Empire State of mind!

Day 5:

Early doors, we headed out of the hotel around 8am again and made our way up towards Times Square, the heart of New York, had a few photo opportunities. The senses are overwhelmed in Times Square. The flashing lights of the advertising billboards, the sounds of the people and traffic and the smell of chocolate wafting down from the Hershey’s store.

We didn’t stick around in Times Square, we headed over to find Magnolia’s Bakery, (from the Lonely Island lyric “Hit up magnolia’s and mac on some cupcakes!”) The cupcake was amazing, im not really a cupcake fan, but I wouldn’t turn down these bad boys!

One thing we hadn’t had yet was pizza in New York, so we stopped at a Paul’s pizza near central park and had a slice each, generic pizza slice, it was good but nothing to shout about. We headed into Central Park and wondered around for a while until we settled down on a patch of grass in the sun. Central Park is amazing, the weather was amazing, it all combined for a brilliantly chilled out afternoon, we spent about 3 hours just listening to some tunes on my laptop and laying about in the sun. We spent the afternoon in shot of the filming of Curb Your Enthusiasm which was being filmed right infront of us, we didn’t recognise anybody.

We made our way down 5^th avenue and all the stores, its just a bigger version of regents street. Paolo and I got to Union square and met up with friends of mine Mary and Eungee and we went to Max Brenner’s the chocolate man, it’s a dessert restaurant. The smell of chocolate was overwhelming, but not a bad kind. The menu was like pornography for chocolate lovers, we simply couldn’t decide, so we just got something which we couldn’t get back home, we had an American delicacy called Smores, where you get a marshmellow and melt it over a flame, squeeze it between two gram crackers, then pour chocolate all over it, with you choice of adding bananas or peanut butter. We made a mess…

Friday night in New York! And a big group of my Yonsei friends to spend it with! Hamidah, Marina, Zena, Esther, Clara, Steve, John, Jen and Johnny! They had come from as far as Texas, Canada, Seattle and New Jersey! I used this opportunity to introduce Paolo to Korean drinking and Soju, it was an intense drinking session, as it always is with Korean’s. We had Soju and a variety of Soju cocktails in Koreatown.

We headed clubbing, the music was great! Much better than music in clubs at home in my opinion, however the actual experience wasn’t nearly as fun as it is back home, clubbing in New York is much more pretentious than home, I think its because they simply don’t do it as much. We go clubbing from the age of 18, so clubs are much crazier. When you fill a club with a whole bunch of people over 21, its just not as wild. That being said, we had an incredible night! Seeing all my Yonsei friends was amazing! Wish I could stay with them forever.