Last weekend, before I forget.

I should probably tell you about some of the things I experienced last weekend, before this weekend’s excursion to Staten Island replaces my memory of said experiences.




The excursion started at our local bus stop. Five guys went - (from left to right) Cem ("Jim", Turkey), Luke (UK), Yohan (Trinidad), Øystein (Norway) and this humble author (Denmark, behind the camera) with no particular plan in mind, except to have a good time in New York City. As I understand it, only Cem had been in NYC before, so there was every opportunity to get lost. We didn't even bring a map.

First stop (after White Plains Station and Grand Central Station) was Times Square, for no particular reason other than to see what the place was like, to get some lunch, and because Cem was heading that way, and nobody else knew where they wanted to go. It’s surprising how lost you can feel in a city where most of the streets are organised in a square grid. I suppose the lack of planning was part of the cause of the confusion, but I don’t like to plan too much – getting lost is much more fun. On the way to Times Square, Luke decided to try out his self-devised strategy of buying whatever the shop clerk or waiter claims is the best choice. We ended up with a map of mediocre quality (lots of sights, but with lots of streets missing) and a guide book of questionable quality. (Admittedly, his strategy did work when he ordered his dinner)

Some pictures from Times Square:




Over lunch we discussed what to do for the rest of the day. It quickly became apparent that everyone but I (not including Yohan, who had gone to Queens to visit his cousin) wanted to go to the Metropolitan Museum, and since we couln’t think of anything we all wanted to do, we decided to walk to the Met and then split up.

The way to the Met went through Central Park, where we had quite a nice walk, without getting lost (Luke’s map was, again, of very little help). I took lots of pictures, but not all of them are very good, and about half of them are of stuff that I have no idea what is (buildings in particular). Some pictures of Central Park:




South-west entrance to Central Park	In the middle of NYC, with NYC in the distance:	A tranquil spot in the middle of the metropolis:
A large rock formation in the park:	On the rocks:	Cem doing some unimpressive rock climbing. Sadly, I didn't catch him when he really panicked.
An American black squirrel. Apparently, they are becoming extinct...	...because of the European squirrel:	There are fences around all the lawns in Central Park, which seemed ridiculous to me, until I saw this sign - the fences are there to protect the elm trees:
A soft, almost bouncy stone surface. I think they put some sort of rubber mat underneath:	An impressive house in the playgrounds. I think it's the toilets...	Slow traffic:
A beautiful and idyllic lake...	...until you take a closer look at the water. Yuck! (according to Cem, it's legal to swim here...)	But a nice looking restaurant by the lake. Can we get a discount if we sit right by the lake?
Ignored sign. As a matter of fact, the sign was exactly the same on the opposite side, so I can only assume the pedicabs are not allowed to enter the area I was standing in. But why would you ever print such a message on both sides of a sign?	The fountain in Central Park. Its name eludes me.

I spent the rest of the day walking through Chinatown, Little Italy, Soho and Greenwich Village, but it’s getting really late, and I have lots of things to do tomorrow, so the pictures and stories from that walk will have to wait. But before I wrote all of the above, I uploaded some random stuff to end this post:




By request, I have taken a few pictures. First, here is a rush hour photo of the street I had to cross to get to the diner:

And here are some pictures from the sushi place I can’t stop myself from going to. The name of the place is Ichi Riki, in case someone reading this is in the White Plains area some time:



Oysters:	A local specialty - the Crystal Roll:	Another specialty - the Lobster Roll:
Luxury sushi - Salmon eggs, full fat tuna, sea urchin, white tuna and a tuna maki roll:	Fresh water eel:	Red snapper:
The chef who made this magnificent feast:

And finally, a few observations about the US:

• 
  

  An exit one of the highways: One can only assume that the exit leads to a cinema...

• One of the news stories this week was about this high school in Minnesota (or somewhere) where the girls could earn up to $2000 for their college studies, provided they didn’t become pregnant during high school. A very commendable idea, I think, given that teenage pregnancies is quite a big problem in this country. What stumped me, however, was the final sentence of the news story: “Should a girl become pregnant, the money she has earned will be distributed among the other students.” In other words, any particular girl actually gains if she can somehow get one of the other girls pregnant, e.g. by handing out defective condoms to her friends…
• The labels on beer bottles in this country encourages people to “drink responsibly”. One can then but wonder why none of the beer bottles I have looked at (and I assure you I have looked at many) tell you the alcohol percentage of the contents…

/J

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