I'm not sure how other people deal with jet lag but the first day I'm pretty useless and tend to sleep in. Obviously the following day(s) I'm awake earlier since I'm still sitting in our Hotel room and it's 7 o'clock now.

Breakfast

As you know from my earlier post about our journey to Asia food is a pretty important aspect of exploring foreign cultures. And so we went out on a warm & sunny Saturday morning to find a nice Bagel place. After all we are in New York and we were hungry. not far we found a "Pick a Bagel" place that was teeming with hungry people, ranging from police-men, students and tourists like us. I went with the breakfast special #3 a cheese, omelette & bacon-filled toasted sesame bagel with an extremely hot and not so great coffee. Ran took an orange juice along with a strawberry-flavoured-cream-cheese-filled-sesame bagel.
As I write this my stomach is growling demanding another tasty treat ;)

Lady Liberty

Since New York is our longest stay among the three cities (New York City, Boston & Washington D.C) we are going to visit we booked a city pass online in advance. You can exchange the voucher for the ticket booklet in any of the available attractions. We decided to go for the most iconic attraction first: The Statue cruise to visit Lady Liberty and Ellis Island.
Unfortunately the line 1 does not serve the stops south of Chambers street and only offers (free) shuttles buses. As you can imagine ferrying literally a ton of tourists to the South ferry is a monumental task with only a handful of buses. After waiting for almost half an hour we were able to squeeze on the bus. The line was so long it would fill up five busses when we boarded ours and that with 30°C.

I moved down to the lobby since Ran does not have any problems with jet lag but woke up from me typing. Compare with my room, the lobby is quite loud with music droning from overhead and the AC turning on every minute.

Getting back on track to Liberty island. We had finally made it to Battery Park and Castle Clinton holding all the ticket booths for the statue cruises.
Getting on the island meant getting back in line to wait and similar to the Vatican museums you have to pass through airport-style security. Although strangely you are allowed to bring knives shorter than 6cm.
Once on the Miss Liberty, that was the name of the ferry, we enjoyed the famous harbour view of New York City; the new Freedom tower and all the other famous buildings making out this iconic landscape.
The island is only 12 acres large but sports not only the famous statue on the former 11-starred Fort but also a number of different buildings including giftshops and restaurants.

Seeing the statue whose inside were build in a similar manner than the Eiffel tower designed by Mr. Eiffel himself is also like seeing the Mona Lisa in the Louvre; its surprisingly small considering all those huge towers in Manhattan. After walking around and enjoying the view and salty air we decided to skip Ellis island and head back to Manhattan.

Once back in Battery park we went North to have a closer look to the Charging bull. Unfortunately it was swarming with tourists, not only climbing on it head but also fondling its crown jewels while taking pictures. This changed pretty quickly when it started raining and we had to take shelter in a nearby entrance. After about 10 min huddling together with all the other people who also forgot to bring their umbrella we headed out and made our way to the Wallstreet and took the subway to Penn station to climb up on the Empire state building.

Korea Town

However the sky was still grey and we feared that the view might suffer we decided to head to nearby Korean town to eat at a place recommended by a friend. Korean town really only stretches a couple of streets but you can find all the typical Korean brands and shops around like Paris Baguette.

![Korea town]

After the dinner Ran wanted to go have a look at Macy's. I was the usual collection of fashion and beauty brands you can find at any big luxury mall these days. This does not mean that its any less interesting to the connoisseur :)

Also nearby is the famous Victoria's secret shop. It does seems like I said famous quite a lot already. New York is so often featured in Movies that it seems that you are familiar with all the location even without having set foot in NYC before. The shop was also swarming with people but there seemed to be a salesperson whenever you need one offering advice and telling you her name for further inquiries.

Times square

After shopping we went North to have a look at the night-time Times square. It does look the same as in the movies, bright as day and teeming with people marveling at the lights and stores like "Bubba Gump shrimps" among others. Taking any kind of pictures was quite difficult as the advertisement overshadowed everything.

![times Square]

On the far end we saw the M&M shop and could not resist its colourful chocolate-flovoured seduction.
Afterwards we took a leisurely walk back to our Hotel and called it a day.

On our way through the city we also passed the Madison Square garden but I can't seem to remember where ;)

PS: Pictures will follow soon so keep checking back in.