I'll start with the old joke, "I just flew from Cape Town to New York and boy are my arms tired..." Yes its lame and, yes its not my arms that are tired. Everything else is.
For those of you who don't know, I flew Turkish Airlines to New York with a stop in Istanbul. I decided to stay awake the whole flight to Istanbul and only managed to get +- 5 hours of sleep on the Istanbul to New York leg. And that sleep was fitful and uncomfortable. And it was not my width that was the problem. It was my length. Sure Turkish Air is cheaper than the competition but there is reason for that. No legroom at all. Technically its better than SAA because the inflight entertainment is MUCH better than the rubbish SAA delivers for more money, but no leg room is still no leg room. I tried to order a seat with more leg room. No dice. At least Delta lets me upgrade to a Economy Comfort seat which has more leg room. So the San Fran leg of my journey will be much more enjoyable. I hope :)
So can I write a decent blog post while VERY tired? My body is craving sleep but I want to watch the first episode of the new season of Franklin and Bash which is at 10pm New York time so I must wait! And since my computer is telling me that its now 2:48am Cape Town time on Wednesday 6th June you can calculate how much sleep I have gotten over how much elapsed time (Cape Town time) and then imagine how my body must feel about that! Well my dear reader. I will let you be the judge!
I am very excited to be in New York. It has been a dream of many years to come here and now that dream is starting to become a reality. I think some people must have looked at me askance today and I had a smile on my face all the way into Manhattan. Seeing the Manhattan skyline for the first time was truely awesome. What was most fun was that I could even pick out some of the buildings. Not many but a few.
On our way into Manhattan I saw something else I actually had not expected. There is a scene in Men in Black 1 where Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones track a bug alien to Queens. The scene in question plays out when the bug tries to get away in one of the space ships that has been left at the site of a previous close encounter with extra-terrestrial life. J and K as they are called fire their weapons and bring down the ship whereapon it crashes through a huge steel structure that represents a globe of earth. This is what I saw on the way to my hotel. And I liked it. We also drove past Madison Square Garden which was one of the sets for another New York based movie Godzilla. Caught a glimpse of the building where supposedly Jonah Jameson had his newspaper, the Daily Bugle. It was also the site where Neal Caffree of White Collar base-jumped after replacing a painting he had stolen with a forgery.
I remember someone mentioning (possibly also in a movie) about how there seems to be a Starbucks on every corner in New York. Well I went looking for a DVD this afternoon and walked down one street and saw four Starbucks coffee shops. Four. Two of them were even within line of site. And I only walked about a kilometer and a half. Thats alot of coffee! I also got the very strong impression that these coffee shops are really all about coffee. There really isn't much else on the menu. Our own home grown product Mugg and Bean at least has a diverse menu that allows you to enjoy a good cup of coffee (or used to do so) AND have a meal if you so chose. Not here. I still need to find a place to eat breakfast. I have one option available so far. They do pancakes and potentially other things as well. At least my breakfast needs in San Francisco will be taken care of! More about that later :)
T-Mobile can only give me Edge connectivity on my really cool iPhone 4S ( :( ) but it is much better than nothing. And Google Maps is a Godsend on the iPhone when you need to plan your routes around a unknown town like New York. Well its unknown to me at any rate :)
Well rather than ramble on forever I will close off by saying I am really glad to be in the Big Apple finally and am looking forward to all the sites I will see tomorrow when I venture out on my first unassisted day of touring. Time Square here I come....
