80 Days in America

In the morning I continued my flight to New York. It was a perfect timing, because it was about sunrise. Sadly the sun was straight in front of us, so we couldn’t see the sun itself. Still it was a beautiful sight to see it slowly becoming light. About two hours later we arrived back in New York. It felt really good to walk in the busy streets of this great city again. There is so much life out here, people walking and cars driving all around you. Everywhere you look there’s something going on.

Yesterday I found out that my friend from college, Raymond, was also in New York so we would try to catch up with each other today. I went to downtown Manhattan and waited in a Starbucks for him. It was really nice to see each other again after such a long time. We tried to catch up earlier in the Netherlands, but it never worked out. Funny that it now finally worked out in New York.

Raymond brought a friend with him called Casper and we hang out the whole day in New York. Casper was a really friendly guy who offered to walk with my backpack most of the day, that was so cool (thanks again dude)! In the afternoon we tried to find a hostel for me. When we tried to call a particular hostel the phone was dead. Raymond already warned us that the hostel would probably be closed, but we still wanted to give it a try. That gave us a nice sightseeing your through Chinatown and Chelsea. Sadly Raymond was right, the hostel was closed. We walked to a small bar and sat outside at a bench looking online for more hostels. It’s really nice to just sit down for a while and watch all those different people walking by. We found a cheap hostel in upper east called Jazz Amsterdam.

Later that day we said goodbye and I went to the hostel we found online. There was a room free for 50 dollars, not to bad for New York. When I saw the dorms (big rooms with multiple beds) and the bathroom I knew why it was so cheap. It made me think a bit of the Ukraine where I was a couple of years ago. It was really dirty and bare furnished. But I had a place to stay for the night. I decided that I would look for another place tomorrow. Fortunately next week I can stay with the friend I also stayed with in the beginning of my journey, but for the next couple of days I still have to find something.