orusttjejen

On request, here comes a first blog post about my US trip. Dedicated to Miss Sofia Abrahamson... ;-)

 

This Friday morning I got on the plane to go on a new exciting vacation - with the first stop New York City. I'm travelling together with my friend Anna, a cute girl I got to know when studying to become a travel guide on Mallorca 2006. On the trip to New York we transferred in Heathrow, London, and I just say don't do that! Or if you do have plenty of time! It took us two hours of constant lining up to get through passport check and luggage check and then we had to take a train to our gate. Luckily we did have three hours though so we made it to our gate. And when we arrived at Newark airport outside New York City we were rewarded with homeland security being really nice... ;-)

 

In New York we are staying with my friend Alicia, from Stockholm but that I met in Kosovo, in a super nice apartment she borrows from a friend. It's having a door man, or well actually three, is only three blocks from Central Park and it is just very nice... Another friend of Alicia's, Marie, is also here now, so we are kinda doing a "four Swedish girls in NY" kinda thing, really good! :-) And it's so awesome to have a guide like Alicia...

 

So far we've been quite efficient with walking around in the city. While doing that we have during the days for example visited the Statue of Liberty together with Americans living two hours away but that never visited it before, shopping crazy cheap at Forever 21, relaxing at the Great Lawn in Central Park watching shirtless guys throwing footballs, walked "the highline" over the southen parts of the town, having awesome waffels for brunch and visited the soup place that the Soup Nazi in Seinfeld has.

 

At night we have seen the musical Phantom of the Opera at Broadway, had amazing burgers, watched the city from the rooftop bar at the Standard Hotel while enjoying a coctail, used the toilets at the rooftop bar that has glass walls so that you can watch the city while peeing, visited the Swedish owned restaurant Red Rooster in Harlem to see a jazz performance and also celebrity spotted the owner himself and walked the streets of Harlem as practically the only white people.

 

And finally some weird things I've learnt about the US this time...

• You have to give your doorman a Christmas present worth of about 3 000 SEK. Isn't gifts supposed to be voluntary?
• Prisoners and ex-prisoners of heavy crime are not allowed to vote. What about the human rights and the constitution? (Read an article in a British newspaper that the ECHR now forces the UK to give prisoners these rights since it's found not to be in accordance with the human rights not to.)
• If someone lies on the ground looking dead in NYC it takes a lot of people to pass by before anyone stops. What about thinking about others?
• It's very inconvenient that you always have to add tax and tip on everything you buy.