Oh my goodness, we're in New York!

It's many, many hours since we left Sydney but here it's still Saturday. It  took 2 flights to get here - a 13-ish hour flight to Los Angeles, then a 5-hour hop to New York. We'd all been dreading the long flight but in some ways it was great! You just sit there and they bring you meals and other random food items and drinks, while you watch The Great Gatsby/The Hobbit/endless episodes of Dance Academy/travel shows with Michael Palin in them, or whatever captured each of us's interest at the time. Touchscreens on the back of the seat in front make it easy.

The transfer at Los Angeles was a bit frantic but clearing USA customs wasn't as intrusive as we expected. Back on a plane for New York, where our body clocks were telling us it was Sunday morning and the crew were serving Saturday lunch. A discussion about who had eaten the most lollies today led to the discovery that "today" isn't the clearly defined period we've come to expect.

At New York airport we queued up for a yellow taxi and headed into town!

The taxi took about half an hour from the airport to our hotel, with some dramatic views along the way.

Our hotel is cheap by New York standards but pretty expensive really. It's fairly basic but they give you free lemonade in the lobby and tell you to have a nice day. 

We didn't pay extra for a city view room, but the view is still quite impressive, with glimpses of the river.

We're worn out now after a 38-hour day, but we did pop out for a bit of an explore of New York on a Saturday night...

With some pretty crazy New York traffic...

Some very dramatic restaurants and night clubs...

Ripley's Believe-It-Or-Not...

And finally settling down to the biggest pizza we have ever seen!