Well after the 5ish hour plane trip to new york we finally got there in the evening. We were thinking of catching a shuttlebus (a mini bus that drops you off at your door, like a taxi) but Some guy who looked all official told us we should catch that bus which will drop us off at grand central station and we can catch a cab there because no shuttles will drop us off in Manhattan. He assured us it would be cheaper than cabbing it from the airport and it would take longer for the shuttle bus to come and get us if we used that. We bought tickets and waited for the bus, then he started yelling citybus,citybus,citybus which kept us entertained while we proceeded to wait what seemed like forever. When it finally arrived it looked like some old bomb that was ready to fall apart, but by that time we were just glad we were on our way. The bus driver was a maniac, i kept thinking to myself *TAKUMI*. I wish i had an initialD sticker i would have stuck it on the back when i got off 
The buses suspension was stuffed, it must have been years of taking this punishment. Anyway all these people on the bus were told by the citybus guy that it would stop at heaps of diff places, but it just went straight to near grand central station, and we all had to cab again from there! people were pissed, we were also pissed when we later found out that the flatrate for a taxi to our door would have been $45, which is what we paid to get stuffed around, but we got there anyway so…
When we arrived to our accommodation in Manhattan. It was on a street running parallel to Broadway between 101st and 102nd st. Which was *only* about 60 blocks from time square. When we got there the girl at the counter gave us the key and said we should have a look at the room before we pay for it, hrrrm that cant be good we thought, it looked ok when you first walk in and the pictures on the site looked ok but it was an old building. We caught the elevator the the 6th floor, it was an old style elevator with a swing open door. When we got to the top and walked through the hallway it looked pretty crappy with patches of gap filler smeared on parts of the wall, but there was no renovating happening. We got to our room and started laughing, it was absolutely tiny, it was painted a horrible pink, the tv had no antenna running to it and the worst thing possible considering the temperature and humidity in New York, it had no aircon!!!! We turned off the light for a second and it wouldn’t turn back on, we both started laughing uncontrollably and after flicking it on and off 50 times it finally came back. We decided meh its still in a good area, we will only be sleeping here and we cbf looking for other accommodation.
We opened the two windows in our room and went for a walk to the convenience store and fruit & veg store along Broadway and sat outside for a while drinking our powerades, soaking up the feel of the city while waiting for our room to cool down. We started talking to some french people who sat on the bench next to us, they were friendly and it turned out they were staying at the same place, we all had a laugh at the accomodation situation, they decided to call it a night, we went to the fruit & veg store, got some food and went to sleep.
