Day 1 - From Paris to Brooklyn to Manhattan

After 7 1/2 hours on the plane, we finally made it to JFK, where Alex was taken to immigration once more... Only this time he only spent 10 minutes to get clearance, thankfully he was the only one there... how surprising...



We were then offered a proper unlicensed cab to take us to sunny Brooklyn, we also phoned the landlord to tell her that we were on our way. On announcement of our destination the driver was very worried. Apparently East NY is the worst area one can choose. Thank you Alex. He really insisted not to take us there and proposed an alternative accomodation in Manhattan, a joyful youth hostel.


Indeed at first we were skeptical about the driver's comments on Brooklyn... However when we got to 408 Macon Street, we realised that the driver was right all along and none of us got out of the car, the girls were panicking, especially Marie who was very scared...


So, what to do??? Dangerous neighbourhood or Manhattan???


Well obviously we opted for the latter but at least we had our 15 minutes of glory in Brooklyn, not... We called landlord again and invoked a bad news in the family department to cancel our stay and attempt to get a refund...

Crisis meeting in the cab, Alex very stressed and a cabbie happy to have saved our lives...

On our way to Manhattan we had short tour included traffic jam to access Brooklyn bridge and a visit of Ground Zero which is very impressive to say the least and we also had a short glimpse of the statue of liberty...


We finally made it to the Hostel, which could easily rival with any 5 stars dog refuge but at least we had a roof to sleep for the night, see pictures for visual explanation.

Initially we were to have a house with all modern facilities, however due to change of plan, we were in the market for bathroom towels which apparently were not provided by the hostel. Though the high point of our 4 stacked beds NY babe pad is that we have our own bathroom.

But before going towel hunting we needed to rest, have a heart attack and get something to eat, which hopefully in Chelsea is an easy thing to do.

300 kg of pasta later, yeah big news food portions in the US matched the height of the buildings, we went all around Manhattan to find towels. Eventhough the first store we visited had some nice ones, we were not in the business of simplying our lives... due to high prices!!!


At the same time, we looked around for a more upmarket hotel, a search that was full of surprises... The first hotel we visited had a nice suite for all of us but unavailable for the whole trip, but at least we managed to meet some nice folks from Lille in the elevator, yes anything can happen in New York but hold on there is more. The climax of the hotel seeking exercise was when we stumbled upon a colleague of Marie and his family at the Comfort Inn next to 5th Avenue.

Yes we could have met Carrie Bradshaw or one of her girlfriends but this time it was only the IT and Logistics Director at Bricoman, a discount B&Q made in France...


In the end we went back to the initial towel shop and managed to find a bargain and from that point on, it was going uphill finally. We got back to the hotel and went on the Internet to find lodging, Nicolas and Alex ran to 25th to check a holiday inn who supposidely had rooms...not... But on their way back they managed to find a room at the Savoy hotel :-)


Needless to say we were tired and deserved a great night sleep... A quick trip to get some drinks and we finally called it day... and what a day...