New York 2006

Today america celebrates its 230th day of indepence. Zicar planned to go the financial district but we realized that it makes no sense since everything will be closed on this day. Instead we did kind of nothing. I played some virtual pool with Mark and Zicar did some laundry and kind of just hang around. We wanted to see the fireworks but due to various reasons it became kind of late and we decided to only walk to central park. Which is kind of the wrong place to see anything. The fireworks are held on 3 barges in the eastriver and the view on that section of the sky is kind of blocked from central park by a lot of very high buildings. We could only hear the fireworks and see some glowing of the night sky and that was it.
I got in a conversation with a retired jewish guy from Sweden which was kind of nice but he rattled on and on so I was glad when Zicar started to just leave so I could convince the man we had to go.

Since today is our flying day we don't have much time to do any stuff. So with this entry the blog is almost at his end. I will post a final entry tomorrow when we have returned home again. At that point I will also be able to fix the problem with the photo site and I will upload the last set of photos.

The plan for today is Interepid for Zicar...working for Mark and well something for me. At 8 we are meeting Mindy who will take us to a Malasyan restaurant in Chinatown. Afterwards the plan is to hit some clubs with live rockbands which we goodn't do on saturday since Mark was feeling sick. So around 12 Zicar was out on his own. Mark was still working and I decided to go play some pool by myself to practice.
When I came back about an hour later Mark was taking the afternoon Nap and I followed his example. Around 5 Zicar came home again and both Mark and me slowly woke up again. We met Mindy at 8:30pm near the restaurant. I couldn't decide what to get so to speed things up Mindy just rattled some Mandrin at the waitress and we ended up with a lot of delicious food on the table (Mark and Zicar did the ordering themselves it was just me who good decide what to eat). Thank you Mindy for taking us there the food was indeed fabulous.
While walking in the directions of the clubs Mark slowly started to realize that most clubs would be closed on this very quite monday night just before the 4th of july. We played some pool for an hour at Soho billiards, which went quite well for me for a change. We found 'the' T-shirt shop where there were supposed to be RHCP T-shirts to be closed and we decided to head home and call it a night.
We chatted a little bid and while Mark and me went to bed Zicar played this video game he got recently until very late or rather very early in the morning.

Sunday we went on a little shopping tour in Midtown. Mark needed some A-strings for his guitars. And Zicar is still looking for a T-shirt of a certain rockband. So we went back to 48th street this time we walked to it through the park. We passed carnegiehall and several other nice buildings. On the way back we walked passed broadway but didn't stop at the expensive dinner for another Tiramisu (see entry Hunting down a camera). However we did stop at Colony's music store where Zicar saw some interesting guitar books but he didn't want to buy them the first time because he didn't want to spent all is money on the first weekend. Since the trip is almost over he now felt save to buy not less than 7 books which can take a lifetime to study completely.
Further up we payed a visit to CompUSA near Colombus. While walking up towards Lincon Center we were discussing the difference between a Harley and a BMW when we got a comment from someboy on the street: "Fuck the Harley get a rice burner (ninja bike)".
Our final shopping stop was Barns&Nobles near Lincoln Center for some SciFi books. Back in the appartment we jammed all night playing on various rock and jazz tunes. I played along with my sax. Since Mark had to go working on Monday we didn't make it to late

Yesterday we finally rented some bicycles to do some 'fietsen in het park' Central park to be precise. Now that we knew where to get the bikes it was easy to find. It was nice to finally see the northpart of the park for a change. It was a lot of fun. After one lap Zicar wanted to take some more pictures so he and Mark took a second lap while enjoyed some leisure laying down in the grass.
The cycling took some 2 hours and afterwards both me and Mark needed a little nap. Unfortunately after the nap Mark didn't feel so good and we had to cancel the planned bar hopping in the village. That was sad. So we played video games instead.

Yesterday it was beautifull weather. Since as usueal, we had kind of a slow day we decided it would be a good day to walk through river side park. It turned out they have extended the park to the south and build a big pier into the river. Mark had never seen this part so we explored it a bit. Riverside park is a nice park that is mainly used by local people from the neighbourhood. Today it was really quit so there wasn't much going on but you could get a feel for it anyway.
After the long walk that took about 3 hours in total we were just kind of out of it so all we played was video games for the rest of the night.
Unfortunately it seems my photo site is down. It may take a few days to get it up again, that depends on how quick my sister is able to visit my house :).