats and I put down for the 30th and the 1st of April.  I got a call back at 11:30, saying that I had been drawn to be an audience member.  So first I had to go back to theater at 2:00PM to pick up the ticket.  I was on "Jacks Gold List".  Then I had to come back at 3:45 when they would let me in.  Before they started recording the show, they told us what we had to do and what we couldn't do.  They also had a comedian to warm the crowd up.  The show started recording at 4:30 and took a little over an hour.  President Obama was on the upper level of the crowd, where I was... and waved multiple times throughout the show.  The guests were Regis and Snope Dog.

While I was in the area I went into the Hello Deli and ordered a Shaffer sandwich.  All the sandwiches are named after the cast of the Late show.  Rupert G was just like he is on the show.

I walked through Central Park with a friend of a friend I had meet in Chicago.  Central park goes from 106th St down to 56th street.  On the first day, we made it down to 72nd st.  The next day I went from 72nd st down to 56th street, past the stone arch bridge and lots of Baseball fields.

It got to Monday on the last day I was going to be at New York and I hadn't seen the Brooklyn Bridge.  So I went on the train and took a few photos.  It was dark and getting late, so I didn't investigate any further than taking a few photos like the one shown below.