Thursday, September 4th 2008

Thursday, September 4th 2008

Today was an extremely interesting day... after almost 2 days of the worst time of my life on the world’s worst buses we ended up in downtown New York at the bus depot. We threw our backpacks on and braved the hot, humid and stinky NYC metro system; at least the buses themselves were air conditioned. After we got off the metro we hiked up the stairs into the scorching and nose wrenching streets of Harlem NY to make our way to our hostel. We found our hostel fairly easily, however, we were definitely thrown off by being a definite visible minority.... something you’re not used to from growing up in South St. Vital in Winnipeg. Either way, it’s all good and our hostel is cheap and clean. After a brief backpack gear-compacting party we grabbed our skateboards and boarded the metro system en route towards downtown. We ended up at the world famous Brooklyn banks skate spot directly under the Brooklyn Bridge. It was amazing but really challenging... I think I need another day there. After sweating heavily under the bridge downtown we headed for the nearest McDonald’s to grab some ice cold H2O... it was great. After that refreshing stop we headed towards Times Square and found a wine shop where Brandice and Sheener picked up some wine. Wait.... before that we ate the world’s best pizza at some terribly casual burger/pizza joint... I believe it was called Liberty Deli. We then took advantage of our 7 day unlimited metro pass and booked it back home to Harlem.... yeeeaa Harlem! I showered and then we walked to Lennox and picked up some beer at some sketchy corner store not even worth calling a Depaneur. I would also like to mention that there is a high class auto sales dealer in one of the sketchiest areas of town where we saw a Lambo, some Bentley’s and Rolls Royce... etc... Whilst drinking our beers on the gazebo of our hostel we ran into a very attractive Scottish man named Martin and his friend David. We discussed going clubbing and then realised that Brandice is the only out of us four that is of legal age... we scrapped that idea and headed on a Harold and Kumar adventure towards the fabled White castle. I will only say this: Despite their tiny size, five White Castle burgers followed by fries and a coke are not as glorious as the stoned movie stars made it out to be. After our grease filled adventure we went our separate ways from the two Scots and trekked back towards home... oh yeah, and we picked up some more beer... this time of lesser quality but heavy quantity. As we sipped our terrible beers on the gazebo we were visited by a Harlem local who tried swindling us for a total of five dollars so he could pick up a gram of marijuana from a legitimate Jamaican source and then come back and apparently share a blunt with us. Harlem is the best.... you just gotta check yoself a bit.

And here I sit in the kitchen/living space of the “Jazz on the villa” hostel surrounded by Sheen, Ryan and eleven others. .. I believe “sex and the city” is playing on the big screen beside me... either that or something equally shitty. It’s 11:45pm and I think it’s time that I brave the burgers laying in my stomach and try to get some sleep. Bonsoir