NEW YORK CITY

13TH - 17TH OCTOBER

We were fairly tired but we’d had a good flight and were hoping to catch the public bus downtown rather than catching the airport shuttle train which was fairly expensive. After a marathon walk to baggage claim we found where the public bus left and waited. We weren’t waiting long but are plan of saving money was scuppered by the bus driver who informed Rob in no uncertain terms, that you could only pay with coins and that there wasn’t anywhere to get change! After us discussing the annoyances of this we both decided to sod the expense and get the train, we were too tired to be bothered. We needed to get a train then change to the subway and take a short walk to our hostel, which was located in East Harlem on 101st Street. We weren’t sure what to expect as we had read reviews that the hostel was fine but the neighbourhood was fairly dodgy. Accommodation is ridiculously expensive which is why we opted to stay slightly further out of Manhattan. It would have cost us the
same amount of money for two dorm beds as it was costing us for a double room if we had decided to have stayed within central Manhattan, so we kind of thought, how bad can this neighbourhood really be?

We emerged from the subway to find ourselves in a neighbour resembling Longsight or Levenshulme, nothing really too bad, just a little rough around the edges! I can see why some people would find it a totally unacceptable area but too be honest, we were only two blocks from the subway, 3 blocks from Central Park and with the two of us we felt fine. We got to the hostel without a problem and found our room to be better than expected and the staff were really friendly and helpful. It was a lovely sunny day so after a quick shower we decided to head straight out and trip the light fantastic in beautiful New York City.