Yesterday began well. Tom and I got up early and headed uptown to a Welsh pub to watch the Rugby. Along the way we grabbed breakfast from Dunkin' Donuts, in my case, an egg and sausage bagel, an iced coffee and a cream donut. All very good. The game itself was epic, as was drinking copious amounts of Guinness at the pub. There were a lot of green jerseys, so we sat with the other Saffers and had a great time.
After a satisfying win, we headed off to Madison Square Park for burgers at the world-renowned Shake Shack. They were epicly good, in a way that I'm quickly discovering only American fast food can be. Rich, tasty and served with cheese-laden fries and a chocolate malted milkshake, I actually felt my heartrate slowing and arteries harden, but I'll be damned if I didn't murder that burger, it was that good. It was raining, but I've learnt that it doesn't seem to have any sort of calming influence on the hustle and bustle of life in New York.
We snappped a few pics of the truly majestic Flatiron building while we were there - it's hard to believe that it was built 100 years ago.
From there, we caught the subway to Times Square, which quite frankly, blew my mind. It's impossible to describe it. I snapped tons of pics and a video. It's just amazing how many people, lights and colours there are.
After marveling at Times Square we walked down Fifth avenue towards the end of Central Park, and from there, went to the legendary Apple store. The new iPhone had just been released the day before, so subsequently, the Apple store was buzzing like a hive, with literally hundreds of people crammed into this bizarre underground mecca of Apple goods. While we were in the area, we stopped by FAO Schwarz, which is possibly the most amazing toy store ever. It must be awesome to be a kid in New York - you may not have a backyard to play in, but the toys you can get are amazing. Enormous stuffed animals, Scalectrix sets that'd blow your mind and electric helicopters and airplanes of every make and model.
We were pretty wrecked after all the walking, so we headed home for a nap. I woke up before Tom and went exploring the East Village while he slept, grabbing a slice of pizza on the way home. After we got dressed we grabbed a train and headed east, off the island, to Brooklyn. We met up with a mate of Tom's, and hung out at his apartment with a whole bunch of people. New Yorkers are amazingly hospitable and friendly. By the time we started doing tequila shots we were fast friends. At around midnight we headed out to hit the clubs (I believe going out this late is fairly standard practice around here). We went from club to bar, trying them all out, having a few drinks at each and moving on. Eventually, we ended up at this karaoke dive bar somewhere in Brooklyn where we drank and sang and danced until I just couldn't do it anymore. We left at around 4 in the morning, stopping off at a deli on the way home (everything is open all the time here) for a bite to eat.
So now, five hours of sleep later, I'm sitting here, nursing a hangover of death and sweating out Pabst Blue Ribbon in the humidity while I wait for Tom to wake up. We're going to do a breakfast burrito this morning and take it from there.
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