home

made it home.... trip home looked something like this:

- caught JFK shuttle at 11am from midtown to JFK
- shuttle driver insisted i needed terminal 3 i thought i needed terminal 2, checked in at terminal 3 lady told me to catch shuttle to terminal 2.
- 3 hour delay due to late plane, weather change, removing people who were on the wrong plane (hostess explaining to non english speaking italians they were on wrong plane...LOL)
- about 50% of entertainment systems were borked no sound
- arrived LAX with 2.5 hours until my AUS flight was to take off.
- first bag at carousel took 15 mins second bag took 35 mins
- walk to terminal 3 check in at vaus
- arrive syd check in at vblue, shuttle to t1
- arrive adel

carnegie deli

Final day in NY.

Hit the carnegie deli for a pastrami sandwich... got some pro advice from ed, make sure you order extra bread and pickles. LOL. it looked somthing like this :

grimaldi's

Pizza... well it's supposed to be good so I thought I should give it a go.

Caught the subway down to the start of the brooklyn bridge, walked the bridge and then down to Grimaldi's. Queued for 40 mins in the rain. Waited for another 20 mins before I was served. They don't serve anything smaller than a 17" pizza so I guess i had to man up and order one.

Pizza came out pretty quick and it was pretty good.

Not sure if it was worth the wait but you gotta give it a go right ?

U.S.A v. Mexico: 2009 CONCACAF Gold Cup Final

Went to the final at the Giants stadium, even though both the NY Jets and NY Giants play there the stadium is actually in New Jersey.

So to get there from Midtown I caught the subway -> subway -> PATH -> Giants stadium train.

Apparently this was the first time they used the new train line to Giants Stadium and it seemed like the driver was going very slow.

I didn't have a ticket so it was a bit of a gamble to go so far... and possibly not be able to get in. I walked around for a bit and there wasn't a lot of scalping action going on. Eventually I a dude with some tickets paid like $100 for a seat way up in the nose bleeds that was about 3 times the list price.



Mexico drilled the USA's "b team" 5-0.

yankee stadium

Went straight from empire state to Yankee stadium to see Yankees v Oakland A's.

Yankee chef demonstrated how to cook "emoo" on the big screen. I think he meant emu.

Yankees won 8-3.






The new stadium is pretty nice, it's right next to the old stadium which i forgot to take a picture of.

empire queue building

Empire state building should just be called the empire queue building. Once your inside all you do is queue.

I counted 8 seperate queues (escalator, security check, ticket, first elevator, 2nd elevator, 2nd elevator, sovenir shop, 1st elevator) to get up to the observation deck and get back down again.

I bought the express ticket so I could just walk straight past the queues, I really really hate queues so it was $20 well spent, even with the express ticket it still took well over 2 hours to do the whole thing, including about 20 mins actually outside on the deck.

tour

So bit the bullet last night and booked myself on a tour... I thought it would be a good way to see a few things fairly quickly.

And like most things there are 100s of tours to choose from but one that caught my eye was a called "OnBoard". So I locked that in.

Tour included strawberry fields, upper east side, empire state, statten island, 30 rock, wall st etc.

NYC

arrived NYC today via train from DC. pretty good run on the train to union station to penn station. i was on the business express, i recommend this option as you get comfortable seats with power for laptops.

the craziness of NYC hit me the second I emerged from the top of the esculator.

people, cars and a large number of dogs, everywhere.

my room is like a jail cell. fits a dbl bed and a very small desk. it's kinda good though i don't feel like i need any more space.

dumped my bags and went for a walk around, walked for a long time never made it out of the high-rise jungle. thinking about going on a tour or two, pizza tour, sopranos tour, or a general NYC tour.

museums

Hit the museums and monuments, today and yesterday. Ratings :

Natural History - good but too many russells

American History - too much star spangled banner, but a reminder of how much fighting there was to get everyone into the "united" states. exhibit on the Appalachian through hiker guy.

Holcaust museum - lame, missed a couple of exhibits coz they were "full". exhibits i did see were lame.

Space and Air - pretty good. lots of aircraft and space rockets. some good demonstrations. too many russells.

Lincoln - solid, bigger than you expect

Washington - pretty big

Vietnam wall - big list of names

Whitehouse - it's kinda smaller than expected but also white.

nationals are like lake mead

went to the baseball today at nationals park, to see the nationals play against the cubs. the cubs aren't playing that well this season but they still managed to sh*t all over the nationals 11-2. with the nationals giving up a 7 run inning somewhere in there.

i was about maybe 3 metres from a foul ball catch. i was pretty keen to show them how aussies catch without a "mit".

just as i arrived, everyone in the bar was crowded around the tv.... watching tom watson at 59 years, lose the british open to stewart cink.

go united

walking to RKS stadium



game about to start.

flight to DC

hmmmm struggled at the airport with sickness.

thought i was gonna faint in the security line, which isn't a good look.

eventually made it through and just in time to board with my "A" boarding pass.

we landed in baltimore around 40 mins early. everyone was happy including the hostess on the microphone, who made us sing happy birthday to a guy up the front.

they then made us wait 35 mins on the tarmac before parking the plane, and it took like forever for the bags to come out at the bag pickup so any advantage made up on the plane we lost it all.

dodgy bwi train station -> washington union. then taxi to lombardy hotel.

barter leaves

boooooo !

good stories from the wsop

- ivey cristal
- ivey pac man
- wrkngball please fold sign
- deeb v tonyg
- taking chips to the toilet
- fml on cafe sign
- barter's table show cards and take penalty
- betting on golf at tonyg's
- rk's never muck player
- an Italian guy at the wsop possibly didn't hold the door open for some other guy who was exiting behind him, second dude went off, "we have a new president, his name is obama, what you think im gonna suck your d**k. etc... ".

suite suite

this is a good suite.....



this is a good view from the suite....




hard work

barter arrives !

yay barter.

ub party last night

held at studio 54 at MGM this year (last year was at the playboy at palms).

phil was dropped down from the VIP area to the main stage via a rope.

girls wearing only body paint and free drinks all night... it could get messy.

phil fist pumped ed on the way out.

finally to innout

finally made it to in n out burger.

had the classic double double.

then went to Steel Panther at Green Valley Ranch.

steel panther rocks !

in n out issues

in and out teases me every day i can see it but it's really hard/impossible to walk there.

WSOP

the WSOP is held at the Rio conventions centre. which is out the back of the rio hotel and casino.



the main event final table is held in the penn and teller theatre which is also here at the rio. it's actually in between the main rio casino and rio convention centre.

japanese place

went to a japanese place ed wanted to try.

ed orders/eats about 15 yakatori skewers.

icecream in a loaf of bread for dessert.

ok so back in the USA !

10:30am adel -> syd -> lax -> 10pm las

took around 30 hours all up it's a long trip.

taxi driver didn't know where my hotel was i had to direct him.