The day after the night before

As many of you might already know, New York never sleeps. Well maybe that isn't 100 percent true, on New Years Day just as the sun is about to rise, all the sleepy partygoers from the night before are just putting their heads on their pillows, and I was one of them.

I thought that I would only need a few hours sleep and then I would be fine to get up and explore the rest of the city, how wrong I was. When the alarm sent its death rays into my room at 8am I thought I would puke just from having to wake up suddenly and press snooze because I was so tired. The next time I woke up it was 1pm. Lucky because I was meant to be going to Alex's at 2pm for a recovery lunch.

I made my way across town and caught up with the girls for a few hours. Then my day really started...at 5pm, but that is practically the morning for a New Yorker. I first went to Bloomingdales and discovered the world of fabulous it had inside. Holy god do they know what a good department store should be. Then after I walked around the city and made my way to Times Square to see the freak show at night.



Getting home

It's 4am in the New York Subway on New Years morning, this is what it looked like.

KATHY GRIFFIN NEEDS TO BACK OFF MA BOO!

Because there is so much going on in New York during New Years Eve, I wasn't able to do everything I wanted, which included seeing Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin doing their telecast for CNN in Times Square. Holy God Anderson Cooper is a silver fox and everytime I see this hot mess I know we will soon be together, you can tell how he looks at me...right?

Meanwhile what I wouldn't give to be Kathy Griffin in the last photo.

New Years Eve

For New Years Eve, SARAH and I had bought tickets to a party at The Bryant Park Grill, which was great as you know I die for Bryant Park generally. Because Bryant Park is quite close to Times Square there were streets closed off everywhere and also police manning every street corner and they wouldn't let you through unless you had a ticket to a party near by, it was really full on and nothing at all like Sydney where we are atleast a bit more laid back about things.

Anyway the party was amazing and I had a blast and ended up leaving at about 4 in the morning. We were treated to a dessert buffet AND a breakfast buffet as part of the party, they were both equally amazing.

The only negative aspect of this partytime was that I met a couple from Canberra, I am not even joking. How is that even possible. Curse of Canberra - 1 Benjamin - 0.


Hot mess of the night has to go to this bish below. She was like 45 and at a party where the medium age was about 22 and she was having a great time. I meet her when she got her talons into me while I was leaning against a wall and she said to me "zhere isish a desssert zhere yum" which actually translates as "There is a dessert buffet there, yum!". Anyway this bish was so drunk that nothing really mattered, especially not diction.

 

SARAH reunion!

The main reason I was in New Yok was to see my friend SARAH who has been there since March, being a hot mess in a leading design firm, you know it happens.

So we met in the lobby of my hotel and then went to the restaurant there called Cafe Gitane, which is actually amazing. All the staff have to be a size zero fashion week model but bizarely enough they are all actually really lovely, which unfortuently can not be said for the rest of their countrymen, as service in America is basically unheard of and certainly never seen.

We caught up and had breakfast and I admired all the stuffed animals on the wall, who knew you could stuff and then hang an alligator, but thank god they did.

Then Sarah took me a few streets over and we went to Magnolia bakery and tried their amazing cupcakes. For me the best part was the icing, it was to die for. SARAH was telling me that some people find the icing too sweet sometimes but for me it was ok, mostly because I have a sweet tooth.

Just down the road from Magnolia is Carrie's actual apartment used in Sex and the City and the stoop. So the new bish who owns it has had a breakdown and has banned tourist groups going down the street to take photo's (like how is that even legal) and she has put this butt ugly "no tresspassing sign" across the stoop. Like bitch please you don't own the street, and it's not like people are really going to break into your house in a chance they will get to see Carrie.

Further up the same street this little unasuming yet amazing cafe just seemed to pop up out of the ground, so we had a sneaky cino and admired New Yorkers for being so fashion forward that they can now coordinate their Wellington/snow boots with their ski jackets.

 

 

New York - Day 1

Day one in New York started very early for me, as the hotel that I was staying in (The Jane) felt that the only way to heat the hotel was to set the heaters to about 1000 degrees, I did have a fan however so that apparently would cool things down a bit.
I was going to meet my friend The Divine Miss Em at Bryant Park and so I thought that best way to get there would be on foot, so I could get to know the city and see what it was actually like under sunlight. The first two things that I saw was snow and rubbish EVERYWHERE! The blizard that had kept me in LA had seriously taken a toll on the city and it showed.

I wasn't blown away with the area that I was staying in as it was just a lot of buildings and streets, but the closer I got to Bryant Park the more I saw the city coming to life and eventually when I was at the Park my view had totally changed. In Bryant Park there is a man made ice skating rink which was adorable to watch while waiting for Em to arrive.

Then Em (who had been in New York for two weeks) became my tour guide and we went around Times Square and Rockerfellar. The most amazing and I think underrated part of this are is a giant Church just across the road from Rockerfellar which you never hear about.

Now you're in New York

Finally I have arrived in New York, a little bit later than what I thought I would but in a way it worked out well because the time I had in LA let my body get adjusted to the new timezone.

When I arrived it was like 1:30am and way colder than LA, which I knew it would be but I still wasn't ready for how cold it was. There was still snow pilled up on the runway which for an Australian was amazing to see!

Even though it was the middle of the night JFK airport was honking and I was exhausted. I tried to get a car to take me into the city, but the waiting time was one hour! ONE HOUR! How is that even possible, so instead I took a gypsy cab with this African driver. My other option was to get a cab (for about the same price) except for the queue would have been 100 people deep, I was not waiting!

The driver got lost because it was the one street in New York he didn't seem to know (of course) and as he had such excellent knoweldge of the city and roads refussed to turn on his GPS, that is until I became a Princess and took over and demanded he turn it on, then like 10 minutes later we arrived. I didn't really see much of New York at night but I knew that tomorrow would be a new day.