New York times..

Central Park

We arrived in N.Y. by midnight (friday) and had an interesting journey by subway to get to our hostel. At one point one of our fellow passengers decided to attack another traveller and just minutes later the police showed up and took the bad guy (NYPD blue?).

When we arrived at Chocolat hostel we discovered that the dorm turned out to be twice as expensive as we thought. We had to stick to our backpacker budget so we decided to dump this hostel and check in to another one just around the corner. Even if it was 3 a.m. in the morning, it took us 1 hour to check in (new record!). This was because of an extremely talkative receptionist - Manny, who (as many other receptionist) fell in love with Astrid's name. He loved all three of them and couldn't stop admire the name - at least till 4 o'clock when we fineally went to bed.

The naked cowboy

Next morning (backpacker style) we decided to find a cheaper hostel and mission accomplished: Broadway Hotel, just around the corner.
We stayed there for 1 night only, because - suddenly all hostels in the area were being shut down by the government. How ironic is that on our last days of backpacking? They were being shut down because the authorities wanted to use all the hostels for apartments instead. We felt like Mary and Joseph who found no place to sleep, except for a stable. Well, it wasn't that bad. We went back to our second hostel and stayed there.

Besides changing hostels we:

Times Square

• walked around in Central Park and had breakfast there along with several birthday parties
• did some shopping in 5th avenue, Times Square and SoHo
• got lost in Brooklyn while looking for a flea market. We did end up with a really cheap lunch.
• went to a broadway show - Billy Elliot the musical
• did some more shopping..
• visited the NBC studios and found a lot of "The Office" merchandise
• went to the top of Rockefeller Centre and enjoyed the view

1. May

• went to Ground Zero (before Obama) and listened to bagpipes. There were a lot of firemen, police officers and TV reporters. 
• had a decent chocolate cake
• watched people playing baseball
• listened to a guy playing cello in the subway
• ...and some guys playing banjos in tight tuxedos
• found locations from "Home Alone" and "Sex and the city"
• just hangin' out in the streets of New York..

Central Park form the Rockefeller Center

View to the Empire State Building

Eating lunch in Central Park