Well here we go at an attempt to catch up the New York stay experience which I gotta say got off to a not so good start! Our flight from Frankfurt to NYC was delayed 5 hours due to an uncooperative 747 engine that decided after a few half hearted attempts that it just didn't wanna go State-side no matter who was driving! After a few hours of onboard BS the bloke up front in the left seat said he was bailing on this burner so we waited another hour for fuelling of burner número duo....took a further hour to get the sucker off the ground....the plane was full of Germans & Turks....decided to let the 2 nations fight it out in the pissed off stakes & chose to personally keep a low profile. Germans don't smile much eh! Many tried to engage in conversation....not many of them understood my no spreakidy Deutschlander even when I showed my bloody passport the cabin crew waffled off in alien speak to me...WTF...do I look German? That's it I'm going for a hair colour change. Black me tinks! At this point I would like it noted that I called our hotel in NYC from Frankfurt, GERMANY to advise of our 5 hr delay....I CALLED THEM! They said....no problem, thanks for advising us, your room will be available! Landed in NYC at JFK to a HLS welcome at midnight.....you got that? No welcome back this time, I reckon they have friendlier staff on the left coast! The lineup was huge.....full of questionable characters that HLS decided they wanted to vet, no prizes for guessing which line we ended up in! Waiting waiting waiting.....get through finally & called our shuttle service who came to meet up 10 minutes later, great service inspite of the time which at this stage was heading towards 2am. Get to our $250 a night hotel close to 3am to be told....we gave your room away as you didn't show up....remember that phone call I made? In a very calm (NOT) manner I reminded them of that call to which they admitted they had a record of, and further more YOU know how long it takes to clear HLS....yes he said.....and you know how long it takes to get into NYC from JFK?.....yes he said.....nah derrrrrrrr.....pissed off odometer now registering at max. The night manager proceeded to phone every hotel in Manhattan.....nada! Nuffink available....why???seems Obama was in town...to which I commented.....like I give a shit...maybe I should not have said that....finally Stanley finds us a hotel in JERSEY....we check in to the Quality Inn at about 4.30am.....not so much QUALITY....not happy Jan! Not happy at all Jan, 2 irritated Aussies makes for serious attitude...Jan! the first room they gave us had a nice surprise awaiting....a couple of horizontal bods in bed....stage exit outta there, pretty funny now though...then at 8am a rather eager cleaning lady opened our door to clean our room....we WERE asleep....colourful words pursued, I put Sherm's birdie to shame! We high tailed it outta that joint ASAP & headed back to our reserved Times Square, NYC hotel complete with our $160 cab fare which they refunded....nice of them. The upgrade fairy visited us, she obviously was scared of our attitude...we got the best room in the house....yep you guessed it, they bumped some other sucker out! Seems over selling everything in NYC is the done thing! Says a lot about the state of the economy in this joint. location wise it was perfect, short walk to everywhere....more on that later :0) Running out of time now so may have to post this & blog further about what we got up to in NYC later. Our Chicago flight is being called. Oh & yeah we got a roaming card so we'll be online throughout our stay in USA....cheap too at $50, not as cheap as in Ireland but still good. Hoo Roo until later.