Gone traveling,
Back shortly.A Travel Journal by Scott Hargroves & Heather Noonan

As Brad asked… we do have free wie-fies – that is, free wi-fi in the apartment, which means that when we blog, we can blog easily and often. Though we only posted on Monday, it was actually very early morning when we did which meant that we had a full day of adventures to get through, and then another today so this blog will be two days worth of our New York stories.

So, on Monday it rained. And rained. And rained some more. But hey, as Jodi pointed out, we’re English, and rain doesn’t bother us. Actually, that’s not quite right. I’m English… Scott’s a New Zealander so he has to try a little harder than me to like (or tolerate) endless rain. We weren’t going to let a bit of water ruin our day so we suited, booted and umbrella’d ourselves up.

We didn’t have much of a set plan except that there were a few places we wanted to check out. We headed to 5th avenue, and scouted out Rockefeller Centre. You know what this is….if you don’t…think Kevin Mcallister and the moment when his Mum finally finds her Lost Boy in Home Alone 2. The big dazzling tree was there… but it wasn’t dazzling. Being an area full of network and cable channels it wasn’t too surprising to see a crazy amount of “setting up” happening… we put 2 and 2 together and realised that they were organising the light switch on, which coincidentally is happening at 8.55pm EST this evening. The ice rink (as made famous, at least to anybody cool, in Home Alone 2) I felt was surprisingly small and less spectacular than the photographs make out. We’ve decided to root out the Central Park ice rink as that is much bigger and we figured we need more space to fall over. Gracefully, of course. The lights/tree switch on is pretty exciting… plus, Shakira is going to be there and we want to check out those “small and humbles” for real.

After our little foray in a classic Home Alone spot and a bite to eat at Pret (Yeah, we go millions of miles across the ocean, and eat in a place we have back in England, weird huh?) we ventured around the block to Nintendo world as a small business excursion in which Heather could research the cutting edge in ‘Nintendology’ – a phrase I have just coined. It’s pretty nice inside actually and we got to have a quick go on all the Wiis to burn off any excess burger juice we may or may not have consumed thus far.

Carrying on up 5th Avenue towards my own personal New York Mecca: the glass Apple Store, we happened to pass something a little odd. Two homeless people in a very heated turf war debate. The overall gist of the story is that one guy felt that the ‘new woman’ had stolen his area. The woman just resorted to name calling while the guy kept repeatedly saying “call the police”, referring to a time the woman had, in fact, called the police on the original guy. I don’t really know about Homeless Politics but I do believe that you shouldn’t just walk into someones home and steal money, so I am with the guy on this one. It is surprising what you can pick up on whilst waiting to cross the street.

5th Ave is pretty insane, it’s full of extremely expensive shops that look awesome this time of year, but also not too inviting for people who are visiting on a budget. However, what did look inviting was the sterile glass cube housing the huge glowing Apple logo. The Apple store itself is actually underground, and the glass cube is merely the entrance. As we entered, the guy at the door used a nifty little machine that bagged our wet umbrellas so we didn’t drop water everywhere. We all know that adding water to the electronics isn’t much of a good idea. The store is huge, and packed full of people. There is talk of this place being one of the most profitable shops in the world, and you can easily believe this with the amount of people in there buying.

On our way out of the store I noticed another familiar site… the hotel good old Kevin stays in during his New York trip: The Ding Dong Dang Plaza Hotel. There is no wonder that they chose this as his location. This place is insane. Huge doesn’t come close and grand can’t touch it. Basically Huge and Grand. Credit Card? Yoooou got it.

By this time we were wet and cold but still had plenty of spirit left in us. We noticed that we had stumbled into the theatre district. That’s Broadway, which is right next to Times Square. I got a little bit excited when I saw the huge sign for Wicked…so Scott agreed to check out the price. The Price! Deary me…well…we went looking at other shows, and other prices…and the prices grew exponentially…so that idea got scrapped. Plus…who wants to watch anything in New York that hasn’t got Gene or Frank as its star?

I was getting hungry…to be honest, I’m still feeling the messed up body clock so although Scott was full from lunch my body was expecting tea, and by the English clock we were about 4 hours late. I naively suggested the Hard Rock cafe, only because we’ve been to London’s, and Manchester’s and enjoyed both. Though it was supposed to be an “experience” we felt rushed, and Scott’s burger….well, let’s just say he should have gone to specsav…I mean MacDonald’s. Mistake duly noted.

So, Monday was a day of wandering and wondering…though it was raining we remained outside for pretty much the whole time. It was interesting, and everything was so huge and fantastical that we drank it all in and didn’t care about our sore legs or wet feet.

As we trekked home, back along 44th Street something strange happened. In virtually the same place as Jude was stood, a doorman was sending someone out of the door and rudely saying that this isn’t where you think it is. I was taken back by this, as so far all doormen have been exceptionally nice. As the doorman returned to the door, and the dejected man turned around towards us, Heather realised that the man was in actual fact Larry David. I didn’t actually see his face as I was busy trying to work out what was going on. 44th is obviously the place to be to fill up your autograph book, that’s for sure. The day was now complete and, content, we carried on home (and with a bag full of Reeses minature cups in Heather’s bag) ready for sleep and excitement for Tuesday.