The First Day

What’s up guys! How’s everybody doing? We just came back to the hotel from our 1^st day in New York City. It was an exhausting day that started at 7:30 with breakfast that had a lot of variety. At 8:00am the bus left with around 35 exited guys (and girls) to Manhattan. The first thing Raphael showed us was the border of New Jersey and New York in the Lincoln Tunnel. We had a beautiful view over the Hudson Bay on Manhattan.

The first stop was Time Square where we had a little walk. It was gigantic and everybody couldn’t believe that we were really in New York!

Rockefeller Center was the next stop. We both were amazed and impressed by all the flags around the ice skating center and took the 1^st of many group pictures.

Our next stop was Central Park in Manhattan where we saw “Strawberries Fields” and “Imagine”. We’ve spent there around an hour and enjoyed the clash of moderns and nature. We took several more pictures – actually Raphael was busy taking all the pictures with around 25 cameras!! Thanks a lot!

We walked by the house where John Lennon got shot but we couldn’t enter it.

West Harlem was our next stop.

Here we divided ourselves into small groups discovering another ethnic part of New York. We also ate there lunch and got a really goooood Starbucks coffee!!! Harlem was full of cool and especially “different” stores and restaurants.

Next stop University of Columbia.

The next place we visited was the MET, and then Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre, where we had a hip hop dance lesson. Tweety who grew up in the Bronx was our instructor. She was really full of energy and everybody who joined us had a lot of fun. The ninety minutes we spent there were amazing, in the end of our lesson we had a hip-hop battle involving the moves we’ve learned. Before we left, we took a gangster picture with our instructor. We think learning hip hop in NYC is pretty cool.

Next was Time Square by night – Such an awesome experience!! Even better than Time Square during day time! There we ate at Bubba Gump Shrimp – a tourist, fish restaurant. We liked the food. We could pick between fish & chips, cheeseburger, shrimps and salad.

After supper we had around 45 minutes free time that most of us used for shopping. We went to Hard Rock Café

where we bought nice and fancy shirts, the Levis store, the sadly closed MTV store, Billabong where we saw headphone for 200$ (without tax!!). At the end we went to Starbucks (again) but the line was too long and so NO COFFEE!!

Than we had to go back to the hotel which was pretty fast – thanks to our bus driver Moses!

Take it easy guys!

Jirka Kral of Czech Republic and Julian Rossello of Germany