New York

Eleven inches of snow is exactly what you want on the first day of your trip isn’t it? One look in my backpack reveals that some of the more useful things I have packed include; shorts, flip flops and a snorkel.

I’m in New York staying with a couple of friends on the Upper West Side – no I’ve no idea what that means either – and have just managed to thaw myself out after possibly the worst New Years Eve I have ever had.

We started the evening at about six having been told to get to Times Square early to avoid the crowds, we sneakily avoided the no alcohol law by taking booze with us inside of hairspray bottles – it couldn’t make the American beer taste any worse trust me.

Once inside Times square we noticed the cops would put up crash barriers behind every 200 or so people effectively fencing us in. however, we only realised why after 3 hours when we went get some coffee (to get our body temperatures back to normal) and were told that if we left this section we’d have to re-join the queue at the back!

For six hours we waited in minus freezing temperatures and – unlike every piece of news footage they drag out every year full of party crazed New Yorkers – the place was dead, after about four hours we realised that not one person from New York was in a radius of about five kilometres of us, they were all warm, having fun and in a bar laughing at all the stupid freezing tourists.

The only entertainment came at ten seconds to every hour when we had the chance to count down from ten to one – crazy nights indeed. By the time midnight came and that stupid ball dropped I was longing for a brandy and a hot water bottle. The final straw came whilst defrosting our toes when all four of us admitted that had it not been for the other three we would have left hours ago.