17 Apr 09

To New York

We woke a 6 to get catch the 8am Lucky Star Bus to NYC when we got there an hour early (ala Greyhound, to ensure your seat) they said that we could catch the 7am so we opted for that and had two seats each so managed to get some sleep on the 4 hour trip. We arrived into the heart of Chinatown at about 11am and called a taxi to get to the Millennium Hilton, immediately next to Ground Zero, in fact our hotel room looked right over the entire site which is quite a moving sight when you get the sense of scale. Of course at the moment it is one massive building site for the construction of the 5 new buildings.
We then headed Uptown to Zabars Deli again to get a few things to take home, mainly some more smoked mozzarella and 1lb of Pastrami! We then headed down to S's favourite comic book stand and again headed back to finish the packing and have a last iced green tea with lemonade. For dinner we opted for a hamburger joint, which the book said was one of the best. The menu includes over 60 burgers (but no fries). We shared a starter of Cajun chicken skewers. S had a main of a burger with American (cheese), Ham, BBQ sauce, M had the Hippo Burger, guacamole, sauteed onions, Swiss, bacon and curried sour cream. We also shared a jacket potato.

We then headed to the Rockefeller Centre to catch sunset at the Top of the Rock which was breathtaking. I would be controversial and say that the view is a bit better from the Rock, there is an amazing view of Central Park but also a very impressive view of the Empire State Building. Having said that, I would still strongly recommend the atmosphere of going up the Empire State. We then were beginning to feel the 6am start and also remembered that we had to be up at 4am in the morning so had to head back to the Hotel.