New York Sum-up

As some of you may have seen on my Facebook, it's been unseasonally cold in the East Coast lately, in Boston it was as low as 12 degrees Celsius and overcast or raining interchangeably, same in New York. For most of our time it's been reasonably okay, but yesterday the skies let loose and it poured continuously for the entire day - really helpful when you're taking a ferry ride to the Statue of Liberty... Basically we got out, took some photos as best I could under the umbrella (shielding us from the sideways-rain) and then hurried back to the ferry and the mainland.

However, not to worry, we already got some great (clear) shots of the UNESCO site (another one ticked off the list!) from our Staten Island Ferry ride and the Circle Line cruise. Ironically it's still overcast but at least not raining today, but ah well.

At the moment we're just waiting in the hotel until closer to the time that our bus to Washington leaves from Penn Station, I'm using the 'public' free internet computer in the hotel's 'business centre' to post this entry, which also explains why we haven't had much of a chance to upload photos yet - this has a 30 min time limit and I inevitably have to relinquish this before I can organise the photos properly. Nevermind, the Washington hotel supposedly has free in-room wifi, so hopefully that's going to be able to cope with some uploads!

Some things I want to note down before I forget about our time in New York, in no particular order:

• Saw a rat in the subway tracks one time, but heaps smaller than the ginormous one we saw in Pondicherry, India!
  
  
• I managed to tick two of the three (?) NY food icons off my list - a pastrami sandwich at Katz's, a lox bagel at Barney Greengrass. The hour plus line at Grimaldi's kinda put me off waiting for that famous Brooklyn pizza though, maybe next time.
  
  
• If you ever come to New York for 3+ days, I'd definitely recommend getting some sort of New York Pass/multiple-attraction discount pass and also an equivalent period unlimited ride Metropass, which works on both the subway and the buses. The New York pass basically meant we got about a 50% discount off all the attractions we went to, not to mention help us avoid a few queues, too.
  
  
• Pedestrians and cars pay zero attention to each other, I was led to believe jaywalking was some sort of henious crime here, but everyone in NY does it pretty much at every crossing, and cars don't wait for you even if the pedestrian light is green - if they're trying to turn and they see a gap, they just go.
  
  
• Every single American tourist in New York can't go around without wearing the 'I *heart* NY' t-shirts. Once we even saw a group of about 30 people in the exact same one, it was a bit weird... We've managed to get through the entire trip without purchasing a single kitschy NY souvenir, which I'm pleased about. I was somewhat tempted by the personalised 'CLARA' items (fake NY license plates, keychains) since they usually never have my name on personalised items, but at US$6.99 for a small keychain I managed to resist.
  

Right, someone else is waiting to use this computer now so I better go, watch out for some photos soon!