New York City, Part 2

Who has 2 thumbs and is in Times Square? This guy!

The next day Jessica and I went to go see some of the major attractions of New York City. First off we wandered up to Times Square to get a glimpse of it during the day (obviously night time is the best time to see Times Square). It kind of looks as you'd expect, what with hundreds of screens up the side of the buildings advertising various gaudy products. Time Square is more of a strip with many touristy closeby.

There were multiple performers in costumes who ask for a tip if you take a photo of them (this was a pretty common practice in many USA places with heavy tourist traffic - e.g. Hollywood Boulevard). There was also a Ripley's, M&Ms World and Hershey's Chocolate World nearby. We spent a fair amount of time in M&M World mainly due to the sheer ridiculousness of it. It was massive! So many M&M products for everything imaginable, from clothes and souvenirs to cookware and leather jackets worth thousands of dollars. It also had a machine that could 'guess your mood' and pick out an M&M colour right for you. I'm guessing that machine's bleeding-edge mind reading technology was a random number generator.

I look like I'm doing more of a Hitler salute.

Morgan Freeman says hi.

We then headed through a park and up to the the New York City public library which we stumbled upon almost completely accidentally. The library had two large lions at the front, which Jessica assured me were famous. Inside it also had Lego replicas of the lions and an exhibit on NYC food. The best part was that it was free!

Jessica in NYC park.

NYC Library.

Lego sculpture of the NYC library lions.

Next up we headed down to Grand Central Station. Nothing super interesting going on, lots of people milling around and a very high ceiling like a cathedral. It did have an Apple store at one end which I thought was a little odd. Quite a spectacular places nonetheless.

Outside Grand Central Station.

Inside Grand Central Station.

The famous clock inside Grand Central Station.

No visit to NYC would be complete without a visit to the Empire State Building! So Jess and I joined the end of the very long line and waited for about 20 minutes. The security guards confiscated my tiny pocket knife off me! The view was spectacular from the top, NYC looks surreal from high up. It is such a mass of tall buildings, and you can definitely make out all the features and attractions. The audio guide was quite informative as well, pointing out interesting facts about buildings that I wouldn't have normally noticed.

Looking out towards the financial district.

Closeup of some of the buildings in midtown.

Not always attractive, but still interesting!

Financial district from a wider angle.

Pigeon on top of the Empire State. 

Jess and I on the top of Empire State.

I wanted to see "that weird triangle building" next - it was one of those times where I knew what it looked like and knew it was famous - but had no idea why. It's shown a lot in TV shows set in NYC including Friends and Spin City. Turns out it's called the "Flatiron Building", which was once one of NYC's tallest buildings.

The Flatiron building and I.

After getting some classic NYC pizza and calzones, I had to go and do the exciting task of my laundry. Later that night Jess and I went out to a bar I'd heard about a long time ago. The gimmick is that prices of alcohol are controlled like a stock market, so that the more people buy of the drink the prices go up. Conversely, less-popular drinks go down in price. Every now and then there would be a "stock market crash" where all drinks would be super cheap!