Manhattan island lies like a giant scar on the confluence of the Hudson and East rivers, with its very earth covered with spires and conurbations. The multitudes scurry like insignificant ants under the shadows of its edifices, a riot of colour and noise. 

  I sat next to the half-empty bus next to Bonnie, my head buried in my book as I tried to while away the four-hour ride from Baltimore to NYC. Suddenly, Bonnie nudged me and said, 'Look, there's downtown'. I looked up at the window and before me, across the Hudson River, stretched the skyscrapers of southern Manhattan across my entire field of view. It's a HUGE city...that's the first thing that struck me. The bus slowed down at the entrance to the Lincoln tunnel, which goes under the river to the city.

  After half-an-hour, we were buried in the NYC traffic. The streets look gritty and crowded with people. Eventually, we managed to crawl our way through. At around 1pm, Bonnie, Matthias and I were dropped off at the intersection in Broadway and 32nd St. The other interns had arrived last night, but the three of us weren't too eager to spend money for an extra night at the hostel, and elected to leave on Saturday morning instead. As we walked the dozen blocks or so towards the hostel, we walked by the poor inner city, which was crowded with new immigrants. I saw Africans whose accents showed that they were obviously newly arrived to the States, walked by Indian jewellery shops. The area was dirty and crowded, but there was a bustle to it that I've never experienced before, At one point, I whispered to Bonnie and Matthias that they seemed to be the only white people around. We got to our hostel at Chelsea borough without incident, and after checking in we set off to try and rendezvous with the others. Gara had told us that they'll be visiting the museums around Central Park in the afternoon.

  The NY subway is absolutely filthy. There was rubbish strewn about and puddles of what I hope were water at the staircase and entrance, but at least the trains were air-conditioned. It was $2 a ride, which was an absolute bargain compared with the London Tube. After a brief ride, we emerged from the station a couple of blocks from Central Park. Central Park is a huge rectangular chunk of greenery embedded inside Manhattan, the only sizeable park on the island. A lot of the museums, including the Natural History Museum and Natural History Museum seemed to be in or around Central Park. As the sheer size of Central Park and Manhattan in general hit us, we tried to send a text message to Gara (she had her Spanish phone and was roaming here) from Bonnie's phone, but with no luck. We wandered through Central Park, with what seemed like half of the city's denizens apparently deciding to either go jogging or cycling there that afternoon.

  Bonnie asked us if we wanted to go to a section of Central Park called Strawberry Fields. Both Matthias and I had never heard of it, and Bonnie was aghast, 'WHAT DO YOU MEAN you've never heard of Strawberry Fields? The Beatles have a song by that name...'. Well, we're physicists after all (later, it'll transpire that Tom had never heard of Strawberry Fields either). It turns out that there's a plaque dedicated to John Lennon there as well, and there was a busker sitting nearby screeching out Beatles songs, strumming along with his ancient-looking guitar. We continued to wind our way across the park, and as we approached the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the crowds started to thicken. Esteban had mentioned really wanting to visit the Met, so we decided to try out luck there. When we went into the lobby, the hordes of tourists and $7 entrance fee suggested that going in to look for them was pointless. It became obvious that trying to find them in the vastness of the city was utterly pointless, so we started to plot out our own sightseeing plans.

  After sitting at the steps of the Met to recover out breath, we decided to make our way down to Midtown, taking the subway to Grand Central Station, a large and imposing neo-Classical building to my untrained eyes.  Across the street loomed the Chrysler building, which was the tallest building in the world before the Empire State Building (apparently all the tallest buildings in the world were in NYC for about a century before Sears Tower in Chicago came up). We made our way through the bustle of the city to Rockefeller Centre, where the plaza was decked out with flags of the countries of the world, with the Rockefeller building looming over everything. In the plaza, there would be a skating rink during winter, and there were some garish golden statues and a self-congratulatory plaque with Rockefeller's philosophy.

  A couple of blocks away was the cathedral of St. Patrick, probably the largest and most notable churches in the Big Apple. St Patrick is of course the patron saint of Ireland, and a lot of New Yorkers are of Irish descent. Outside the cathedral, we glimpsed inside the magnificent and ornate interior, where a crowd was beginning to gather, presumably for Saturday evening Mass. As Bonnie puzzled over the map for our next destination, I noticed one thing about NYC traffic: most of the vehicles seem to yellow taxis. Later, as we walked by a few parking garages, the fact that most of them accept credit cards made it clear why most New Yorkers prefer not to drive.

  At around 6pm, after some wandering, we found ourself in the riot of bilboards and people that was Times Sq, where many of the theatres were located. The amount of traffic and people there was almost disorienting. After standing there like dummies for a while, we decided to get dinner, and Bonnie suggested TGI Friday's nearby. The food was overpriced, this being NYC, and fatty, this being the USA, but we filled ourselves up after a hard day's sightseeing.

  After dinner, Gara still hadn't responded to any of Bonnie's messages or calls, so we had to figure out how to spend the evening before hopefully meeting up with the others at the hostel. It turned out that there was a comedy club at the basement below where the restaurant we ate, and since the entrance fee was only 10 bucks, we decided to go for it. There was a series of standup comedians scheduled to do their act, and the first guy was the quasi-MC. He came up on stage and started to ask the audience about where they were from, what they were doing in NYC etc, and then proceeded to make fun of everyone, before introducing the other comedians to do their act. The humour was definitely adult, and there was no holding back as far as expletives and sexual content was concerned. I was mildly surprised at all the f-words being thrown about, and the couple of times when the comedian thrust his hips back and forth when talking about sex. There was this guy who came up and started making political jokes about Bush, and when he didn't get his expected audience response, he started to flounder very obviously, and I didn't find him very funny, but felt sorry for him. My favorites were this black guy who did a few hilarious skits about his Mexican neighbour, Indian tourists being detained by police and his girlfriend's cat which was apparently permanently on heat. The other good one was this bloke with huge sideburns and manic, staring, eyes, and he was so absolutely wound up that it was totally hilarious. 

  When the show ended, it was 10.30pm. We got out into Times Sq, and the place was still crowded. We found out that Virgin Megastore there closed only at 2am, so we went in there and hung out for a while. At around midnight, we decided to return to the hostel and try and leave a note for our missing comrades. As we walked towards the entrance of the hostel after taking the subway, I spied from afar a lanky red figure which looked extremely familiar. Esteban!

  The other interns were outside the hostel entrance, and we rushed together and started swapping stories. Apparently they were about to start knocking at our doors, and for most of the day we seemed to be one step ahead or behind each other. They were at the Natural History Museum around the same time we were outside, and they even ate at the TGI Friday's while the three of us were downstairs watching the comedy show!

  The Hispanic guys, nutters that they are, wanted to drag us out again for clubbing, but most of us were so exhausted that we decided against it. So, apart from Miguel, Rafa and Esteban who merrily went out again, the rest of us retired for the night....

To be continued....

...and the pics from the trip are here , in the meantime...