Day 11...(Transit Day) Planes, Trains & Automobiles -7th July

It took s all day from leaving the hotel at 7am to arriving at our New York hotel at midnight (also please include the time difference of 3 hours between LV and NY).

We had a stopover in Cleveland, fling over one of the great lakes - when I looked out the window I tripped out as I thought we were flying over the ocean - even though I knew we were in Middle America! We landed quite close to the suburbs and got some great views of suburban America. (Well Cleveland anyway). Their roofs were all grey, and they all backed onto parkland, but none of them had fences and they were spaced quite far apart, but you could see into each others house due to lack of trees and fences in the middle. You could just see them eating their apple pie at night and chasing coons of the porch and then going and seeing their kids at cheerleading or football or some such crap. Fantastic! I saw them in the Cleveland airport too, all wearing baseball shirts and stuff. One lady was great, she looked just like one of those annoying suburban mums you see in the movies and stuff, and she was chatting animatedly on the phone with a full on middle american accent.

The flight to New York from there was in a cool, tiny 30 seater plane which was only 3 seats across. However the flight company Continental, which we had been flying on all day - was way better than the flight to Las Vegas with Northwest. They even fed us. They were much more efficient and clean too.

The drive to Manhattan wasn't long as we landed at La Guardia airport, although the shuttle bus ended up taking ages as they dropped everyone else off first. The driver was an annoying Jamaican guy and his boss who was a local black Jazz player who was clearly sick of him and they squabbled like an old married couple the whole way to, and through Manhattan.

We stopped outside our hotel just in in time to see a crazy old lady with a big-ass purple hat being arrested by police and putting up a right old fuss. Our hotel is the Chelsea Star Hotel, which looks like a small, kinda decrepit building on the outside, but is was cool inside! I was a bit worried at first, but when we opened the door and walked inside it was awesome. It is a themed hotel, so the walls are bright yellow with stars, and the floors and stairs are raised metal. The rooms are separately themed - ours is the Orbit Room, which has black floors and blue walls with stars on them. Its a bit of a hole in the wall, but it has A/C, a TV and I just love the theme. The bed is on the floor, on a raised up timber bit that bends alarmingly when Nate gets up on it. It's great! The shared bathroom is quite c lassy with black tiles as well. It's a bit of Russian roulette on who gets to use it (you get to know when to listen out when someone leaves then rush in). You can see the hotel on: www.starhotelny.com

In bed around 1am.