When are you gonna come down...

Almost one month after the trip to NYC, I'm still visiting my cloud every now and then. Am I going crazy? Every time I look at the pictures, or listen to the birthday concert in the train on my way to work, my mind flies to NY and I feel the need to tell everyone about the show...and we've got to admit it, people don't care about Elton John's birthday!

So to feed my need to talk about the weekend, here's a little bit more about our trip to NY...

Let's begin where the last post ended:

Saturday, March 24th, around 4pm: we got out of the subway train downtown and spent the whole afternoon...basically shopping! We've got to thank Rod's Lonely Planet guide for the indications that led us to the best shopping areas. I've got to admit that I was almost feeling sick by the time we got to SoHo, so I couldn't enjoy the shops as much as I'd have liked. But someone got a handful of clothes that day.

We had been looking for a cybercafe where we could check the internet for any fresh Elton news for the whole day. We were about to give up, actually we had almost decided that my state was too bad to go on with the shopping tour and were looking for the nearest subway station when, out of the blue, a cybercafe materialized right in front of us!

The computers in that place were almost slower than my Spanish dial-up connection (and that says something!), but after a few minutes Rod managed to log into his msn and we even managed to open the Hercules fan site and Stephan's blog that he was writing about his trip to NY and updating it everyday. That was how we found out that Elton's party on the eve of his birthday would be held....in a Cathedral!! It was 6 pm when we read that, we called a friend who had just landed in NY and told him the news, we met him at the hotel, got into the subway again and headed for the Cathedral of St. John Divine!

Unfortunately we were too late to see Elton, but we didn't find out until after half an hour of getting soaked in the rain. Elton and David were the first ones to arrive, being the hosts of the party, but we still got to see more celebrities than I'd seen in a lifetime! Elton's band, Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne, Yoko Ono, Liz Hurley, Jon Bon Jovi, Whoopy Goldberg, Robin Williams, Richard Gere! Raining and with all the press in front of us, it was almost impossible to get a good shot, but at the end we were so close that I still got a decent shot of Richard Gere ;-)




We spent some two hours in the rain, it was freezing...so after being interviewed by some TV crew, we had something to eat in a diner...interesting and very american way to end the day! ;-) So good was the diner, that my umbrella decided to stay in there instead of coming back home with me!

Back in the hotel, time to rest from such an active day and to assimilate what was to come on Sunday...the BIG day, Elton's birthday!!!!

to be continued...

Back to the simple life again

It's been one week since I landed in Barcelona (or so they told us when we touched down) and I still haven't totally get used to it, my spirit is still in New York and probably will be for a while!

Sometimes I wonder if there wasn't some kind of problem during the flight and we accidentally landed in planet Mars or something, that would definately explain why it is impossible to find Elton's new CD release in any shops in this country. I know I keep complaining that it's only another greatest hits, I got it in NY anyway and I'm not sure I want to buy it, but it's not me but the remaining 40 million people living in this country that should get a chance to buy it, right?

Anyway, back to New York for the best...

Our second day in the Big Apple started early, at 6:30 in the morning exactly, which is the time at which we woke up due to jet lag. As our hotel was really close to the Empire State Building and we were ready to walk the streets of Manhattan before 9am, we decided it would be a good idea to walk to the Empire State and go see New York from the observatory before it became too crowded...and so we did!

After that it was time for some more sightseeing, so we just walked East to Grand Central Terminal, were we almost got a glimpse of the filming of a movie (too bad we were late and didn't get to see the actual filming).

The visit to Grand Central Station included the mandatory pictures of the clock and the stairs in the main hall and we then paid some tribute to our beloved Mediterranean food habits by buying an apple (we had to eat an apple while walking in the Big Apple, right?) and walked all the way to the UN building.

On our search for a subway station we even had some time to stop by a shop and buy some fashionably colourful eyewear to Eltonise ourselves (mainly Rod's self).

We then took a subway train (no graffitis to be seen anymore, sorry) to SoHo, were our shopaholic inclinations were tested. I have to say at that point I was so tired and even feeling unwell, which was the only thing that helped me refrain from having a shopping spree!

And that's all for today...more about our second day in New York soon...it was a long looong day! ;-)

Stay tuned!

New York City I'd really like to stay...

We are back from our amazing trip to the Big Apple, which means it's about time I update the blog. The only problem is: I can hardly find the words to describe what we had the privilege to live last weekend in New York. What an unbelievable weekend it was!

It all began when we landed at JFK airport on Friday 23rd. After being admitted in the country (you should never take it for granted that they're gonna let you in!) we took a bus to Manhattan, left all our luggage in the hotel, which was right in front of Madison Square Garden (that was made on purpose, of course!) and we headed for the lights of Times Square. All I can say is 1 year and a half after our first visit to the Queen of Cities, being surrounded by all those sky-scrapers felt like home, believe it or not. Even the Empire State Building didn't seem as frightening to us as it did the first time we saw it...just take a look at it...isn't it beautiful?!

The first day ended as, exhausted after a 29-hour-long day, we ingested some Mexican food and drank our first glass of Coke in a restaurant in New York's 5th Avenue, just two streets away from the Empire State building.

And that's about as much as we got out of our first day in NY!

to be continued...