Arrived into JFK to be welcomed by the Department of Homeland Security with a 1 hour queue to get through immigration - humph! Eventually got out to the Hostel and then met up with Jen for a Chinese meal. That evening, we took a trip over to the east side of Central Park to figure out where exactly Mikli's was, and then retired to the Hostel.
K spent the day at Mikli's. After walking through Central Park, Jen and I headed up the Empire State Building. Afterwards, I went to try to find little sister, failed, went back to the Hostel, got lost in Central Park, was too late to find Jen and eventually just went and stood in the rain outside Mikli's waiting for little sis to finish. We went back to the Hostel and changed before going to TGI Fridays in Times Square for dinner.
Took the bus down to the south tip of Manhattan Island, then met Jen and went across to Brooklyn and had a walk in Prospect Park. After having lunch, we then walked across Brooklyn Bridge, through Chinatown and Little Italy before the heat eventually got to me (it had suddenly gone up to about 30'C!) and I had to retreat to the Hostel for a lie down. Once recovered, we met Jen for dinner at a Soup Restaurant with her friend
Went to Grand Central Station before battling our way through the Salute to Israel parade to get to 5th Avenue Presbyterian Church. Service was quite strange: a heady mix of Presbyterianism, Anglicanism and Americanism - quite good though. Afterwards, we again battled our way up through Central Park and the Salute to Israel parade before eventually getting to the Museum of New York. Later, took a walk back through Central Park and visited Strawberry Fields. That evening we took a bus up to Columbia University and had a look around there, having a spot to eat at an Italian thereabouts.
Little sis went on a bus tour while I went with Jen to The Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum. Intrepid is an aircraft carrier moored in New York harbour and it had loads to see and do. Having bored Jen silly with looking at planes, we went back into New York and met up with little sis again before going to get tickets for a show at Times Square. Afterwards, we had a browse in a few shops (including Toys'R'Us at Times Square) and then had dinner in Macy's. Jen then had to leave, so we bade our farewells and we went to see the show we had booked (Rent).
Up bright and early, we headed down to Wall Street to have a look around. Sadly, the NYSE is closed to tourists these days, so we could only look around outside. Comedy was to be found outside the door of the church at the top of the street, which had a plaque sunk into the ground which read to the effect, "The Queen stood on this spot during her visit of xyz. Prince Philip also stood somewhere nearby." We weren't quite sure why they'd mentioned Prince Philip, since they clearly hadn't been paying attention to where exactly he had been standing, but hey. After spending a happy 10 minutes trying to figure out what was setting off the security barriers on my way into a nearby bookstore (my suncream, of course), we then headed to Ground Zero for a sobbering couple of hours wandering around the site and around the nearby World Financial Centre. Then, we went and did a little more shopping before trying to go to Liberty Island, except the last boat was at 4pm, it closed at 5pm, and we arrived after 5pm (despite the fact that it was light till after 8pm, but hey). So, instead, we went and found a little Mediterranean restaurant (Niko's) for dinner before returning to the Hostel to pack up.
In a moment of madness, little sis and I had agreed to go to Liberty Island first thing next morning rather than waiting until we were coming back through New York. We left the luggage at Penn Station and then headed down, arriving at Fort Clinton just as it opened to start selling tickets. We got the first boat of the morning to the island, went on the first tour up to the top of the plinth and then spent some time wandering around before returning to collect our luggage and head out to Newark Intl Airport to pick up the hire car. The Hertz guy sorting the paperwork was trying to persuade us that we wanted to upgrade to a larger sized car, but, given that we were on a budget I was keen not to. We decided that we would go out and have a look at the 'compact' car that we had booked and, if we couldn't get the rucksacks into the boot (i.e. if it was the size of a Ford Fiesta) we'd come back in and discuss an upgrade. We headed outside and discovered that American 'compact' loosely equates to British 'large family sized' and so we didn't have to upgrade. After lunch at the airport, we hit the road and worked our way up to Cape Vincent, a little town near the Canadian border on the shore of Lake Ontario. We were staying in a Hostel within a lighthouse keeper's cottage that night, which is really the only thing that took us there. We stopped for a drink and a sneaky peak at a road map at a bookstore in Scranton, stopped for a burger in Syracuse and eventually got to Cape Vincent just after dark. It turned out that we had the Hostel entirely to ourselves, which was quite cool, so we sat and watched TV and relaxed from the 7 hour drive.
