Welcome to Manhattan, my first few footsteps on American soil.
Relentless flashing of adverts plastered over every surface coupled with preachers, buskers, police officers, ticket touts, street vendors, tourists, NYC cabs and cars made for quite an experience, Time Square.
We found a little Irish Bar snuggled behind the Empire State Building called Jack Demsey’s.
5 or 6 beers later and we were beginning to grasp an understanding of American Football, between the commercials. We happened to notice a basketball game being shown on one of the TVs. At this drunken point, we started pondering how good it would be to go and watch a New York Knicks game. After a swift Google to figure out whether that could even be possible I’d found there was a game that night at Madison Square Garden in an hours time, or so I thought…
Without further consideration, I’d found a website that sells the unwanted tickets of fans with season tickets and I’d put a bid in for two tickets to watch the Knicks that night. I came proudly stomping back into the bar to announce my successful purchase.
While finishing our drinks, I continued my Google-ing with excited anticipation of the evening’s activity to come, at which point I discovered the score, for New York Knicks vs. Hornets ‘FT result 113 to 111’, the game I thought I’d just booked tickets for. Hang about they played yesterday? What the hell have I just bought tickets for?
It turns out that basketball games are played in two legs back to back, playing the first night at one team’s ground and the next night they travel to the other teams ground to play the second leg. I’d managed to book tickets to go and watch Hornets vs. New York Knicks in Charlotte, North Carolina, a casual 627 miles from our current location, a naive English man in New York conundrum. There was no refund to be had, an expensive lesson was learnt so there was only one thing for it, back to the bar.
