.Day One- Wednesday 5th Jan.

I was very excited when first arriving in NY and i couldn't wait to leave the airport and get outside into the NY fresh air. After feeling like a criminal in security control due to the amount of checks i had to go through, we finally got to bundle onto a coach outside...it wasn't until i saw the first yellow cab that it hit me...that i was actually in NY, something Ive only ever seen in the movies.

We had a very amusing tour guide on the coach on the way to the hotel, but due to the high amount of excitement and lack of sleep the only piece of information given that i can recall is that the emergency number in NY was 911 rather than 999- fab. As approaching the boarder line of Manhattan, NY began to arise in the distance, the sheer height of the buildings was incredible, i knew what to expect but you can only really understand it until you've seen it with your own eyes.

Finally we arrived at the East Gate Hotel on 39th street of 3rd avenue, leaving the coach i suddenly felt very small and very very lost. Room 21G was to be my new home for the next five days, after showering at a million miles an hour, I set off onto the streets of NY...along with my friends Becky and Liz.

So after about five minutes we considered ourselves completely lost, the plan became just to walk north and head for 5th avenue...only 2 avenues away...surely it couldn't be that hard to find. Stopping for our first 3 dollar slice of American pizza to keep energy levels high, as we walked along the streets by eyes kept catching the amount of rubbish bags that were left on the street...pile and piles of the stuff, hardly glamorous i kept telling myself... The roads were literally crazy, four lanes of yellow blur, there was a billion taxis racing around everywhere!

After about half an hour or so we were bang on 5ht avenue and the sight of Macy's department store was in the distance (absolutely huge) and it was are first stop... it kind of reminded me of the British Selfridges, no items were bought here and it was straight onto Forever 21 (NY's equivalent of New Look)..many items were bought here!

After visiting a few more stores we were running low on energy again, so choosing from one of the large amount of Starbucks that are available on every street corner of NY, we grabbed a coffee and watched the busy streets of NY go by.