We're On The Road To Nowhere...

We spent practically the ENTIRE day on the road, yesterday... Half of the time, needlessly going around in circles...
We spent the first half of the day proudly exclaiming to the world, of our tourist status; by sitting atop an obnoxiously decorated open-topped bus, touring Downtown NYC, with a guide on the mic, who looked a splitting image of Art Garfunkel... The only conceivable measure of making us MORE obvious tourists, would be to buy one of those clichéd "I <3 NY" T-shirts, and wearing enough suncream to be easily confused as the marshmallow man from Ghostbusters...
The tour as a whole was quite pleasant though, and the guide gave a decent.... guide... Before we got off at Ground Zero... Now I tell you; the work they've done there since 9/11 is quite remarkable - they've already built a beautiful couple of waterfalls on the foundations of the original towers, which is a really tranquil memorial; as well as begun the building of the new World Trade Centre, with what will be the tallest building in the city... What I find disgraceful though is the amount of people who have used the event as an easy way of cashing in, by making booklets and T-shirts, and other such crap, to sell to passing tourists, with slogans on 9/11... I mean seriously?!? Are these people so damn near braindead to fail to realise that some people may find this stuff a touch distasteful?!? My deepest sympathies go to those directly affected by it, because they deserve much more than some pathetic sweatshop slogan...
We then took a little stroll down Wall Street, and past the US Stock Exchange, before turning up at Pier... 13?... I think it was 13... Can't really remember if truth be told, but it may as well have been 13, because the cancer that is Justin Bieber was apparently there... I didn't see him (which is a shame really, because I'd have really quite liked to whack him round the head with a golf club), but my mum said he was there, and due to the hoards of little, fat, lonely, and delusional 12 year old girls in Disney outfits, scampering about; I am not one to question it... As I say though; I was just a tad disappointed that, that was the one day I decided against bringing my Personal All-In-One Guillotine Kit from JML, which I purchased with not one, not two, not even three; but FOUR free blades for calling in the next 10 minutes... Genuine guttedness... 
Later in the day, we climbed atop the Rockefeller Centre (although let me point out that I mean via elevator, as apposed to full out human-spidermanesque climbing up the side of the building - we are FAR too lazy to attempt that...), and had a look around at the NYC skyline from above... Some nutter decided that it'd be fun to try to climb over the huge barrier though, just to "take a bit better picture", at the risk of falling  70 stories, to his human-pancakey demise... Whilst up there, I also found a huge amount of Asian families... Now I don't know why this is, but I find that whenever Asian people are taking a photograph on holiday, the woman and children will always be making a large enough smile to give themselves a facial tumour, whilst gesturing this stupid little sign with their first two fingers... Meanwhile, the man stands there, with the sole job of looking as miserable as conceivably possible; only making the others look somehow EVEN MORE happy... Why can't they just all give an awkwardly false orgasm-face smile, like the rest of us?...
So we came down, had ourselves some dinner in TGI Fridays, after waiting for the waitress (who looked like Serena Williams with some 42E cups going on) for nigh on a millennium to serve us; and began the trip home... Now that should have been it for this entry, but no... of course not... On our trip home; which should have taken perhaps 15 minutes at most; turned into an hour and a half long marathon around the entire city of New York... The self proclaimed geographical genie that is my father, had decided that rather than going back by the known route to which we had taken to get to TGI's; it would be MUCH easier and quicker to go in some unknown direction... "OK..." we said, and began walking down this road.... 15 minutes on, we end up half way down the road and he decides to say "... Umm... Guys?... I don't think you'll believe it, but... I think we're going in the wrong direction..."; so I was like "OK, that doesn't matter all too much; how far far wrong are we?...", to which the response comes "Totally... We're meant to be going the COMPLETELY different direction...". Naturally, I assumed that he meant we missed the turning or whatever; but no... Of course, he meant that we had to walk ALL THE WAY back through what we had just spent all this time walking, until the point where we were essentially the same distance from TGI Friday's as we otherwise were; just in the other direction... So we carry on, before he says "... Umm... Guys?... I don't think you'll believe it, but I think we're going in the wrong direction...". Now obviously at this point, seeing as it's 11:30pm, and we've been out all day; I'm SERIOUSLY PISSED, because I just wanted a bit of sleep, yknow?... (Hardly asking of much...) So from there on out, in some passive aggressive spat, I decided to just walk off on my own to the hotel (because I'm hard like that)... And of course; I found my way back IMMEDIATELY... 
Now if there's ANYTHING even SLIGHTLY positive that can come out of that little fiasco (which certainly won't be my fatigue levels, considering that I only got about 7 hours sleep, and now look like a half-dead gibbon with a stroke...) it's that I now know what to get my dad for Christmas... A freaking compass...

Thanks,
Kempo.