'Now you're in New Yoooooooooooork' (except I'm not because I'm back now)

Hello all.

I had a marvellous time in New York (concrete jungle that dreams are made of), it was really really good. And as a bonus I got back with 36 hours to spare before the whole world went volcano-crazy and had to resort to plebeian land-based forms of transport.

We walked MILES, at least five miles a day, and we did and saw so much, so I shall only share with you the highlights and some of the nicer pictures. It was meant to be a more relaxed trip to New York this time, as we'd already rushed around for four days there before doing all the touristy things, but in the end we did just as much this time. It's that sort of place, you can't really just sit around when you're in the middle of one of the coolest cities you can visit.

Our flight out from Heathrow was fine (good old Virgin Atlantic, they're always so good). We used Purple Parking at the airport, which I had been a bit worried about because I'd read some bad reviews, but in actual fact they were really good and ever so efficient. I guess some people just get unlucky and have a bad experience, but we thought they were really good.

Anyway, the flight was fine as I say, and I watched the film Precious on the way out. It's a harrowing film in many ways, but it's also brilliant and gritty, and kind of uplifting by the end. I also watched half of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, which was crap and predictable and as annoying as any of the other JK Rowling drivel (I watched the second half on the flight home; it didn't improve).

The hotel was the same one as we stayed at on our honeymoon, the Chelsea Pines Inn on West 14th Street. It's a really nice gay hotel with very friendly staff, and all the rooms are named after movie stars and have their movie posters on the walls. This time we were in the Mitzi Gaynor room, which was a cheaper bracket of room than we had before, and it did show a bit. It was fine, nice posh furniture and stuff, but not as plush. I'd still recommend it anyway, and you can't fault the location; it's ideally placed so you can walk uptown to Times Square and the touristy bits, and downtown into Greenwich Village where lots of gay bars are.

Some of the exciting things we did included:

- Walking miles and miles up and down 8th Avenue, 7th Avenue, 6th Avenue, 5th Avenue and Broadway. We saw lots of skyscrapers, and went in loads of shops, but apart from my cool new Skechers I didn't actually buy anything. American clothes were so BORING. If I want checked shirts and chinos I can buy those at home thank you very much.

The shopping was not wasted time however, as several US stores apparently employ hot, semi-clad male and female greeters who entice you in and then stand there letting you drool over them. Principally I'm talking about Abercrombie & Fitch, and Hollisters. Behold the hotness:

And once you've walked around looking at all the hot boys (and girls dancing in stairwells in bikinis) you can swan back out again obviously without buying anything, and they STILL wish you a nice day.

- We went to a couple of museums: the Museum of Modern Art (the MoMa), where we saw lots of famous paintings by famous people. There was also an 'artist' woman who had decided that sitting in a chair in a red dress staring into space for three months counted as art. The museum apparently agreed, but it all seemed rather pointless to me, as she was obviously just sitting there wondering what to have for her tea. I liked this piece though:

And we went to the Museum of Sex, which was good for a giggle. I learnt about female anatomy:

And Chris learnt about sex toys:

- We went to quite a few different bars for drinkies. Some were very good (a bar called Pieces in particular), and some were crap (The Duplex). The Duplex was a pretentious piano bar where the drinks were over-priced, and they kept passing round this stupid fucking plastic top-hat to try to solicit tips for the pianist. Frankly, after paying £10 for two drinks AND having to tip the barmaid on top of that, we weren't prepared to give them any more money. "Has everybody had the hat?" they kept asking expectantly. Yes we had had the hat, and we passed it straight onto the next person thank you very fucking much. We didn't stay there long.

Pieces, on the other hand, had some excellent reasons to stay there, including this:

And I met @plaintruthiness whom I know from Twitter there too. I think that's the first person I know from Twitter that I've met in real life actually.

I had one night where I over-indulged and threw up everywhere when we got back to the hotel, and consequently one day with a shocking SHOCKING hangover, but other than that I coped fairly well given my general wussiness and lightweightedness.

- What else... oo yes, we saw Chicago on Broadway, which was fab! I knew nothing at all about the story, and so it was all new to me and I really really enjoyed it. Plus it had the third not-quite-so-famous one from Destiny's Child in it (not Beyoncé, not Kelly Rowland, the other one. Michelle summink) in one of the lead roles.

And I think that's about it! I'm obviously really pleased that we got back before the volcano erupted, as I'm not sure I'd fancy being stuck abroad indefinitely. Chris' brother and sister-in-law are currently trapped in Fuerteventura, but I think they're OK and the tour operator is looking after them, and so there are worse things.

I've been back at work for half a day now, and it's been alriiiiiiiiight, it could be worse, but it's still pretty crappy compared to swanning about in New York and photographing hot boys.

I have lots of other things I should write about that aren't New York-related, but I shall save those for later.

TTFN.