today michael and me had to get up really early in the morning to get to o'hare airport to get our flight to new york city. so we packed our stuff and drove to the airport. we soon found our gate and boarded. the pilot announced that there might be problems with taking off in chicago and landing in new york due to delays caused by the weather in chicago and new york. but with only a small delay we made it to new york and had no problems landing there. the weather here in new york is warmer than in chicago and it's also not raining all the time. so we went to our hotel that is really close to several sights we visited later like the empire state building (the "king kong" thingie, remember?) where really only a few people went, so we did not have to wait long to get to the observatory floor, or like the time square we found later (actually by accident). new york itself is different to chicago from what i can tell now. it's way more busy and there loads more people. but maybe we are just staying in a busy and crowded area. we'll find out tomorrow. so far i enjoyed new york city. it's actually more or less like you know it from movies and/or series. several WTF-encounters were made so far, like a ferris wheel in a huge "toys'r'us" store near time square. especially nice was seeing the statue of liberty from the airplane, when flying over it and fog around the empire state building within a few minutes when there was sunshine a few moments before. very very nice.