New York - Buffalo

On Monday night we went to the APT nightclub with a guy from New Zealand who we think was named Daniel. The club itself was in the trendy Meatpacking District in south west Manhattan, and was so trendy that it didn't even have a name above the door. The bar staff were rude enough to ask for tips, that's how exclusive it was. Sadly, the lineup we were expecting never materialised. However, the resident DJ Akalepse was more than satisfactory and we were treated to the sight of a hefty white guy engaged in a dance-off. We ended up staying there until the early hours.
The following day was a day of rest in which we did some laundry and struggled to eat rice without cutlery or plates. We were glad of the downtime seeing as it has been pretty much nonstop since we arrived in the US.
On Wednesday morning we made our way down to the World Trade Center site. The atmosphere around there was strangely subdued. It was quite affecting to see the large open space where the towers had been and remembering where we were on the day that it happened. A couple of weeks before had been the 5 year anniversary and they had only just finished cleaning away the debris. Work has just commenced on the new Freedom Tower which when built will be the biggest tower in the world. After taking stock for a few minutes we headed down to the banks of the Hudson river to look across the water at Lady Liberty. Whilst we were there we noticed a great deal of commotion amongst fire and ambulance services which we later found were heading to the site of the recent plane crash that killed a New York Yankees pitcher and his flight instructor. This occured up on East 72nd street which is nowhere near any of the places we were visiting. Shortly after this it began to pour down so we headed back to the hostel to dry off. That night we headed to a popular burger and pizza joint on the upper West side called Big Nick's. The menu there was literally 24 pages long packed with every conceivable variation of junk food imaginable.
We had time to kill on Thursday seeing as we had booked a night bus to Buffalo that didn't leave until 11.45pm. We spent our time wondering in and around Times Square culminating in a vist to the Church of Scientology. Here we were shown a fifteen minute movie about "Dianetics" which essentially informed us that the reason for all our ills is due to things we hear subconsciously whilst in pain or unconscious. The video was incredibly cheesy and left us with a lot of questions which the representative from the Church was only too happy to answer. We spent a good hour talking with her about the subject and mocking Tom Cruise's hair, whilst trying to keep a straight face.
Our bus left over and hour late and thus began a trial of patience and endurance which was to last us almost 24 hours. We woke up five hours into a seven hour journey to heavy snowfall and around dawn the bus came to a complete standstill amongst hundreds of other vehicles where it remained for the next 10 hours. While we were sleeping a huge weather front had made it's way across Lake Erie and dumped 2 feet of unseasonable snow over the entire Buffalo area. The city was put into a state of emergency and no vehicles were allowed to enter or leave the city for the rest of the day. With very little food or water we were forced to amuse ourselves until the bus was finally able to turn around and take us back to Syracuse a good two hour drive away. From here we managed to catch the last bus back to Buffalo which went the long way around via Rochester, Pennsylvania and we finally arrived at our hostel just after 11 that night. The hostel itself is by far the nicest we have been to so far and feels like a veritable oasis after our long ordeal getting here.
Today we spent the day walking around the city and wandering at the huge number of trees which have been destroyed by the heavy snowfall. Weather permitting we plan to make our way to Niagara Falls in the next couple of days.