Monday/Tuesday – Day 155/156
Posted on 4th January 2013
Monday! NYE! My plans for today mostly involved catching up with friends and then seeing what it lead to. First step was to meet Ariel for lunch and then a walk around Times Square. By this point the area was already packed. Security guards and police stood around slowly closing off streets for the purposes of crowd control, allowing only people already in the areas to stay inside.
At some point in the afternoon, the main zone around 42nd street was closed off, just as Ariel and I were trying to get in. In our attempts to subvert the security we bought tickets to see ‘Jack Reacher’ at a theatre inside the closed off zone and were let through.
The movie was terrible. Particularly after reading the book. Recommend against seeing it. However, it was nice to be in the area after and at least get a look at the madness happening.
After that we attempted to meet up with Rigel, Paul M and a friend of Ariel’s (Anna). After much difficulty and around half an hour of walking we managed to find each other on the west side of Times Square. From there we realized we were all starving and started walking aimlessly in search of food. Being reasonably late on NYE, nothing was open and so we ended up tracing circles. After no further progress was made, we decided to head to Paul’s place in Manhattan, around which he knew a number of places to eat. On our way we did see the famous NYE ball that was too be lowered to usher in 2013 and were all shocked at quite how small it was!
Arriving at 86th Street, we decided to go into a diner that Paul knew would be open, where I had a bagel with cream cheese and lox, coupled with a vanilla milkshake. A good NYC speciality. After hanging out there for a while and tipping generously we went to Paul’s apartment to finish off the celebrations with a good bottle of single malt scotch and a visit from Nikki, Rigel’s girlfriend.
The New Year was certainly spent well in such good company and it was one of the most enjoyable I have in memory.
Tuesday, the next day, was something of a recovery day. All my plans fell through due to circumstances outside my control so I ended up staying in most of the day and reading a few more books. Not a bad way to spend the last proper day of my holiday. I was however, eagerly looking forward to resuming my time at Penn where I felt comfortable and more in control of my circumstances. Besides, there were friends I had been missing and of course, rehearsals by the day-load.