NYC - Day 2

Have had a great day today, but also very tired, so I might sound incoherant :)

Today we decided to wander around the "Center Of The Universe" as they like to call it, ie Time Square. A great place where there are tons of neon lights, big massive screens that display anything, and where all the shops are supersized and just American.

To start things off, Kelly had told me about a restaurant she saw on TV called "Junior's". We thought that it only served cheese cake and there was one in Brooklyn. Turns out there's 3 of them, one in Time Square, and they serve main course and cheese cake. We went there for breakfast. We both told the waiter that we wanted Benedict Egg and some coffee, so he told us that we should really order something with the egg, otherwise it's just a single poached egg. We foolishly agreed and both ordered some corned beef hash as a side.
The food came and not only was there 2 eggs on a base of bread and meat, but the corned beef hash wasn't a side order, it was a main meal in itself! I had to really force my self to finish it (OK, not really :p). Then we had the cheesecake which we thought was really nice. The Original Number 1 Cake (aka the plain cake) was really good.

We then just wandered around the square and saw tons of really American things, like semi naked men and women filming something outside The MTV Store, and the big massive Toys R Us store that is so big it actually has a full-sized ferris wheel ride inside it!

Another American oddity was the M&M's World Store! Yes, M&M's have now got stores that sell all the usual franchise things you'd find in a Disney Store. We actually liked a few things there, so we didn't leave empty handed!

We also went in to a smoothie shop called Jamba Juice, that does these really fresh, big, and very thick and cold smoothies that were great. They literally start off so thick that you can't suck them properly through the straw, just like Mc Donald's milk shake!

Later on we walked down 5th Avenue, which is the posh designer store street, with lots of things like Lous Vitton, Prada, and Tiffany & Co. It also has Apple's flagship store, which on the outside looks really cool, being basically a big see-through cube with the Apple Logo hanging in the middle. The whole store is underground, so all you see from street level is the cube, inside which is the logo and some see-through lifts and stairs! Inside though, it was actually disappointing and fairly basic compared to The Regency Street store in London. Come to think of it, even Steve Jobs himself thinks the London one is better.

I also managed to buy me a hard drive from Best Buy, which is the worst name for a massive chain of stores that sell electronics/computer stuff etc.

Finally, we went to China Town, which really was China Town! Unlike other China Town's I've seen, which were built by cities to look Chinese, this area in New York is actually just a poor, semi-dirty area with predominantly Chinese people. It doesn't just have restaurants and grocers, but all the little stores sell all sorts of Chinese fake stuff, like the bags and the watches and the DVDs etc etc. The restaurants themselves look really authentic, and aren't westernised in any way.
We looked around for a bit then went into a Vietnamese restaurant that looked nice, and it was! The staff were nice and polite (a rarity in NY it seems), and the food was some of the best we'd ever had. We both had some noodle soup dishes for main courses, and they really tasted authentic and fresh and we were just enjoying the whole experience. It was also cheap :)

And I think that's about it. I'm sure I've missed out some other really cool things but I'm too tired to think.

SoB out

PS: tomorrow we go see Grindhouse. Scary thing is, the cinema we're seeing it in (AMC Empire) really does look like a seedy grindhouse. Stay tuned.