New York, Old cliches

Well, I've arrived in New York, no problems with Immigration which was a relief, I was pretty paranoid about that, made my way after a long subway journey (I had to "take the A-train") to the youth hostel, where I had to wait for almost an hour while the staff tried to work out whether they'd lost some money, which involved adding up large piles of cash and credit receipts.

Eventually I made it to my room, had one of the best showers of my life, the flight was very hot and sticky as was the subway, its pretty hot here. I went for a wander round Central Park which is a really nice place, ate some fried chicken, got accosted by my first New York homeless person (much more agressive than the average London one) watched everyone enjoying their Fourth of July barbeques in the park, and am now about to fall asleep from jetlag despite the fact it's only 8pm here and I'm probably going to miss some spectacular fireworks...

As for the city itself, I really like it, the regularity of the streets make it a little confusing at first but I think I'll get the hang of it in a couple of days. I think I'm going to go up the Empire State Building tomorrow, hope fully I'll find somewhere I can update photos, as the internet in the hostel is relatively limited. The buildings *all* have those fire escapes down the side exactly like every Woody Allen movie, Friends etc. The subway system is a little confusing; wheras the London tube map is easy to look at but pretty low on accuracy, the New York subway map shows the lines directly under the roads which can be a little overly heavy on information.

That's enough for now, I'm off to bed...