As I mentionned earlier, I visited "The Big Apple" aka New York City two weeks ago accompanied by the fabulous K and Nizza and also by Michael, an Asian friend of mine who I study at University with.
The whole trip was completely unexpected and planned at the last minute; not even 48 hours in advance! Indeed, Nizza called me two days before (sunday, december 18th) her arrival date to announce to me that she had finally found a reasonably-priced roundtrip flight ticket from Stavanger-Sola to New York City. For those of you who have never flown before or are not used to book flight tickets online, the key to saving a few pesos is to compare prices among different airlines and on different retail websites.
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| Abercrombie and Fit model and us ;-) |
And that's how Michael, K, K's mom and I drove all afternoon that sunday heading south toward the Empire State of Mind. We reached the overly-populated island of Manhattan shortly after dinner. Travelling with Chinese folks also implies a lot of shopping for brands and sales!!! All three of them forced Rodzilla to stop at the Duty Free before crossing the American border. The prices indicated were just slightly cheaper than in Canada or in the States which means that you should shop by category in these shops since certain items might be worth the hassle to stop there while some others might be about the same price.
Another very important stop we had to make was Woodbury Common Premium Outlets which is in fact a H.U.G.E. retail outlet outdoor mall located in Red Apple Central Valley, NY two hours shy of the Big Apple. I believe these outlets were very interesting and appealing for savvy shoppers but as for the tired driver that I was, I didn't feel like buying anything and the fact that we needed to walk outside between shops anoyed me very much as the temperature was friggin' cold!!!
The moment we reached Chinatown, we had to hurry the (&*? up to bring all of our luggages into K²'s hotel room in order to leave some space for Nizza. We then sashayed away into the ghettos of Queens and Brooklyn in a New York minute to get at JFK where Nizza was scheduled to land. We waited an hour in awe at Terminal 4 (probably the ugliest terminal at JFK) and that's when the lovely Norwegian made her way out through the arrival hall and greeted us with her cute Scandinavian smile. I presented every single one of them to each other and proposed we leave the airport before the parking fees exceeded what we wanted to spend on food and booze.
That night, we were all so dead tired that we did nothing but eat and get off to bed. The following morning, I went shopping with the Chinese posse at Bloomingdale's while Nizza was recuperating from her lack of sleep and jet lag. We then hopped in a cab toward the Empire State Building and went to the top to take pictures and admire the New York skyline. I thought I'd be scared shitless as the first time I had been there (I was 14 at the time), I could barely breathe nor open my eyes and my family had made fun of my virtigo!
We walked a bit north towards Times Square, visited or should I say, shop again at Toys'r'us and agreed to eat a generous meal at Bubba Gump. I have to tell you that their Cajun shrimps were probably the best dish I had in ages and that their menu is definitely high on price/quality ratio! I also took a Fisherman's plate and a Louisiana Lemonade which allowed me to get a free glass buck at the end! A few minutes before we left the restaurant, we asked our waiter if he knew any good night clubs in NY as we were looking forward to go out and get loose. He said he didn't go out very often so he couldn't really help and came back with his colleague; a tall and lean African-American twink.
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| You know you're in Little Italy when... |
The moment we reached Chinatown, we had to hurry the (&*? up to bring all of our luggages into K²'s hotel room in order to leave some space for Nizza. We then sashayed away into the ghettos of Queens and Brooklyn in a New York minute to get at JFK where Nizza was scheduled to land. We waited an hour in awe at Terminal 4 (probably the ugliest terminal at JFK) and that's when the lovely Norwegian made her way out through the arrival hall and greeted us with her cute Scandinavian smile. I presented every single one of them to each other and proposed we leave the airport before the parking fees exceeded what we wanted to spend on food and booze.
That night, we were all so dead tired that we did nothing but eat and get off to bed. The following morning, I went shopping with the Chinese posse at Bloomingdale's while Nizza was recuperating from her lack of sleep and jet lag. We then hopped in a cab toward the Empire State Building and went to the top to take pictures and admire the New York skyline. I thought I'd be scared shitless as the first time I had been there (I was 14 at the time), I could barely breathe nor open my eyes and my family had made fun of my virtigo!
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| New York skyline |
