Wednesday 16 January 2013
Sledgehammer Bingo
Is my favourite night at Western, I've decided. You get pitchers of beer, free popcorn, and play Bingo.. win and you get to put on goggles and a poncho, sledgehammer some fruit, and take home some sex toys, pizza, or XL poutine. Lose, and you strip or buy shots for a shrine of Honey Boo Boo. Last night I won. TWICE. And our team won a third time. Cock ring, family sized poutine and salt and pepper penis shakers. Ceeps I love you!
Tuesday 15 January 2013
New York City
So this is a fantastically belated post about part two of my Christmas travels - the Big Apple. This has actually been the post I've been most excited to write about because NYC is fabulous, however the amount of things we crammed into five days is likely to produce an essay longer than I want to write or anybody wants to read, so I'll attempt to keep it considerably short and sweet.
Day 1
8 hours later than planned due to snowstorms and cancelled coaches, we got our first view of the city by sunset, driving along the entire skyline from across the Hudson river. Everyone was equally embarrassing and started listening to any song about New York (Empire State of Mind was mine) whilst sort of excitedly squeaking and shouting "IT'S SO BIG!" (no innuendo intended). But it was. It's fucking MASSIVE. So bizzare seeing it in real life after seeing that skyline a thousand times over on photos and films. Due to it being so late, we dropped our cases off at the best hotel a minute from the station, right opposite the New Yorker and five from Times Square, and went to get our first glimpse of the Square. It was as if it was daylight at 8 o'clock at night with the glare from the lights! It was such a bustling and exciting place, you sort of felt like something out of a film was going to happen at any moment.. sadly no flash mobs BUT I did meet Woody from Toy Story.. anyone who knows me will know what this meant for me. We bailed to bed early after a meal at an Irish pub and sampling NY crepes.
Day 2
Up and out by 9am, we went to rush tickets for a Broadway show - this is where you get in line to get heavily discounted tickets for a number of shows, and we ended up with some amazing seats in Avenue Q, a risqué puppet show made by the creators of Sesame Street. It was a matinee performance so slotted in halfway through our day and was hilarious and so cleverly directed, it was exactly what we all needed to wake us up as New York is unsurprisingly exhausting to visit. The morning was spent experiencing our first subway which wasn't as terrifying as I expected and visiting the Met. The best thing about the majority of the sightseeing we did is that it was either free or extremely inexpensive - to visit the Met was free, but to get in special exhibitions you donate however much you want. I guiltily donated just $1 to see an Andy Warhol exhibition, but the staff were lovely and explained they have the system so students like us get to experience the museum. Who was in the same tiny exhibition as us but James fucking Franco?! He literally must have been right next to me at one point but I was too busy looking at the stupid art to notice. However the exhibition was incredible which I didn't expect to enjoy.
After Avenue Q, we decided to take a stroll down 5th Av and sample the shops. I say stroll - 5th Av is one of the longest streets in the world, so we took a subway to Macy's instead. Macy's is the biggest store in the entire world! Literally. Think Primark in central London - but bigger. It felt like 100 stores crammed into one, and the products made me sick with envy so I left as soon as I could. This is when we discovered New York's downfall - unless you know the city really well, or have thousands of dollars to blow, the shopping.. isn't all that great. There are countless Forever 21's, Steve Madden's and Zara's, but how many can you realistically go in without getting bored and not finding what you want? The stores were all messy and disorganized and the staff were rude, but I think this may have something to do with it being New York at New Year - the busiest time! My favourite shop of the day was Toys R Us in Times Square! It was five floors high, with a ferris wheel right in the middle, a Wonkaland, life-size Barbie house, almost life-size dinosaur which moved and roared, plus more toys than anybody can comprehend. I will NEVER take my child there unless I want to go bankrupt. We were in here until about 11.30 and the place was still crawling, the city actually never sleeps. As we were climbing into bed, Ryan comes knocking at the door and drags me and Jess for a spontaneous night out with other people on exchange from Leeds at his uni. It was a ridiculous and hilarious night out which involved cameras almost getting robbed, running on NYPD cars and breaking into a 4* hotel with security chasing us.. not that I can remember, I'm just glad I didn't get arrested!
Day 3
Still drunk, we got the subway to the Natural History Museum via Grand Central. Grand Central was beautiful and magnificent, and more impressive than I expected it to be. Some people were running in all different directions just trying to get to where they needed to be, whilst others stood staring around and taking pictures - we were the latter, and I got the same feeling I seemed to have all week that we were in the middle of a film! The Natural History Museum was a perfect hangover cure, but honestly you could spend days in that place and not get bored, it was so so huge, and took us hours to pass through without reading any of the information. Midway through the day we took a wander through Central Park to get to the Rockerfeller. Like everything else in the city, Central Park is SO big. We must have covered such a tiny portion of it, but it was my favourite part of the whole trip. Snow was still on the ground from the day before but it was brilliantly sunny with not a single cloud, and the park was so stunning. We passed by the biggest of the lakes, the fountain, the boathouse, the ice skating rink and the row of trees featured in so many famous films, I was pretending to be in SATC the entire time.
The Rockerfeller, besides NYE, was the busiest place we went to on the trip. Ice skating? Not a chance. You could barely get a good look at it, never mind get on it! However the Christmas decorations, in particular the tree, are as impressive as they're hyped up to be. New York does nothing by halves! The prospect of a 4 hour line up Top of the Rock caused us to cover a little more shopping, grab some famous dollar pizza and retire to bed.
Day 4
The final day of 2013 began with an early morning trip to the Empire State Building, where I REALLY wanted to be Elf and press all the buttons in the elevator.. but thought the Chinese tourists riding up with me might murder me. The views were mind blowing, you forget the expanse of Manhatten, never mind Brooklyn and the surrounding areas. The wind got the better of us and we retired after about half an hour, not before picking up a half-price snowglobe out of Elf (again)! Speaking of Elf, the entire week was spent trying to spot/re-enact scenes from it. Obsession gone too far.
The rest of the entire day was taken up by the military operation that is Times Square on NYE. Reviews told me "it's something you have to do once in your life, but never again".. perfect description! It was a long day of highs and lows and delirium and no toilet trips and pens and cheering and games and rationed water but at the end of it total EXCITEMENT. We had a mini countdown every hour as the rest of the world welcomed in 2013 which was really cute, but despite being only one block back from the stage we could barely see anything as the screens all still showed adverts bar one! Naughty Times Square. However the final hour, the atmosphere really was electric and the countdown was the most exciting I've had by miles. Afterwards the streets were pouring with people shouting "HAPPY NEW YEAR", throwing confetti, blowing horns, even the people in bars were waving and shouting, it was so much fun. Exhausted and forgetting to get alcohol we were in bed by 2am, the most sober I've been on NYE in years!
Day 5
The first thing we did in 2013 was go to visit Ground Zero - not the most uplifiting start to the year! It's very difficult to make a graveyard into a tourist attraction, but the memorial is absolutely stunning. When you look around, you still see all the damage to the surrounding buildings and it's hard to comprehend what actually happened there. I was sort of milling around struggling to really think of it all as being real, when a woman stood next to me shocked me out of it by talking to me.
She pointed to a name and nudges me, saying "Guess what? I used to date him." I just sort of looked at her in shock and stammered some sort of apology. "Yeaaah," she sighed, "we had a bit of a thing in our 20's then just lost touch, but when I saw it on the screens I knew he'd have been the first one in there." "Was he a firefighter?" I asked, literally not knowing whether to give her a hug or start crying. "Yeah, but don't worry, he'd have loved to die how he did, saving people." Then she just smiled at me, says "Have a good day!" and walks off. That was definitely enough for reality to kick in.
Trying to lift all our spirits, we wandered through Wall St, feeling like total scruffy ants, to get the subway to find some decent shopping with most of our cash still sitting in our pockets. Today shopping was far more successful, after stopping by the New York public library we headed to Soho, where cool shops lined a maze of cobbled streets, and was much more manageable than 5th Ave and alike. Just next to Soho is Little Italy, which felt like holiday, with gorgeous little streets crammed with restaurants. The meal we had that night was beauuuutiful, the entire menu was in Italian so despite the waiter translating some it was sort of a guessing game, although it was hard to guess wrong as it all looked incredible. I wish we'd had time to go again!
Day 6
Our final day in the city began with another of New York's infamous attractions, yet again free of charge; the Staten Island ferry. Back down Wall St we went to take the 20 minute trip out to Ellis Island. The damage from Sandy meant we couldn't go onto Ellis Island and walk around, but the ferry gave us the best views of the skyline and the Statue of Liberty, despite being almost as cold as Montreal thanks to the wind! I wanted to pretend I was Carrie when she goes to the party with all the firefighters BUT the bit on the ferry she gets to go on was closed off. Boooooo.
From the port we walked along the harbour to the Brooklyn Bridge which was SO cool.. another SATC moment, Miranda and Steve 4lyf <3. The pedestrian walkway is in the centre of the bridge so you get the two lanes of traffic driving either side which is cool, and all along the bridge there's bunches of padlocks fastened to the sides, with a couple's names and their anniversary or other romantic messages.. slightly sickening but very very sweet. The views again were fantastic and very movie-esque, then we headed to another random area of the city to do some final shopping. Wandering around we discovered a cute little waterfall in between some apartment blocks and a cafe.. it's little quirks of the city I want to be able to see next time I come back, whenever that may be, one week is not enough to do somewhere like New York.. although one year most likely wouldn't be either!
Another giant meal ended the trip, this time at Applebees, with a coach journey spent entirely sleeping dropping us back in Toronto, which after the craziness of New York really felt like home.
Our time in Toronto was planned to be intense sightseeing for Steph's sake.. yet once we met up with Tasha all we wanted to do was catch up and get drunk.. which we did. And it was so much fun, despite a lost phone and spiked drink.
Sooo.... short and sweet this wasn't. But a week in NYC cannot be kept short and sweet. Frost week back in London has been unsurprisingly hectic, especially with the added stress of attempting to learn to ski before my trip to Tremblant this weekend. Skiing is so much fun, and Tremblant sounds like all you do is ski, get drunk, ski, get drunk.. sometimes simultaneously. I cannot wait!
Day 1
8 hours later than planned due to snowstorms and cancelled coaches, we got our first view of the city by sunset, driving along the entire skyline from across the Hudson river. Everyone was equally embarrassing and started listening to any song about New York (Empire State of Mind was mine) whilst sort of excitedly squeaking and shouting "IT'S SO BIG!" (no innuendo intended). But it was. It's fucking MASSIVE. So bizzare seeing it in real life after seeing that skyline a thousand times over on photos and films. Due to it being so late, we dropped our cases off at the best hotel a minute from the station, right opposite the New Yorker and five from Times Square, and went to get our first glimpse of the Square. It was as if it was daylight at 8 o'clock at night with the glare from the lights! It was such a bustling and exciting place, you sort of felt like something out of a film was going to happen at any moment.. sadly no flash mobs BUT I did meet Woody from Toy Story.. anyone who knows me will know what this meant for me. We bailed to bed early after a meal at an Irish pub and sampling NY crepes.
Day 2
Up and out by 9am, we went to rush tickets for a Broadway show - this is where you get in line to get heavily discounted tickets for a number of shows, and we ended up with some amazing seats in Avenue Q, a risqué puppet show made by the creators of Sesame Street. It was a matinee performance so slotted in halfway through our day and was hilarious and so cleverly directed, it was exactly what we all needed to wake us up as New York is unsurprisingly exhausting to visit. The morning was spent experiencing our first subway which wasn't as terrifying as I expected and visiting the Met. The best thing about the majority of the sightseeing we did is that it was either free or extremely inexpensive - to visit the Met was free, but to get in special exhibitions you donate however much you want. I guiltily donated just $1 to see an Andy Warhol exhibition, but the staff were lovely and explained they have the system so students like us get to experience the museum. Who was in the same tiny exhibition as us but James fucking Franco?! He literally must have been right next to me at one point but I was too busy looking at the stupid art to notice. However the exhibition was incredible which I didn't expect to enjoy.
After Avenue Q, we decided to take a stroll down 5th Av and sample the shops. I say stroll - 5th Av is one of the longest streets in the world, so we took a subway to Macy's instead. Macy's is the biggest store in the entire world! Literally. Think Primark in central London - but bigger. It felt like 100 stores crammed into one, and the products made me sick with envy so I left as soon as I could. This is when we discovered New York's downfall - unless you know the city really well, or have thousands of dollars to blow, the shopping.. isn't all that great. There are countless Forever 21's, Steve Madden's and Zara's, but how many can you realistically go in without getting bored and not finding what you want? The stores were all messy and disorganized and the staff were rude, but I think this may have something to do with it being New York at New Year - the busiest time! My favourite shop of the day was Toys R Us in Times Square! It was five floors high, with a ferris wheel right in the middle, a Wonkaland, life-size Barbie house, almost life-size dinosaur which moved and roared, plus more toys than anybody can comprehend. I will NEVER take my child there unless I want to go bankrupt. We were in here until about 11.30 and the place was still crawling, the city actually never sleeps. As we were climbing into bed, Ryan comes knocking at the door and drags me and Jess for a spontaneous night out with other people on exchange from Leeds at his uni. It was a ridiculous and hilarious night out which involved cameras almost getting robbed, running on NYPD cars and breaking into a 4* hotel with security chasing us.. not that I can remember, I'm just glad I didn't get arrested!
Day 3
Still drunk, we got the subway to the Natural History Museum via Grand Central. Grand Central was beautiful and magnificent, and more impressive than I expected it to be. Some people were running in all different directions just trying to get to where they needed to be, whilst others stood staring around and taking pictures - we were the latter, and I got the same feeling I seemed to have all week that we were in the middle of a film! The Natural History Museum was a perfect hangover cure, but honestly you could spend days in that place and not get bored, it was so so huge, and took us hours to pass through without reading any of the information. Midway through the day we took a wander through Central Park to get to the Rockerfeller. Like everything else in the city, Central Park is SO big. We must have covered such a tiny portion of it, but it was my favourite part of the whole trip. Snow was still on the ground from the day before but it was brilliantly sunny with not a single cloud, and the park was so stunning. We passed by the biggest of the lakes, the fountain, the boathouse, the ice skating rink and the row of trees featured in so many famous films, I was pretending to be in SATC the entire time.
The Rockerfeller, besides NYE, was the busiest place we went to on the trip. Ice skating? Not a chance. You could barely get a good look at it, never mind get on it! However the Christmas decorations, in particular the tree, are as impressive as they're hyped up to be. New York does nothing by halves! The prospect of a 4 hour line up Top of the Rock caused us to cover a little more shopping, grab some famous dollar pizza and retire to bed.
Day 4
The final day of 2013 began with an early morning trip to the Empire State Building, where I REALLY wanted to be Elf and press all the buttons in the elevator.. but thought the Chinese tourists riding up with me might murder me. The views were mind blowing, you forget the expanse of Manhatten, never mind Brooklyn and the surrounding areas. The wind got the better of us and we retired after about half an hour, not before picking up a half-price snowglobe out of Elf (again)! Speaking of Elf, the entire week was spent trying to spot/re-enact scenes from it. Obsession gone too far.
The rest of the entire day was taken up by the military operation that is Times Square on NYE. Reviews told me "it's something you have to do once in your life, but never again".. perfect description! It was a long day of highs and lows and delirium and no toilet trips and pens and cheering and games and rationed water but at the end of it total EXCITEMENT. We had a mini countdown every hour as the rest of the world welcomed in 2013 which was really cute, but despite being only one block back from the stage we could barely see anything as the screens all still showed adverts bar one! Naughty Times Square. However the final hour, the atmosphere really was electric and the countdown was the most exciting I've had by miles. Afterwards the streets were pouring with people shouting "HAPPY NEW YEAR", throwing confetti, blowing horns, even the people in bars were waving and shouting, it was so much fun. Exhausted and forgetting to get alcohol we were in bed by 2am, the most sober I've been on NYE in years!
Day 5
The first thing we did in 2013 was go to visit Ground Zero - not the most uplifiting start to the year! It's very difficult to make a graveyard into a tourist attraction, but the memorial is absolutely stunning. When you look around, you still see all the damage to the surrounding buildings and it's hard to comprehend what actually happened there. I was sort of milling around struggling to really think of it all as being real, when a woman stood next to me shocked me out of it by talking to me.
She pointed to a name and nudges me, saying "Guess what? I used to date him." I just sort of looked at her in shock and stammered some sort of apology. "Yeaaah," she sighed, "we had a bit of a thing in our 20's then just lost touch, but when I saw it on the screens I knew he'd have been the first one in there." "Was he a firefighter?" I asked, literally not knowing whether to give her a hug or start crying. "Yeah, but don't worry, he'd have loved to die how he did, saving people." Then she just smiled at me, says "Have a good day!" and walks off. That was definitely enough for reality to kick in.
Trying to lift all our spirits, we wandered through Wall St, feeling like total scruffy ants, to get the subway to find some decent shopping with most of our cash still sitting in our pockets. Today shopping was far more successful, after stopping by the New York public library we headed to Soho, where cool shops lined a maze of cobbled streets, and was much more manageable than 5th Ave and alike. Just next to Soho is Little Italy, which felt like holiday, with gorgeous little streets crammed with restaurants. The meal we had that night was beauuuutiful, the entire menu was in Italian so despite the waiter translating some it was sort of a guessing game, although it was hard to guess wrong as it all looked incredible. I wish we'd had time to go again!
Day 6
Our final day in the city began with another of New York's infamous attractions, yet again free of charge; the Staten Island ferry. Back down Wall St we went to take the 20 minute trip out to Ellis Island. The damage from Sandy meant we couldn't go onto Ellis Island and walk around, but the ferry gave us the best views of the skyline and the Statue of Liberty, despite being almost as cold as Montreal thanks to the wind! I wanted to pretend I was Carrie when she goes to the party with all the firefighters BUT the bit on the ferry she gets to go on was closed off. Boooooo.
From the port we walked along the harbour to the Brooklyn Bridge which was SO cool.. another SATC moment, Miranda and Steve 4lyf <3. The pedestrian walkway is in the centre of the bridge so you get the two lanes of traffic driving either side which is cool, and all along the bridge there's bunches of padlocks fastened to the sides, with a couple's names and their anniversary or other romantic messages.. slightly sickening but very very sweet. The views again were fantastic and very movie-esque, then we headed to another random area of the city to do some final shopping. Wandering around we discovered a cute little waterfall in between some apartment blocks and a cafe.. it's little quirks of the city I want to be able to see next time I come back, whenever that may be, one week is not enough to do somewhere like New York.. although one year most likely wouldn't be either!
Another giant meal ended the trip, this time at Applebees, with a coach journey spent entirely sleeping dropping us back in Toronto, which after the craziness of New York really felt like home.
Our time in Toronto was planned to be intense sightseeing for Steph's sake.. yet once we met up with Tasha all we wanted to do was catch up and get drunk.. which we did. And it was so much fun, despite a lost phone and spiked drink.
Sooo.... short and sweet this wasn't. But a week in NYC cannot be kept short and sweet. Frost week back in London has been unsurprisingly hectic, especially with the added stress of attempting to learn to ski before my trip to Tremblant this weekend. Skiing is so much fun, and Tremblant sounds like all you do is ski, get drunk, ski, get drunk.. sometimes simultaneously. I cannot wait!
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