We woke at the deeply wrong time of 5am, after our ‘early night’ turned into ‘sat in Asian restaurant scoffing yaki soba until 2am’. So anyway, we got to Dublin Airport at around 6, to discover that it’s now been upgraded from a shithole – it’s now a shithole on a building site. It’ll probably be a nice airport in about a decade or so.
Anyway, it turned out our flight had been delayed for three hours, so we stocked up on books and mags and settled down for the long haul. Turns out though, that Dublin Airport has its own US Immigration department – so instead of having to spend hours in a massive queue in JFK, we were officially in the USA before we even took off! Good work guys. So we finally got the flight – Johanna’s never flown further than France before, so she was quite excited! I was more excited about the in-flight movie, until it turned out to be Nim’s Bastard Island (Why, Gerard? WHY?!?). So we hit NY at about 3pm their time. Now, I’ve spent the last few months hammering GTA IV – I think my addiction levels are still around ‘Fiend’ – so I immediately felt like I knew the city like the back of my hand. This odd feeling, however, was compounded by the Eastern European taxi driver who accosted us the moment we got out of baggage control. He was comedy gold, a fellow called Dave Ross, who was definitely a long-lost Bellic. He got us to our hotel, chatting all the way, offering us tips and advice – hell, he even pulled up and stopped in the middle of the Queens Bridge so we could photograph the skyline, which I’m pretty sure is illegal…
We hit the streets in search of food right away. We’re only a block or so from Times Square, and I decided the best way to complete Johanna’s sensory overload was to take her straight there. She was blown away – as was I, I don’t think you can ever really get used to that place, especially as I now live in the wilds, with my nearest neighbour being an exceptionally noisy cow who seems to be getting raped on an hourly basis. Anyway, Johanna made what I consider to be the ‘New York Mistake’ – let me explain. Now, this city has the finest cuisine in the world. The best. If you can name a country, you can probably find a restaurant serving its national dish. However, I’ve always found that if you just pick a vague idea, like ‘Mexican’ or ‘Chinese’, rather than a specific restaurant, you can be wandering for a while. I’ve always found that if you just have a look at every restaurant as you’re walking around, you’ll fall fine. So that’s what we ended up doing. Johanna fancied Italian, so we wandered a good few blocks or so without finding anything that seemed decent. It was at that point that I spotted a wee place called Havana NY – a Cuban restaurant. Now, I’ve always found that the best way to judge a restaurant is if it’s populated by people of its own ethnic origin, you won’t go far wrong – for example, back in Rotherham, I’d only eat at the curry places where the Indian people ate. So when this Cuban place was full of Cubans chatting loudly and drinking, I knew it was worth a go. We had a cracking meal – fair play to Johanna, who can be a bit of a creature of habit when it comes to food, for just picking something at random from the menu!
So we set off back to the hotel, having been awake for 21 hours at this point. Somehow along the way we ended up in Toys ‘R’ Us. Not sure how it happened, but boy, toy shops are even more fun when you’re slightly squiffy on Sangria! I could live in that place. They’ve got a Dark Knight exhibit on at the moment, with a proper Batsuit and a scaled replica of the Tumbler. And even better, Johanna bought me a Wall.E toy that moves around beeping and gurbling. I’m in love with it. I keep hugging this burbling hunk of plastic. I haven’t even seen the film yet, but on character design alone I’m declaring it BEST THING EVARZ!!
Wasn't until we got back to the hotel that I discovered that the Dark Knight black-carpet premiere had been happenng a few blocks away. Bastard.
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