Been a very busy time here in New York, very long days every day.

On the evening of my first night I met some other travellers in the lobby and we decided to go check out a rooftop bar call 380 on 5th, it was on the 20th floor and had fantastic views of the Empire State building.

I had two more days here by myself before Lisa arrived. The first day I caught a train downtown to near the Brooklyn Bridge and then walked down the water from to try and find a get a good picture. I continued to walk down to the Stanton Island Ferry, but by the time I got there the rain was starting to get quite heavy.

So the decision was made to make it a shopping afternoon, so I caught a train to midtown to check out Macys. After finding some good deals (I am now carrying a second bag to fit everything), I headed to a bar called “The Australian”, I heard from a guy in the hotel that they sold Coopers beer and I have missed my coopers.

I then went back to hotel to dump my latest shopping successes. I ran into the same guys from the night before (and a couple of others), so after a bit of dinner we headed back to “The Australian” so they all could be introduced to what I was spruiking as the best beer in Australia – Coopers.

The next morning the day was a lot nicer, so I attempted to finish my site seeing from the day before and caught a train straight to the Stanton Island ferry. This is a free ferry that goes very close to the Statue of Liberty. I figured if I actually went to the island I would be too close to take photos. It seems to be a very popular thing to do, with most people getting off and going straight to the return ferry. You also get really good views of the downtown buildings.

On my return I walked up through the financial district and down Wall st, struggling with the masses to get a good photo of the “bull”. I then went down to the World Trade Centre memorial, there is lots of security to get in which I can understand, but it was worth seeing. I still remember seeing it all happen live on TV all those years ago.

I then headed up to Century 21 (another big shopping centre) and am happy to say I did not spend that much money this time.

By his time the new hotel would have been ready for me, this is where I was staying with Lisa. So I head back and got settled in and waited for Lisa to arrive. She got in fairly late and after a long day of flying for her we went out and got some dinner and had an early night.

Saturday was a very big and long day. Even though we were right next to the Empire state building we never went up it. Instead we went up to the Rockefeller Plaza to do “Top of the Rock”, this has great views of the city and Central Park and the great advantage is that your city photos actually have the Empire State building in it. That is the one problem going up the Empire state build observation deck, you take photos of the city without the most iconic building in it because you are on top of it.

We then walked down to Grand Central Station before heading to Times Square to buy tickets to the Lion King. We then caught the subway down to Chinatown before doing a walk half way across the Brooklyn Bridge and then walked down to Century 21 so Lisa coud down some shopping. We had to go back to Times Square so I could go to a Lids shop to buy a baseball cap.

Last day in New York, so we caught a train up to Central Park and spent a few hours walking through there as well as checking out the zoo. It is such an impressive park and I could really have spent the day walking around.

We then headed to midtown to go to a shop Lisa wanted to go too, but before heading back to the hotel to pack and get ready for show. We figured you could not go to New York without going to see a Broadway show and the Lion King is one of the biggest at the moment. It was a very impressive show and I very happy we went.

We are now at JFK airport waiting for our flight to Toronto where we are staying for three nights. I will load up some photos soon, but I have about 800 photos of New York to work out which ones are good and which ones are rubbish.