New York, New York City: Fun in the Big Apple

Manhattan was the next destination on our tour around the United States during the summer of 2007. The enormous city was an anticipated location for both of us, not because we had never been there, but because we had planned to meet up with several good friends during the five days that we decided to venture to The Big Apple. Since we both had already been to the place, we had no set plan at all; the most important thing was hanging out with our friends. Of course, we also planned to have some downtime so that we could work on this travel journal, something which we were very behind on by that point in our trip - this seems to be a recurring theme in our stories as of late, so we'll try and exclude any moaning about that from now on, but we can't promise anything.

To get to New York, we used our airmiles to obtain a ticket. We flew on American Airlines to John F. Kennedy (JFK) International Airport, via Chicago O'Hare International Airport, from Little Rock International Airport, which was located an hour from Hot Springs, Arkansas, where we had been basing ourselves at Judy's and Marc's (Kyle's mum and his stepdad) house for the first part of the summer while we were in the United States. We didn't walk to the airport because it would have taken us more than 24 hours; instead, Judy drove us in Jeane's (Kyle's aunt who was visiting Judy at that time) car to the airport.

We got on the Subway about five minutes before the steam pipe exploded, killing one person and creating a huge crater in the street

Before we got into the main part of Little Rock, we stopped off at Brown's Country Restaurant for a buffet lunch. The huge buffet stand offered many types of southern, home-cooked, delicious foods: fried catfish and cod, many types of salads, potatoes, fried chicken and chicken crispers, meatloaf, corn bread and hot rolls, fried green tomatoes, french fries and potato wedges, lots of different casseroles, and several choices of other vegetables, to name but a few things available there. The restaurant had a claim to the longest buffet in Arkansas, or maybe even in the United States, and the claim was not disputed by us!

Not having to spend time sightseeing in the big city was a really nice change, since we had been sightseeing in many places around the world for the first half of that year. Since we mentioned that our main intention for travelling to New York City was to see and catch up with friends, the first thing we should do is let you know who we managed to catch up with when we were there. We think that we managed a good job of seeing people, but there were also a couple of failures on Kyle's part, which we will mention in just a bit.

Our successful reunions first started with a couple of good friends of ours from London: Olivia and her boyfriend, Laurie. We actually met up with them at the airport when we had arrived, because our flights to New York had been arranged so that the four of us landed around the same time. They landed at JFK International Airport on Olivia's birthday and Laurie's birthday had been the day before, so the trip was timed very nicely for them. The plan was for us to spend the next five days with them, but it was the first time either of them had been to New York (and Laurie's first trip to the States!), so we managed to relax in coffee shops whilst they did some of the more touristy things.

The next successful reunion was with our friend Julia, who had lived in New York for quite some time. She ended up meeting up with us for dinner and drinks on a couple of the evenings during the week, and it was very fun, indeed. We were both sad that we didn't manage to see her cats during this trip, though; the last time we went to New York, we had stayed in her apartment in the Lower East Side, and we babysat her cats whilst she stayed at her ex-boyfriend's place. London will hopefully be in the cards for Julia; she had been trying to get her work visa to move to London in order to continue her newly developed textiles career there. We hope that it works out because it would be great fun to spend more time with her in the UK!

Tuesday night was when we had arrived in New York and it was Friday before we managed our third successful reunion, with Brady and Ralph. Brady was a longstanding friend of Kyle's from his cheerleading days, teaching summer camps all over the United States, and they have managed to stay friends since then; Brady also used to work for the same company where Kyle works. Ever since Kyle had been working and living in the UK, Brady had managed to complete a jaunt to Europe over the week of Thanksgiving nearly every year. Dan had therefore gotten to know him and can now claim him as a friend, too; it was good for both of us to be able to catch up with him. Brady lived in New York for ten years and it was always great to meet up with him there, since he knew a lot of hole in the wall restaurants and bars to explore. Ralph lived in New Jersey (which we won't hold against him) and it was easy for him to meet up with all of us over the weekend. You'll have to read further down the journal entry to learn when Brady and Ralph performed their infamous disappearing act during dinner one evening...

The final reunion that we were able to accomplish was with Michelle, who came all the way from Providence to New York City, so that she could see us when we were in the United States. We were originally going to travel to Providence to see her, but the three hour journey there, and three hours back, would have cut a lot of time out of our short trip. Michelle had graduated from law school and was working in Providence for a judge, but she was finishing her assignment that summer, and was planning on moving to Manhattan to work full-time for a law firm there. She loved New York and didn't mind at all to come and see us, instead of us going to see her. Michelle was a friend of Kyle's from work in Dallas, Texas, where Kyle started his career. They have remained friends over the past ten years and she had been to London a couple of times to visit, where she met Dan; also, the three of us went on a trip to Mallorca, Spain, which was quite fun (drunken karaoke, oh gosh!). Again, a mutual friendship was developed and we were both happy to see her again.

We mentioned some failures on Kyle's part, for not catching up with everyone he knew in the city. The first was with a good friend of his, Joe, from his university days at The University of Oklahoma (OU). Of course, that reunion was completely excused because Joe had been living in Spain for most of the year, and he was still there when we made it to New York. The next failure was with another friend of Kyle's from OU, Marcy, who had been living and working in New York for a short while, but who was working in the retail industry, with a crazy schedule. Even though Kyle and Marcy exchanged voicemails during the week that we were there, they didn't manage to meet up. The final failure was with a third friend of Kyle's from OU who was practicing law in Manhattan. Sandy didn't even get a call from Kyle because he didn't have her telephone number; also, Kyle had not planned enough in advance and didn't get a chance to email her before travelling to the city, something of which he is extremely sorry, because it would have been great to see her after such a long time. Sorry, Marcy and Sandy - another trip to New York will happen in the future, when Kyle should be able to catch up with you!

Now that you are caught up on the friends we had planned to meet during our trip to New York, we can get to the nitty gritty of our activities there. We had arrived on that first evening around 11:00pm and, by the time we had collected our bags and met Olivia and Laurie at the Arrivals section of the terminal, it was nearly midnight when we were all in a taxi, heading to the Upper West Side where our hostel was located.

Jazz on the Park Hostel was one that we managed to find that was decently priced (within our travel budget), that would accommodate the four of us and that would be nice enough for Olivia and Laurie to reside in for their holiday. There was a shared bathroom in the hostel but it was really only shared by the four of us, so it was no big deal; the only real problem experienced throughout our stay was during check-in, whereby we had to register inside one building and walk a block away to another building where our rooms were located. The rooms in the place were simple, but they were nice and clean. Also, the hostel was only located a couple of short blocks away from a subway station, which made travel to and from the place very easy. Finally, there were a couple of great delis near the hostel and we soon found out that the breakfast sandwiches there were to die for.

For the start of our first full day in the city, Olivia and Laurie offered to take us to breakfast. We took the subway to Times Square so we could find a diner and also so the two of them could see the busy Midtown area. We walked around for several blocks before we found a place that served pancakes, something that everyone wanted to eat. Olympic Diner was our saviour and, even though it was located 8 blocks (and about 30 minutes walking) from the 42nd Street subway station where we started our search, the place dished us up great breakfasts with excellent service. It was quite funny because we all ordered the exact same thing: pancakes, eggs and bacon with a side of coffee.

During our walk to find Olympic Diner, Olivia and Laurie spotted a few shops that they wanted to check out some other time, so we suggested that they spent time that morning to look around and shop some while we hung out in a nearby Starbucks. An hour and a half later, they arrived back with a few shopping bags and slightly emptier wallets than when they had set out. Since the British Pound was so strong against the weak US Dollar, to coin our friend Brady's phrase, "everything they bought was half off". It's amazing how buying something like a pair of Sketchers shoes in the United States could work out to be less than half of what we would pay in the UK; it's just a shame that we were travelling for a year and couldn't spend money too frivolously!

Once we had met up with them again, we took them for a long walk around Midtown Manhattan. We walked east from Times Square towards the Chrysler Building before heading north towards Rockefeller Center. On the way, we passed Radio City Music Hall and then circled around Rockefeller Center to visit the immense and beautiful St. Patrick's Cathedral. Neither of us had ever been inside, so we were happy to cooperate when Olivia suggested that we enter the cathedral to take a look. None of us were disappointed; the inside of the cathedral was as beautiful as the outside. When we left St. Patrick's, which was located on Fifth Avenue, we walked south for a few blocks before making our way east again to find the British Consulate.

Dan was worried that his passport would run out of available pages during our year-long trip, especially since we would have to get another visa when we travelled to Australia in November. He thought that he may have been able to get pages added to his passport whilst we were in New York, but that wasn't the case; he could only take care of passport-related issues via the post or in Washington, D.C., at the British Embassy. Since that city was going to be our next stop during the "US and A" portion of our 2007 travels, we decided to give that a go when we arrived there the following week. Olivia and Laurie managed to do some more quick shopping while the two of us went into the British Consulate. There was a sports goods store next to the building that we entered and they had gone inside it to purchase some new socks for Laurie's new tennis shoes (that's the same as trainers for the British people reading this), which he had bought that morning.

Across the street from the sports good store was a Taco Bell. Anyone that knows us knows that we love Taco Bell and can't resist passing up the chance to eat it whenever we see one, since there are none in London (for shame!). Therefore, we asked Olivia and Laurie if they wanted to try a snack there, since dinner was still several hours away. They conceded and really enjoyed the food that they ordered, which was the same thing that we ordered, beef and cheese quesadillas. Laurie was getting a lot of "firsts" during his trip to the United States and Olivia was able to re-experience the Taco Bell phenomenon, which she had previously encountered when we came to the United States with her for a wedding a few years back.

For those of you who heard about the steam pipe explosion in New York back in July, we narrowly missed being in the area when it happened. Of course, only a few of you actually know that we narrowly missed the explosion, because only a few of you bothered to contact us to see if we were alright. Thanks for that. Anyway, we left Taco Bell and got on the Subway about five minutes before the steam pipe exploded, killing one person and creating a huge crater in the street above the site of the explosion. We luckily just missed the tragedy but, fortunately, we were just past the area where it happened, when it happened.

We had taken the train to Greenwich Village and we walked along Bleecker Street to show Olivia and Laurie the neighbourhood and also to give Laurie a chance to look in some of the record shops there, to see if he could bolster his collection of albums. Laurie was unlucky because one of the shops had recently closed that day due to floods in the basement, where the records were stored, and the other store had shut simply because it was after 5:00pm, their closing time. He didn't manage to find any records at the other shops that he looked at and, whilst he was doing his shopping, Olivia did a little more shopping herself, but soon got bored and joined us for a smoothie at a local juice bar.

The four of us really liked Greenwich Village and ended up spending most of the rest of our week there. After we were reunited with Laurie, we decided to go for a drink. We found a cool bar that had an outside seating area on a main junction in the West Village; they even served Stella Artois, a favourite beer of ours that we always found difficult to find in America, but that had increasingly become more popular as an imported beer on a bar's drinks menu. We had several pints (the place was so cool to even serve it on draft!) and then met up with our second reunion of our New York Trip, Julia.

Julia was waiting for us at Boca Chica in the East Village, but we only kept her waiting long enough for her to order a frozen margarita and some tortilla chips with black bean dip. Once the taxi that we had caught arrived at the restaurant, Dan bid adieu to the driver, with whom he had shared the front seat and who was, interestingly enough, from the tiny country Burkina Faso in West Africa (find that one on the map, we dare you!). We walked inside, introducing Julia to our friends from London and ordering margaritas ourselves.

Dinner that evening was a bit of a blur because we had already drunk quite a few beers before arriving. Luckily, we wrote down what we ate so we could share that with you. The restaurant served Cuban food and we shared a plate of shrimp quesadillas that had come with salad and black beans. It was a good thing that we shared the food because it wasn't an inexpensive place and we also had filled ourselves up by eating a lot of the tortilla chips and black bean dip. Oh, and the margaritas!

After dinner, we bid adieu to Julia, who we really enjoyed seeing that evening, and headed to the nearest subway station to make our way back to the Upper West Side and our hostel. Getting the subway late at night was an experience, both with the fright factor of the characters we observed there and with the fact that the trains didn't work the same way at night as they did during the day. We, very scarily, ended up in Harlem and had to catch another train 20 blocks down to the 103rd Street station, where we then walked to Jazz on the Park Hostel.

The next morning, we were able to experience firsthand how delicious the food was in a local deli near our hostel. Of course, having had several drinks the night before, our bodies were craving some grease and fatty foods. The four of us continued a trend that we had started the previous day (remember breakfast and Taco Bell), by having the same food as one another: a fried egg, bacon and cheese roll with ketchup and mayonnaise. The bread was very fresh, as was everything that went in the sandwich, and the staff working in the deli were really friendly, too. We had slept in that morning so none of us felt rushed, but when we had eaten our fill of food, we were ready to attack the city for another day.

Stepping back a few moments, before breakfast, we had to try and sort out a problem with the plug sockets in our rooms. None of the sockets had seemed to work when any of the four of us tried plugging in mobile phones, cameras, or even our laptop. Ultimately, the plug socket that had the air conditioning plugged into it did work, so we managed to recharge dead batteries. It was lucky for Laurie because he had gotten a new camera from Olivia for his birthday and he really wanted to take some pictures from his first trip to the United States. He didn't need to worry too much about not having photos, though, because we would easily be able to give him copies of the photos that we took.

So, now that we had eaten some great deli sandwiches, on the way to the subway station at 103rd Street, we were able to hop on a train, heading south. In order to let Olivia and Laurie get some of New York's sights in, we helped them plan out their day, to see as many of the main sights as possible, such as the Empire State Building, Ground Zero, Bloomingdales and Macy's. Since they were going to be covering all of the things that we both saw during our last trip to New York, they didn't mind us parting ways until later that day. Whilst they were being prime tourists in Manhattan, we totally relaxed in a movie theatre and a Starbucks.

We ended up seeing a couple of movies that were not going to make our top ten list, and that probably wouldn't make many other people's lists, either: "License to Wed" and "Captivity". It's not to say that the films weren't enjoyable, because films have to be really dire for us not to give them a chance, or for us not to manage to sit through them comfortably, but they were definitely no-brainer, cheesy films for their genres. The reason we saw two was because they were playing back-to-back and, as we were leaving the first film, the second film was playing next door to the theatre that we were exiting. We were really bad and we snuck into the second film, mostly because we couldn't be bothered to go all the way back downstairs to buy new tickets; plus, we were travelling on a budget, so who could blame us?

The AMC 24 movie theatre in Times Square was our theatre of choice, since we knew they would have many options, both with the movies being shown and the times offered. Also, Times Square was an easy location for us to meet up with the other two when they had finished their activities for the day. The meeting point was Starbucks again, the same one that we met them in the previous afternoon. Brady, our friend who would be arriving in New York in a few more paragraphs, had been kind enough to let us use his wireless internet username and password whilst we were travelling around the US. Therefore, a Starbucks cafe was a place that we could always use the internet for free and we never minded using one as a meeting point. Another factor that helped lure us into the cafes was that their frappucinos and iced coffees were always consistently delicious around the world.

Olivia and Laurie had more shopping bags when they arrived, clearly signalling a successful day, and they wanted to rest their weary feet, so they sat down with us for a while to enjoy coffees. Whilst we were sitting in Starbucks, chatting about their day, the area in front of the movie theatre, which was next door to the cafe, was being blocked off for some kind of a premiere. It ended up being the premiere of a new television drama called "Damages", with Glenn Close. We ended up seeing her and other cast members, including Ted Danson. That was our only brush with fame during that trip to New York, but it was great to see those actors up close, pardon the pun.

After the stars filed through the doors of the movie theatre, we were all ready to eat, so we headed down to the West Village to grab dinner at Burritoville, a chain restaurant that served really yummy, you guessed it, burritos. We ordered two (huge) burritos to share: a barbecued chicken one and a grilled chicken and cocoa bean one with mole sauce. Each of the burritos was filled with beans, rice and veggies, and our two friends took our lead, by ordering the same thing and sharing their two burritos.

After dinner, we headed back on the subway to Times Square - don't worry, it was the last time that we found ourselves there during that trip - because Olivia and Laurie had not seen the new Harry Potter movie yet and there was a late showing that evening. With us being on a budget, we decided not to see Harry Potter again and decided to use the money for a ticket to a new film that we had not seen.

Two new movies were opening that evening at midnight and we opted to be some of the first people to see the musical movie, "Hairspray". By the time the film started, after the commercials and previews (or as we say in the UK, the adverts and trailers), it was half past midnight and we thought we may have struggled to stay awake for the next couple of hours. We were wrong and the film kept our attention with its upbeat songs and tempo, as well as its funny dialogue. What we are trying to say is that it was a great film that we thought was extremely hilarious and well-cast.

Getting home was a nightmare for us, because of the weird evening train schedules. It took us an hour and a half and we had to change trains at least three times in the process. There were even stranger characters out then, probably because it was later in the evening than it had been the previous night. Once we finally got to our hostel, after 3:00am, we crashed very quickly and slept through the night.

There had been no problems for Olivia and Laurie when they had to make their way home after seeing the Harry Potter movie, which they really enjoyed. Apparently, all we had to do was take a subway to Harlem and then catch a train down a few blocks to our station, the same thing that we had done the night before. We wished that we would have paid more attention the night before, to save us the extra hour that it took to get home. We probably could have walked home from Times Square much quicker than it had taken us on the train!

We all slept in again the next morning, since we had a late evening after the movies. The deli was our first stop and we enjoyed the same sandwich that we had eaten the morning before. Brady was heading to New York and was due to arrive by noon, so we headed to the West Village to meet him in a Starbucks there. The mobile phone that we were using in the United States for the summer was having trouble connecting to Brady's phone, so it was no surprise that we didn't get a text message from him, which he had sent earlier that morning, to say that he missed his flight and would be flying in a little bit later. So, the two of us sat in the cafe all afternoon, waiting for him to appear. Olivia and Laurie waited with us for some of the time, but they got fidgety and did some shopping during the first part of the afternoon. Shopping for them meant that they went to couple of record shops (the ones that Laurie failed to visit on our first full day in New York) and then into a pub to drink some beer, followed by a checkpoint with us, then another pub, another checkpoint, etc.

As we said, their pub visits were repeated several times; this was because Brady didn't show up until five hours later. Each time that Olivia and Laurie returned to the cafe, they were a bit more talkative and feisty from the additional drinks that they consumed. During their last visit to a pub, just before Brady had actually arrived, we started to get major hunger pains and we decided to grab a piece of pizza from a Greek (yes, you read that right) pizza place across the street from Starbucks. It was New York style and the slices that we ate were very large with big toppings. They baked the pizza slices that we ordered, so they were piping hot when we sat down to eat them. Delicious!

We went back into Starbucks after eating, eagerly waiting for the other two to return from their latest pub crawl, so we could take them across the street for some New York pizza. When they did return, they were famished and they tucked into some pretty quickly. At that point in the (late) afternoon, Brady finally arrived and we saw him get out of the car that had picked him up from the airport, in front of Starbucks. He had planned to stay at his friend Heather's house, which was located a block away from our meeting point, and we walked to her place with Brady, while Olivia and Laurie went for another beer at a Mexican restaurant and bar that they had already frequented that day.

Heather was really nice, we enjoyed meeting her. Also, she was kind enough to let us leave our backpacks there while we all went out for the evening. Brady joined us as we walked to the Mexican place to have a couple of beers with Olivia and Laurie before they had to part ways for a few hours, to do something else we had helped them arrange. Ralph ended up meeting us for drinks, too, and we all had fun catching up.

New York Liberty was a professional basketball team and, when we helped Olivia and Laurie book tickets to see a game, we had no idea that the team was all female. We had assumed since the game was played at Madison Square Garden, that it would have been a male team. It didn't matter, though, because the two of them had just wanted to see a basketball game and also witness something within the large arena in Midtown Manhattan. They had a lot of fun watching the game over more beers and hot dogs.

In order for Olivia and Laurie to see the game, we had to accompany them to pick up the tickets because they had been booked using Kyle's credit card and he had to pick them up at the Will Call desk. Once they had their tickets, we said goodbye and headed back to meet Brady, Ralph and Heather at Heather's apartment. While the basketball game was being played, the five of us went to the East Village to have dinner at an Indian restaurant called Milon. Julia met us for dinner again and it was great to see her a second time during our trip.

The Indian restaurant was really tiny and situated on a street with quite a few similar looking places. Inside, it was like an overly gaudy Christmas celebration was in progress, because there were hundreds, maybe thousands, of lights hanging from the ceiling in the small, narrow room. We say gaudy because most of the lights were strange variations of standard Christmas lights; for example, bright red and green chili pepper lights were hung amid strands of tinsel. During the meal, which was BYOB (that's "bring your own booze", for the British people reading this), we saw a few people who were celebrating their birthday in the fun place. Each time it was someone's turn to be wished a happy birthday, the music was turned up even louder than it already was, and the song was an Indian rendition of the classic birthday tune.

The food was great, the same as the last time we went to New York and visited the restaurant, and it went down nicely with the beers that we had brought. We finished the meal around the time that we were supposed to meet up with Olivia and Laurie, so it was no surprise when our group turned up almost an hour late at the bar where they were waiting. We ended up walking from the East Village back to the West Village, to the place that we had drinks on our first full evening in town, with Olivia and Laurie. We were able to sit outside again and much silliness ensued. The night was young, even though none of us really were, and although it was actually really late, we went to another nearby bar afterwards called Oliver's. Ralph left, though, because he had to get back to New Jersey and he needed to catch the last train back. When we sat down at a table inside Oliver's, more beers were served and, soon after, we had to call it a night because things were getting pretty sloppy.

Before everyone parted ways, we had to get some more food - as if the Indian food wasn't enough! - and we stopped off at a fast food hot dog place to eat some hot dogs and corn dogs. This was a good idea; otherwise, people may not have felt very well the next day. Once we were full, we headed back uptown with Olivia and Laurie, while Brady and Heather walked back to Heather's place. Julia hopped in a taxi to her apartment in the Lower East Side. Getting home that evening via the subway was much easier for all of us and we were there in less than half and hour.

Do you think we slept in again the next morning? If you said yes, then you are correct. Olivia and Laurie didn't sleep in as late as we did and they started their day with a walk through Central Park. We actually suggested that they walk from the entrance at 103rd Street, all the way down to the southern end of the park, which was about 50 blocks away. The day was really sunny with a blue sky, much better weather than the previous few days had been with their gloomy, cloudy, grey and stormy skies. Olivia needed to buy some Abercrombie clothing, for both herself and her housemate Stephen, so she and Laurie went to the flagship store on 5th Avenue after their marathon walk through the park.

When we finally got motivated to leave the hostel, it was noon and we went for breakfast at the deli. We tried the same sandwich, but this time on a longer hero bun, so we got almost twice as much food; that was sufficient after such a heavy night of food and drinking. And more food, and more drinking. We quickly walked into Central Park, but only for a few minutes, to take a couple of photos for this journal entry. We then hopped on the 103rd Street train and headed down to the West Village - to Heather's apartment - and wait for our final friendly reunion with Michelle to start.

Michelle arrived in the city and had to take care of some errands before meeting up with us. Since we were moving a little slowly that day, we ended up getting to the West Village around the same time as she did. Once she arrived at Heather's, we caught up a bit before heading to Starbucks to meet Olivia and Laurie. Brady had met Michelle in San Francisco, when Kyle had visited the two of them there a few years back, and also in London, during one of his Thanksgiving trips, when Michelle was in town there, too.

We went to Starbucks in the West Village to wait for Olivia and Laurie and we had iced coffees whilst we were waiting. As soon as Olivia and Laurie turned up, we headed towards a pub to have some beers (are you surprised?) and play some games of pool. Before we made it to the pub with a pool table, on Bleecker Street, we stopped into a small pub nearby to have a round of pints, because some of the people in our group (no names mentioned) could not wait another fifteen seconds to walk a few doors down to the pool table pub.

When we finished the first round of beers, we walked a few doors down to "Wicked Willy's", which took about fifteen seconds, and we took over the back section, which had the pool table. We drank several more rounds of beers (pints again!) and played many games of pool, alternating teams and players. Everyone played except Brady, Olivia and Ralph, who had met up with us at that pub, and we even enjoyed quite a few games with one of the doormen, Carlos. Michelle and Heather played many games with us, so we got to catch up quite a bit with our good friend and new friend that afternoon.

Dinner was on the agenda and it was becoming necessary for everyone to eat because of the amount of alcohol intake that had gone on in the pub. Brady had suggested Ariba Ariba, which had good Mexican food and even better, even deadlier, frozen margaritas. The margaritas were not cheap at $16 (£8) each, but they certainly were strong and tasty.

The wait for our table ended up being almost two hours long because we had a fairly large group. Whilst we all waited to be seated, we enjoyed answering Michelle's questions about our travels and also reminiscing about some of the stories that she had read in our travel journal. We actually convinced Michelle to stay the night in New York at Heather's, instead of catching a bus back to Providence. She acquiesced and enjoyed a couple more margaritas afterwards, not having to worry about catching a late bus back home that night.

Once the restaurant manager decided to seat us, probably because we were being very loud and obnoxious, having not eaten and having gotten very drunk from the potent margaritas, Julia turned up to enjoy a margarita and some dinner with us. Everything started to become a blur at that point, with people disappearing for the evening (Brady and Ralph just "left"), people falling down on the floor a few times without being able to get up again (Dan had no idea that Kyle kept pushing him back down whenever he tried to sit back up), people stopping people from dancing on the table (Kyle stopping Michelle, or was it Michelle stopping Kyle?), people sitting back and watching the crazy antics whilst wearing their sunglasses in the dark restaurant (Olivia and Laurie were too cool to get too crazy or involved), people trying to take over the DJ booth from the DJ (Heather really needs a new career now), or people being just sober enough to remember everything that happened that night (Julia, we sure hope that you can fill us in on some of the more sordid details).

We were sad to part ways that evening, because it meant that our time with everyone in New York was finished, since we were departing the city quite early the next morning. However, we were also glad, in a way, to attempt a few days recuperation from the insane time that will always be burned in our minds, or at least always be able to be read, when we look back at our travel journals from the year 2007. Let's hope that we don't have any kidney failure occur, too.

Even though we had to leave early on our last day in New York, Olivia and Laurie did not have to leave as early as we did; their flight was booked to leave in the evening after 8:00pm. We had asked Brady to take them on the Staten Island ferry, round trip, so that they could pass by the Statue of Liberty for a much needed photo. We didn't end up having time to do this on one of the previous days and Brady didn't mind at all, which was very kind of him. Our two friends from London met up with our friend from Austin and they had a great afternoon, while we were travelling to and checking out our next destination.

Many people may not realise that several parts of the United States have an extensive train network running across them. The northeast was no exception to that and we decided to leave New York City by train, to get to our next destination, Washington, D.C. Amtrak was the train company that we used and the train was very nice and comfortable.

The most pleasant thing about taking the train early that next morning, after our crazy afternoon of beer and pool and our crazy evening at Ariba Ariba, was that we bumped into Michelle, who had arrived at the station when we did, to catch her train back to Providence. She was worse for wear, as we were, so the three of us had some breakfast at a small cafe inside the train station.

Check out our next journal entry to find out more about the 3-1/2 hour journey from Penn Station, in the Midtown area of the city, to the country's capital city, Washington, D.C. If you listen to us and do your required reading, you will also find out about a couple more further reunions: one with Sally, a friend of Dan's from his university days at Greenwich University in London, and the second with Erin, a mutual friend of ours whom we had met in Leeds through another couple of friends of ours, Brett and Melissa, whom we hope are reading this journal entry and are still trying to figure out a way to come and see us when we are in California in September!