Since I originally had believed my stay in New York would be shorter, I had only booked a few days at the hotel. When it became clear that it was going to last a while longer, my old hotel was already full-booked. Thankfully, there are a lot of hotels in New York. So, at a few dollars more a night, I found a hotel in Long Island City, much closer to Manhattan, and now that I am in that room, quite a lot better. (Not to mention that the trip to the airport suddenly got 70 USD cheaper.)

It is quite a nice hotelroom, comfy office chair, a jacuzzi plazed in the room itself, and not the bathroom for some strange reason. And just a much higher standard. I can probably get some work done here as well as the week goes by.

Back to the Intrepid. Construction was started only days before Pearl Harbour, and it was commission in 1943, staying in the Pacific for the duration of WW2. It was later recommissioned as a cold war era jet fighter carrier, adding the horizontal takeoff along with a much improved messdeck, serving as a platform during the Korean war.

I started however at the U.S.S. Growler, the first generation of submarines carrying nuclear missiles (the precursor to cruise missiles), which is the only nuclear missile submarine open to the public. It was large on the outside, but being a dieselelectric submarine, it was quite tight fit on the inside. Imagining up to a hundred crewmembers serving onboard the boat for up to 90 days, anyone could get claustrophobia. It was a very interesting tour.

Further on was a former British Airways Concorde. I appreciated the chance of seeing this piece of aviation history myself, going aboard it, and just imagining how it must have been onboard the worlds fastests (and therefore quietests, as it outran its engine sounds) commercial airliner. But I guess it was too far ahead of its time.

The Intrepid was large, but the areas of the ship available to the public was perhaps 25%, not including the hangar and top decks. While it has been retrofitted with modern heads, a small caffeé and elevators between all decks. It was still worth the tour. Having survived five full on kamikaze hits along with a torpedo, it stands as a testament as to how hard it was to actually sink a carrier.

Up on top there was a nice selection of cold war era aircraft, including a U-2.

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Then I planned to go out to Statue of Liberty, along with what remains of World Trade Center. I took the subway to Times Square, and then on to South Ferry, but as I was making my way to the ferry out to the statue, I saw people advertising a helicopter tour of New York city. As I like getting the overview, I went for it. It turned out that the poor fellow had been trying to get people to get a helicopter tour, but his company was fully booked for the day, but he did me a favour, and pointed me to a rival company, named Manhattan Helicopters, offering the same kind of tour. Was a nice tour, and I got some nice pictures out of it.

After that, out on to the statue of Liberty. It was too late in the day to get into the statue itself, but with the long lines, just seeing it up close was enough.

Random thought of the day:
While I could swear that 90% of all cellphones I saw at the NAB show where iPhones, they make up for over 50% of the phones I see here in New York as well.

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Getting the luggage was a breeze this time (computers do wonders), but the poor cabbie I got this time, had to drive around most of Queens before he found the right place. (Thankfully, its fixed charge trips from the airport.)

Its quite interesting living here, seeing how New York is outside of Manhattan. Tomorrow I plan to go there, visit the statue of Liberty, and probably the 9/11 site.

Having sent my dirty clothes to be cleaned and picked up tomorrow morning, I am looking a lot more positive on things, than last night, with no luggage or clean clothes after the airtrip.

Todays photos as usual, the hotelroom.

When I was rebooked, I had the choice of going back to Vegas, staying in Houston or going on to Newark, as I had decided that playing tourist for a few days could be fun, I chose to go on. My bags on the other hand, chose to stay in Houston without telling me about it.

So, when I came to Newark, none of my bags arrived. There was misrouting with all bags routed to Europe, so it took a while to find any one bag. 2 hours passed, and I rechecked, and they went out to search for my bags again. 3 hours passed, and the transport hub manager started looking, but still no bags. Finally though, the poor continental rep. who had to handle all requests, got a computer to search with, and they started to suspect that my bags where in Houston. An hour later, it was confirmed, and I had to head back the next day to retrieve the bags.

I had managed to book a small hotel in Queens, New York, quite cheap, quite nice. But my cabdriver actually had problems finding it, despite being on a main boulevard, Queens blvd.