New York

We travelled by train from Montreal to New York, 13 hours on a train that seemed to be moving at snails pace! It was quite an excruciating experience, but WEggie and I entertained our selves by listening to iPods and watching DVD's. The good thing about the Amtrack train was that there was a powerpoint next to our seat, so we weren't relying on just 5 hours worth of battery power! We arrived in New York at approximately 9:00pm and caught the subway to our hostel where Weggie and I went straight to bed.

New York Day Two
We started this day by catching the subway to the Empire State Building, we qued in line for an hour and a half, first to get tickets, then to get in the elevators which take you to the 86th floor, we bought a pre recorded Audio Tour "Tony The Cab Driver", and walked around the top of the Empire State Building, pressing in the numbers and then gazing at the view as Tony explained what we were seeing and a little bit of the history about each landmark.

After the Empire State Building we again made a stop at a Library for more Blog updating, then walked to Times Square, which really does look just like it does in all the movies! We tried to line up for tickets to Wicked, our general admission theatre performance of choice, but after finding out that it wasn't showing on Monday night, we instead went to the Movies... again and saw Zoom a new Tim Allen Super Hero Teen Flick.
We had dinner at Cafe Europa and then went back to the Hostel for a relatively early night.

New York Day Three
We hit the Rockerfeller Centre first thing this morning where Weggie and I treated ourselves to Ben and JErry's ice-cream before going outside for a photo oportunity.

After snapping our shots, we went to the NBC Store and signed up for an NBC Studio tour.
A lot of my favourite shows are produced by the NBC, Law and Order, Will and Grace, Scrubs, Saturday Night Life, just to name a few, so it was very interesting to ge to go into the studio and see the behind the scenes of a few of the sets. Unfortunately we didn't get to see any famous people, and photography of the sets was strictly prohibited, we werent' even allowed to have our cell phones turned on at all during the tour.
We had lunch at Rockerfeller, before catching the subway to the Guggenheim. The exhibit at the Guggenheim was Zaha Hadid's work, she's an architect who's designs are all very sculptural and futuristic in nature. It was quite an interesting exhibit, which both Weggie and I think Julian and Monie would have loved.
After Guggenheim we walked to the Met so that Weggie could buy a painting for her mum, then we caught the subway back to Broadway so we could try to line up for General Admission Tickets to Wicked.
We put our names down for a lottery, and waited around to hear the results, not surprisingly our names weren't drawn, however upon enquiring at the box office if their were any seats available in the next 2 nights, we discovered that there were some, rather pricey, but good seats available.
$250 a piece later Weggie and I were the proud owners of tickets, Row F Centre Seats to Wicked on 16/08/2006. We bought the tickets on the proviso that this would be the only broadway show we see while in New York.

New York Day Four
Weatherwise, today was perfect for a trip to New Yorks most well known land mark.
We caught the Subway to South Ferry Station, and after a short walk to Battery Park and the Clinton Castle, we bought tickets to both Liberty Island and Ellis Island.
We disembarked and had lunch in a shaded spot on Liberty Island before taking a stroll around the great lady herself, she's really rather impressive, if a little smaller than she appears in all the films and such.

Time seemed to pass quite quickly on Liberty Island, becuase very soon we found we needed to get back on the boat, we sailed arround Ellis Island, opting not to get off the boat because I desperately wanted a shower before going to Wicked that night.
We spent a great deal of time waiting in line for the Ferry, and finally arrived back in Battery Park at about 4:00, we had a look at some of the creations in the stalls at the park before heading back to our hostel to get ready for our night on Broadway.
We got back to Time Square by 6:30 and had dinner at Cafe Europa before strolling up 5th Avenue to 51st Street and the theater where Wicked was being held.
As we were walking along 5th Avenue we happened to pass the WWE Programming Truck... i was so tempted to hang around and see if i could spot any of my favourite wrestlers, but we had a broadway show to get to, so i had to content myself with just looking from afar, i found out from a roadie that it was the Finale of the Diva Search, so i wasn't too sad that i'd missed it.
We arrived at the theatre with a little time to spare so we bought some souvenirs, an umbrella for me and a program for Weggie, then went inside to wait for seating.
It was an absolutely amazing performance! The Show was awesome, one that I definitely intend to see again when it comes to Aus. Elphaba, the main character had such a powerful voice and i just loved the story line!


New York Day Five
Our last day in New York for me was spent in bed, unfortunately I've come down with a cold and since we'd pretty much done all we wanted to do in New York I took the opportunity to rest up while I could, in hopes of beating this cold before it really sets in!
Weggie however flew solo and visited a couple of places that weren't on our itinerary and did some shopping along the way.
She tells me that she had a great time and I'll be sure to get her to put in a blog entry telling exactly what she did.

Hey its Weggie i'm suppose to tell you what i did the day without Taz so here goes;

I took the train down to Ground Zero if they had started doing stuff to the area, they've fixed the train station there and started to fill in the hole hopefully soon they'll decide what to build.

I then went to Century 21 which is a huge discount store, there i bought some designer stuff for my parents. Then i went back up to Fifth Ave to do some more shopping at the NBA Store and checked out the famous toy store Fao Schwarz which was in the film BIG with Tom Hanks. I even saw the piano that he does the famous chopstick skit on.
From there i walked along Central Park to Broadway and caught the train back to the hostel.