Frankie told us it was the city which never sleeps, Maculary Culkin was lost in it and John Lennon took a wrong turning there with fatal results New York City is one of the most remarkable places on earth. Over the next four pages we are going to attempt to capture the magic we took away from The Big Apple and share our experiences with you. Now if you are looking for your normal tourist Wish-You-Were-Here style rubbish, then we suggest you jet off somewhere else across the Web. Yes, we did all the tourist attractions, but this isn't what our report is about. We won't bombarded you with irrelevant facts or bore you with statistics. This was our holiday and we want to bring you along for the ride..
Take off that watch, mobile on the tray oh, and that gun you are hiding in your pocket? It's gonna show up through Heathrow's security system, so best depose of it now. Try hiding it in your wheelchair! That is actually a good point, last year a terrorist nearly succeeded hiding a bomb deterrent in a baby's bottle of milk. So would a gun, hidden in a wheelchair pass through the metal detectors? We actually don't know, but the guys at Heathrow certainly carry out a tough check on us before we make our way to the Virgin Atlantic Club house. The VIP hideaway where our holiday really starts.
Upstairs, the clubhouse can best be described as an adult playground. Starting from the far left, so we don't miss anything out, there's a spa and sauna allowing you can freshen up before the flight and next door is a saloon, so a quick short back and sides could sort you out with your chances of joining the mile high club with an air hostess. If you dehydrate in the sauna then the bar right opposite can quench those thirstbuds ideally and even serve up a three course meal. Bit too much to stomach before a flight? Then the Delia bar gives guests the perfect light lunch with a wide selection of rolls, meats and exotic food which we couldn't even identify. Amazingly all the Delia food is served with proper currently, which is surprising as recent regulations compulsively replaced such presidential weapons with plastic knifes and forks. Mind you, if you paid an extra couple of grand to fly upper class would you really want to fork the pilots eyes out and ruin the journey?
Delayed flights could be a blessing in the Clubhouse, especially if you are in the chalet room playing table arcade games, potting the black on the poole table or enhanced reading a story in one of the wide selection of complementary magazines on display. If the weather is suitable enough the roof garden gives you some fresh air and an amazing view of, well, polluted air from airplanes fumes and probably a Jumbo obstructing any kind of foreseeable landscape.
With the waiting over we were eventually airborne and on our way to The Big Apple.
Once we landed, took the metro which, unlike the London underground is only a few feet below ground leveland checking in a dingy hotel in the Soho area of New York the time was around 1am, bearing in mind there's about a seven hour time zone change and we had no idea that our plane seats actually turn into a proper bed - we were shattered, but still up for a night on the town.
Staying local we found a bar with an Irish chap called Sean, spreading the word of ABLE2UK we gave him our URL, so just in case he has IRA connections we can proudly give the bar the award for the most ideal way to spend a night in Soho at. Despite the fact the disabled toilet was signpost with our most pet-hated word, Handicapped. A word we never use on ABLE2, it actually means Hand-In-Cap in other words, begging for cash because you are a spaz. The word originated from the States and is sadly still used widely around the country. The Yanks apparently had a problem with the acceptable term 'disabled' and a few years ago tried to change it to 'Physicality Challenged'.
That was until the biggest spastic of them all, George Bush came into power and now no matter how crippled or deranged you may come across comparison to the President will ensure others that there's always somebody more retarded than you!
OK, time to let you into a small secret. Don't tell anyone, but a couple of years ago we went to New York for the first time and we were meant to give our 2005 trip a full write up - We didn't. We went to see U2 at Madison Square Gardens and rubbed shoulders with Michael Stripe in the VIP lounge securing a great story - which was never written! And we visited all the tourist landmarks, which by memory we are going to write about now, 15 months late. Our first tourist attraction is simple to recall as we visited Times Square a few times during this years stay. Think Piccadilly Circus multiplied by a hundred. Bright Neon lights gives life to one of the worlds most busiest locations. The Virgin megastore has three floors of DVDs, books and even a cinema which is now sadly no longer in use.
Toys R Us has a Ferris wheel on the ground floor so older brothers can leave their annoying youngster circulating around the first floor whilst they play downstairs on the recently launched Playstation 3 (The graphics are mind-blowing!). Across the street MTV shares a huge building with VH1 and transmits TRL on a weekday afternoon over looking Times Square. Hard Rock Cafe is a rock memorabilia museum as well as a restaurant and clothes shops such as Billiabong stay open to midnight. Thanks for the 10% discount guys - we promised to give you a mention.
Dreams of our past adventures in Times Square filed our minds as we slept through our first night back in New York City. We knew the next three days would be as exciting as our last journey, but as the temperature dropped to below freezing outside our Hip Hop Tour in the morning would as cold be as Vanilla Ice's music career!