After Ellis

Okay so back to Monday. After leaving Ellis Island Scott and I walked around Battery park for a while, watching street performers and enjoying the sun. We walked North up through wall street and saw the famous big bull of Wall street. We kept walking for a while and headed up to the WTC site. In the day light it was very different, you could watch the work being done through tears in the fence covers that went all the way around ground zero. There was one observation area that I found where you could get a decent view and ever tho I had seen it before the size of the devastated area was awe inspiring. We headed up towards Rockafeller Plaza to try and get into the Conan O'brien show, passing through broadway and by radio city music hall. There were some great shows like: Blue Man Group, Young Frankenstein, Lion King, Chicago, Mary Poppins, Grease and others. Maybe one day I'll come back at see one but right now I'm too poor. So we made it to NBC studios which is a large, black building right next to where they film the Today show. We walked in and it looked like the inside of a 5 star hotel only with posters of NBC shows, past and present, everywhere. We went up to the Conan area only to be told that there were no more extra seats. We then headed off to Central park so I could see Balto. Central park is massive! Its a very nice park also, even in "winter". Statues and nice landscaping were the theme. It was also very open and seemed like it would be alot of fun in the summer. There were horse carriages and bike pulled carts everywhere, but we stuck to walking. The park was so big we missed Balto a few times but finally found him. The NY Balto is jacked! Compared to the Anchorage Balto this dog was definitely on the juice. Leaving Balto behind we took the Subway back to Atsoria, Queens to meet Mario. Tuesday we didnt do to much, mostly just hung out in Queens and then checked out the nightlife. Queens is very very international and a fun place to go. Wednesday we helped marios Grandfather empty out an apartment in one of his buidings that he was renovating. After that we headed into the City to meet Elle, one of our friends from Florence. Elle was leaving to do volunteer work in Africa on Friday so we wanted to hangout with her before she left. We had a mix-up and didnt get to meet up with her that night so we just walked from Washington Sq. Park through the East and West villages. Those are pretty unique areas, known for being counter-culture, non mainstream areas. Filled with shops and restaurants and interesting looking people it was a fun area to walk through. We then went down Mulberry St. into Little Italy (according to Mario its not the authentic one) and I was abe to use my Italian to talk to some lady who was outside a restaurant trying to get people to eat inside. We decided to try it and it was alright, nothing special. Little Italy had a surprising number of Asian owned shops and was only a few blocks in size. We continued down through a little bit of China town and walked for a while before taking the subway home. One thing I've loved doing is walking around Manhattan because every 3 blocks it really is a different place. So many different ethnic areas, shopping areas, surreal areas like Times Sq. and pretty much everything you can imagine. Thursday we hooked up with Elle at her Washington Sq. Park apartment and started walking. We took the subway up into Times Sq to get a bite to eat at ESPN Zone, which is a sportsfans palace. The main eating floor was facing a wall with two huge screens and about 20 others, all with different sporting events on. It was alot to take in. I was very happy to see about 8 basketball games one at one time. There also was a screen at out table that was touch operated and allowed you to bring up any of the 20+ games that were on the wall. The food was very good also and they had a great selection of beers on tap. I got a gorgonzola cheeseburger that was decent. (by the way we went out last Saturday to a gentlemans club and had a couple or a few drinks and one more thing I've learned in NY is that 30 whitecastle burgers between a couple guys does not feel good in the morning) After eating we walked around the always crazy Times Sq and started walking downtown. We spent about an hour walking around NY before taking another subway to a stop near her house. One thing about NY is that it's a very clean and safe feeling city. The subways actually feel cleaner than many in europe (at least italy). I also have a safer feeling than in many other American cities I have been in. It might be because of the 100,000 NYPD officers there are but it's definitely different than I expected. All the New Yorkers explain that it was Guiliani's work that made it this way. After we got off the subway we walked to the hollywood diner for milkshakes. We hung out there for a while, talking about Italy and remembering some of the things we did. After we walked her to her apartment we had some fun wrestling in the streets before the mood was dampened by the realization that Marios jeep wasnt where he left it..... After some phone calls we discovered that it had been towed- about 40+ blocks away.(near the meat packing district This was at about 2AM but we decided to walk. As we walked through the different neighborhood we saw all the clubbers coming out all dressed up and jumping into their sportscars and limos. It was a pretty nice walk, still pretty warm and the streets for the most part were pretty empty. We made it to the tow lot at about 3:30AM and it took about 45 minutes for them to process his car out of the lot. Next update- Coney Island and last night.