St Louis

We arrived in St Louis at around 3pm, pretty convenient as the hotel we stayed at was a short walk from the station and 3pm was when check-in started. It was all very fancy - they gave you free popcorn in the lobby in the afternoon, three free alcoholic drinks in the evening (plus bar snacks) and free soda any time you wanted it. Also free breakfasts, which meant we could take bagels and muffins for our lunch. When we got there we just chilled out for a little while (ate popcorn, etc), then went in search of dinner. The old train station had been converted into a shopping centre with a food court, so we ate there and had a wander. We tried the food that St Louis people are most proud of: frozen custard. It was basically like ice cream with a slight custardy taste and when it melted it wasn't at all like custard... it was quite nice but I wasn't overly excited by it!

The next day was MY BIRTHDAY and of course I was very excited. We went back to the shopping centre so I could use one of the touristy machines to print a medal for myself that said "BIRTHDAY GIRL". Very tacky but $1 well spent I think! Especially because Oz paid for it. We went to the Missouri Botanical Garden in the morning and saw lots of sculptures and flowers and things. Then in the afternoon we went to the Anheuser Busch brewery, basically the world headquarters for Budweiser. They do free tours and at the end you get free beer, so obviously it was a good 21st birthday activity. The brewery itself was cool, it smelt all malty like Shreddies. Afterwards we went back to the hotel for our free drinks and snacks, then to the Hard Rock Cafe for dinner, where I told the waiter it was my birthday, Oz told me I was a loser, but I got a free birthday sundae. All in all it was a very good brithday!

On the 21st we weren't in the mood for doing anything touristy so we had a lie-in then went to Delmar, a street that's (apparently) one of the top ten streets to visit in the USA. It has loads of random quirky shops with retro clothing and random gifts and things like that. So we wandered around there and had a cheap Thai lunch. I bought a nice t-shirt and Oz bought some comic books. We found a tea shop selling "bubble tea" which is a cool drink that has little blobs of tapioca in it that are tasty and chewy. Then we decided to see if we could shoot them out of the straw like a pea-shooter and had a competition to see who could shoot one into the drain several feet in front of us first. Of course Oz won but I managed one too (and do not fear, we kicked all the ones that missed into the drain afterwards so as not to leave a mess O:-) ). On the way back we found a shop we hadn't been in yet and I bought a new bracelet for Oz as an early anniversary present as his other one got lost in NYC. So all in all a very lovely day =)

Sadly, the 22nd was a bit of a failure in all respects. We went downtown to see the arch (symbolising that St Louis is the gateway to the West) and the free museum of western expansion, which I didn't really get because it was really poorly organised so I couldn't really tell what I was meant to be learning. I wanted to learn about the pioneers and stuff like that but it was actually mainly about these two guys who sailed all the way along the Mississippi and fought Indians and things on the way. Then I guess they came back again?? I don't know, I really didn't get the museum at all, but that was ok because the gift shop was awesome. They had all this tacky olde-tyme American stuff like weird candies and handmade bonnets (I was so tempted to buy one but couldn't really think of any good reason). Mummy, I bought a book for you but then we hit calamity because Oz left the bag on the Metro, so we lost the things we'd bought =(

After the museum we lunched in the park then wandered around downtown, but there really wasn't all that much there, so we walked to this random suburb that turned out to be really far away and it was really hot so we got grumpy. Then we realised we'd lost the things we'd bought earlier and though we phoned the Metro lost property they said nothing had been handed in, so we went and got on our train to Dallas (which was delayed, I forget by how long). So we had a bit of a sad ending to St Louis, which was a shame because before we had been having such a nice time.

It wasn't that Windy a City...

With Cincinnati ten hours behind us we reached Chicago late morning. Figuring out which bus to take was pretty easy (the hostel told us...) and we got off at what the driver called 'Buckingham Palace'. We thought he was taking the piss out of our accents until we realised we were right next to Buckingham Fountain – one of the largest fountains of its type in the world. America really is a country of 'World's Somethingest Something'. Even in places we're going to like St. Louis, it has to be described as the 'second largest city in Missouri' or similar. I figure Li and I need superlatives to go with us on this trip too – answers on a postcard in our comment box!

Anyway, the hostel was lovely. Run by the Hosteling International group, it was remarkably clean, the rooms were huge and the facilities on site included a massive kitchen, group recreation area with pool table etc. two TV rooms and a large lending library. Wi-fi wasn't free but we managed to steal the unsecured connection from the café next door. Being an HI hostel, rooms were single sex so Li and I were apart at night. Li shared a two bunk room with a friendly Korean woman and I was in a room with four guys from the UK (not sure where) who were all living in London once they finished travelling. They were flying and their route was a lot less direct than ours. They'd started on the East coast, flown into the midwest and were headed back out to New York before going to L.A to finish the trip.

We didn't do much on our first day except take in the Magnificent Mile – Chicago's famous high street area and, because I thought it'd be cool, we went uptown to the world's only Threadless retail store to get a couple of cheap but very awesome shirts.

Day 2 was a LOT more eventful. Upon finding coupons in the hostel, we decided to head over to Navy Pier to rent a couple of bikes and ride up the side of Lake Michigan. The people at the rental shop were lovely and we hired a pair of hybrid bikes (kind of a cross between a racing and mountain bike) and took off heading North. We leisurely cycled ten miles up through the parks and along the shore and came to a beach at the end of the trail. We locked up the bikes and went for a quick paddle. Then it got interesting. Li's key broke off in the lock, meaning she couldn't get the bike back. Seeing as we only had them for another hour, this was a problem. We figured the best option was for me to cycle back and explain our predicament and hope they didn't charge us through the nose for it all.

Ten miles and an hour later I made it back to the shop and, in my tired, sweaty state, told them about the problem we had. I expected them to hop in a car with a rotary saw and rescue Alison. What they actually did was hand me a pair of bolt cutters (the kind you use to cut through chain link fences) and let me use a bike for the day until we recovered the other one. Not wanting to wade through crowds of people by the beach again, I took to the Chicago roads and, some might say miraculously, did not die. I made it to Li in no time, satisfied and with a new idea for a London based project (see my NEW blog at http://ozonabike.blogspot.com).

Now, they'd warned me at the shop that, while possible (they'd done it before) cutting through a solid bar lock with bolt cutters really sucks. Instead of being able to cut through the lock, the process was more like grinding it down, one layer of molecules at a time. After an hour we were maybe halfway through. Throughout the ordeal people kept on coming up to offer advice or simply comment on our situation. Hardly anyone thought to question why we were apparently stealing a bike in broad daylight. Eventually The Nicest Man in America came by and offered to cycle home to get a hacksaw. He returned less than twenty minutes later with a saw and cold beers as well! He made it through the lock in no time and we were on our way. Another ten miles (we did a LOT of cycling that day) and we were back with the bikes for the nice folks at the rental place. Vowing to only ever use combination locks from then on, we took the bus home in search of dinner.

Dinner was an ordeal in itself. Not through any problems or adventures but just the sheer size of what we had to eat. On this trip we're endeavouring to sample as many local 'delicacies' as possible. For Li, it's been an adventure in cheese-coated food so far. For me, it's meant eating salad for every other meal in an effort to stay healthy! We were doing well but Chicago nearly had us beat. The famous Chicago deep-dish pizza is a monster never to be taken lightly. Ours was over an inch deep with a thick pie crust around the rim and enough cheese inside to make a buffalo cry (thanks again Li). We ordered a medium (graciously paid for by Alison in return for my efforts earlier) and made it four slices in before giving up and taking the rest home for dinner the next day. My sinuses were packed with cheese and dough.

Having whizzed past a number of attractions the previous day (FOUR TIMES in my case), on our third day in Chicago we decided to take a look at a few of the free places of interest that the city had to offer. We started off in the zoo which, for a free outing, was incredibly good. Plenty of animals (some you wouldn't see in London or Bristol) plus a nice open park space to wander around. Next was the botanical conservatory which was equally impressive and, again, our favourite price! Just after lunch we decided that it was time to spend a while in the sun and we headed down to the shore of Lake Michigan for a swim and a lie on the sand. Summer be damned because the lake was FREEZING. It was a pleasant contrast to the burning hot sand, however.

Once dried and dressed again, we walked into town in search of the Museum of Contemporary Art which, being a Monday was closed. Of course. Bugger. While the city is supposedly like New York in terms of nocturnal activity, all of the museums and galleries seem to close early on weeknights. To console ourselves we walked a bit more of the Magnificent Mile, window shopped (Li now has a list of things to buy in San Francisco), had a bun and went back to the hostel to play some pool and pack. Our next stop was to be St. Louis. Our first proper stop in the American midwest.

Comments from Li:

Okay. Everyrthing in the US really does have to be the world's somethingest-something, and if it can't be that then it has to be the second or even third most somethingest something. E.g. the world's (or USA's) third widest cable bridge, as if the first and second widest cable bridges also make note of that sort of fact. Anyway. Day 2, and Oz has just set off back to the cycle shop with my broken key. I hang out for a little while by the bike – luckily we parked them right next to a water fountain. I consider going swimming with all my clothes on because I was really hot, but decide against it and instead wander into the nearby neighbourhood to find a magazine to read at the 7-Eleven. I then proceeded to read the whole magazine cover to cover, and I learned that (apparently) women who eat a bowl of cereal a day in the month before they start trying to have babies are more likely to conceive a boy. Supposedly (I have my doubts about this). About 10 minutes after I've finished, Oz appears sweaty and out of breath with... a pair of bolt cutters. Great. So we start grinding away at the lock. Many people tell us, “You can open those with a bobby pin,” “You're going to be going at that for a long while,” “You need a hacksaw,” “You need a blowtorch,” until, as Oz said, the Nicest Man in America (otherwise known as Our Hero) saved us from our predicament.

The pizza we had was AWESOME and I don't know why Oz was complaining! It was stuffed pizza, so it had a thin base, then a thick layer of cheese and whatever else you'd usually put on the top, then another thin layer of base, then tomato sauce on top. Tasty! Though we did have the surliest waitress ever, even though we gave her a New York tip (most places in the USA expect you to tip around 15%, though in NYC they demand a 20% tip off you). She did counterbalance the kind of frighteningly friendly and somewhat hyperactive man we had serving us the day before – we went to an English style pub, which was kind of like an English pub but wrong in many subtle yet glaring ways.

Now I'm going to bitch a little bit, because I wanted to go to the Chicago History Museum, which we actually walked past when we were trying to find the Museum of Contemporary Art. We'd previously decided we were prettymuch done with art museums after NY, also Oz owed me a museum because he made us go to the Holocaust Museum in DC. But no, we had to go to the Contemporary Art Museum. Which was shut. Then the lady in tourist information said that the Chicago History Museum was free that day, only by then it was too late to go back. Well, I didn't get sore about it for too long (but I'm totally bearing a grudge about this so can force my museum choice on Oz in the future...) because I didn't want to be a grumpyguts. Also we went in H&M and I found lots of nice autumnal clothes which were very cheap – even when the dollar is $1.85 to the pound, when the prices have just changed the £ for a $ it's still really cheap :D So I decreed that we have to find an H&M in San Francisco so I can buy lots of things. Does that count as a museum choice...?

Cincinna-TEA

Well, it was a joyous train ride to Cincy: 11:10am til 1:30am. Woo. I didn't like it too much because it was all mountains and woodland and it all seemed very sort of wild and isolated. The lady checking our tickets said she liked the way we said Cincinnati, because we, in our English way, said Cincinn-atty, not Cincinnahhddy.

We didn't have anywhere to stay that night so we hung out in the station until 6:30am, when we got a taxi to the Travelodge, who let us check in early at about 8:15 (they were meant to charge us $20 to check in early, but they didn't - not sure if they forgot or what but I'm not complaining). So we fell into bed and slept until 1, when we wandered over the bridge - the Travelodge was across the river Ohio so technically in Kentucky, not Ohio as the rest of Cincinnati is - to get some lunch and see what there was to see. Turns out, not too much, but that was ok because everyone was super nice to us (especially the man at the AAA, where we wanted a map/bus info), and though when we strayed from the central part of the city things did look a bit worn down, the centre was rather nice. We got a bus to Mount Adams, a suburb with a free conservatory on a hill. It was very lovely, a little perverse going into basically a greenhouse on a really hot day, but we saw some cool plants and bought souvenirs and wandered around the park it was in too (more because we were lost than anything else). Everything shut at about 5 which was a bit of a shame, so we didn't have time to go to the zoo - apparently the sexiest zoo in the USA as it has the highest success rate for animals mating. Macy's was still open though, so we looked in there and I ended up getting a belt and a bag and purse that matched. Oz bought the bag and belt as my birthday present, but let me have them early =) We found a burrito dinner in Newport (the semi-suburb over the river where the Travelodge was) then watched Cartoon Network and the end of The Truman Show. Sometimes it's nice to just bum about!

The next day, we hung about in Newport. We watched the new Starwars movie then spent some time in the arcade and had freaky smoothies. The smoothies all had dodgy stuff added like soy protein and carbohydrate something-or-other. Then we had lunch in a seafood place, picked up our bags from the Travelodge and got a bus to the station, which is less a station and more the Museum Center, with a children's museum, a natural history museum (which was actually quite devoid of natural history, apart from one skeleton) and a museum about the history of Cincinnati. We got lucky as that Friday it was free museum day, which apparently happens once a month, so we saved some $$. We also went to the Imax theatre there to see a film about the human body at 9pm - as our train wasn't until 1am, we wanted to keep ourselves amused.

After the film, we got really lucky. In the station is a 4000-pipe organ, which is only played very rarely. But this being the age of electronical wonderment that it is, there were "recordings" of the organ being played which, when played back, made the pipes play themselves so it was just like the real thing. When we were there, one of the station employees was showing off the organ to some other people, so we got to listen too. It was really impressive as there was nobody else around, and the station is huge with an arching roof, so it sounded amazing. Although it was completely a case of being in the right place at the right time, we felt extremely lucky, and it made me glad we were travelling. Sometimes it's not just the things you see when you're there, but the things you see along the way. 

Adventure in Maryland, or, how Li got SHOT IN THE FOOTs

Okay, so Oz is being really rubbish about updating the blog, and he keeps hogging the laptop so I can't update it either. Or he gives it to me when I'm really tired and can't be bothered. Well, we've been having busy days!

Sunday at Ethan's: we have a lie-in, which feels pretty good, then take the opportunity to do an American activity, namely, going to a range and shooting guns. We wanted to do this with Ethan because he's responsible and actually knows how to work guns, so we won't shoot ourselves (that doesn't mean that we won't get shot by other people, though). So we pick up Pat (another American Oz met in halls last year), who also has never shot a pistol, who lives in Virginia. It's kind of cool driving around there because you can go into three states in about as many minutes. We got a little lost trying to find the range, but we got there in the end. To give you a little background on this place, their website advertised Monday's: Ladies' Night, Wednesdays: Couples' Night and Fridays: Parent and child night. 

We got two 9mm pistols, a Glock and a Sig, and three boxes of ammo between the four of us. Then, armed with our earmuffs and... arms, we assumed position in our lanes. Ethan had, of course, shown us how to load and fire the gun, and how to eject the magazine afterwards (because you should always set the gun down with the magazine out before you step away). I went last because I was frightened, but I think Oz and Pat were too, just hiding it better or being manlier! I wasn't good at loading the bullets at first because the spring was kind of strong and my fingers kept slipping on the bullets, but after a couple of goes getting Ethan and Oz to do it for me, I managed to work it myself. Shooting was surprisingly fun after the initial fear, though I was rubbish at aiming.

Then, I got SHOT IN THE FOOT. Not really. The guy to our right was firing increasingly large and scary guns, and as I was getting ready to fire, he fired and something flew off from somewhere and hit me in the foot (flipflops clearly being sensible footwear), scratching me and drawing blood in two places. Luckily I lived to tell the tale, and get lunch afterwards. Pat stabbed Ethan's cup with a cocktail stick so his soda was squirting out, so Ethan naturally got revenge by attempting to drive off without Pat. I think all the people in the parking lot thought we were crazy. After lunch we went to wander around Old Town in Alexandria, VA, which by our standards was really not that old. Then we all headed back to Ethan's place for Halo and a Taco Bell dinner where Oz ate entirely too much.

On Monday Oz and I went into DC, which we both really liked. It was possible to do everything in one day, as it's all really close and easy to get to. We started off at the Capitol then walked along the Mall to the Smithsonian air and space museum, where we saw moon suits and spacecraft and the original Wright Brothers plane, etc. We also went to the Natural History Museum, which I greatly preferred over the one in NYC, though we didn't spend too long looking around there. I'm developing a fascination for natural history museums, though Oz doesn't share my enthusiasm quite so much. So what did we do instead? We went to the Holocaust Memorial Museum. We wanted to go to the museum of American history, but it was shut until September for some reason. The Holocaust museum was entirely depressing (as I expected), but afterwards we wandered around the Washington Monument, Reflecting Pool and Vietnam Memorial then up to the Lincoln Memorial. All very lovely, and we saw the White House afterwards too, where there were some amusing children. One was very disappointed when told she couldn't go in. The other asked her dad if George Bush drove a Mini Cooper.

Dad: I don't think so, he has a limo with lots of security

Child: Why?

Dad: In case someone tries to shoot him

Child (incredulous): But who would want to shoot him, Daddy?

Dad (very serious tones): Crazy people, honey. Crazy people.

We got back kind of late, but Ethan kindly drove us to the supermarket so we could get some food for dinner. We thought we were leaving on Tuesday, but when I checked our tickets it turned out we weren't leaving til Wednesday, so we had a whole extra day to play with. So, we went to Arlington cemetary and had a picnic lunch nearby (obviously you can't picnic in the actual cemetary). It was cool to see but it was sooooo hot - didn't help that we didn't get there til about 1 because when we called a taxi to take us to the subway station they didn't make a record of it so we had to call them again - but we saw the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns, and Kennedy's grave. It was too hot to wander around any more so we came back and had a look around Rockville, getting smoothies to refresh us. Then we went back to Ethan's, packed our bags and had some dinner. More Halo was played until around midnight, when we went to bed so we could get up fresh the next morning to get on a train to... Cincinnati.

Now the sun's coming up, I'm riding with Lady Luck, freeway cars and trucks,

Time to leave New York now.

We had an early(ish) departure from New York today and got up bright and early to make sure we got a bus to Penn Station on time. We were the first down to breakfast so we missed the free bagels (free bread and butter though) and then we took a pleasantly air conditioned bus all the way down to the station. Nice and easy =)

After that, however, all the trains on the line we needed were plagued by delays and we ended up leaving New York around an hour later. Still, after a freezing train journey thanks to air conditioning powerful enough to keep a polar bear happy (thanks for the simile, Li), we made it to Washington D.C. (which I now know is part of no state – Columbia doesn't exist in North America...) and tried to get in touch with Ethan, our friend from last year at Connaught Hall. We failed. U.S pay phones really aren't that helpful but, thankfully, we'd been left useful directions to the nearest metro station to Ethan's house and dutifully followed them. Upon reaching Rockville, a delightful quiet suburb that's actually in neighbouring Maryland, we tried again and got through. Ethan seemed relieved, believing we'd been robbed/murdered/kidnapped en route and he came to pick us up.

After living in university halls and student housing for the past 2 to 3 years, Ethan's place, even by normal standards, is a palace. Rockville, we were told, is quite small and relatively expensive but house prices are still enough to bring a tear to any UK homeowner's eye. One thing we didn't entirely understand or accept was, once again, the air conditioning. Being from the South (note the capitalisation), Ethan has grown up coddled by its icy embrace. To use his words, we were cutting glass. Still, we were comfortable.

We hit a bit of a snag with what to do in the evening as Li is still a week away from turning 21 and becoming a fully fledged adult and Real Human Being in this country. Drinking, obviously, was out and, as everywhere requires ID on the door unless you want to go to an overpopulated, overrated, overpriced dance club, 18+ events are no fun. It was Ethan's recently refurbished Xbox to the rescue and we enjoyed a night of killing each other instead. Pat (another friend from my first year) was meant to come round too but he had attended a BBQ earlier that day and, to the best of his recollection, was unconscious by 9:30pm.

Hmm, I'm coming off as really negative about this whole day. This really isn't the case, though. It's great to catch up with old friends (we hadn't seen Ethan in over a year and Pat in nearly as long) and, after NYC a change of pace was more than welcome. Plus, we have all of D.C's history and spectacle to enjoy at our leisure!

Apologies for lack of photos at this stage – I'm updating on the train and my camera is locked away in my bag. Once electricity, light (night trains – woo) and a USB cable make themselves available to me, I'll add pretty pictures.

-Oz

P.S – We've been on this train for 10 hours now. 5 to go...

NYC: Friday

Back again... really going to have to update more frequently if I will insist on doing a blow-by-blow account of each day. I have been meaning to update on trains but from NYC to DC I slept most of the way. However tomorrow's train journey from DC to Cincinnati is a joyous 13 hours long, so undoubtedly we'll say more then (but obviously, no internet on the train so it might be a little while until we post what we've written).

On Friday we went to do the Circle Line tour around Manhattan. The boat left at 11:30 so we went early to get tickets with our city passes, then just hung out by the fountain near the boats because we were meant to get in the queue for boarding at 11. We bought a "souvenir mug" for $6 because drinks were $4 each but with the mug you got free refills. So we had about 5 drinks then chucked the mug afterwards :P The tour itself was pretty good. With our passes we had to do the 2 hour one, but I have to say I was done with it when we'd been on the boat for just over an hour. But we did get to see Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty (smaller than you'd expect) and where they're building on Ground Zero, as well as several bridges. When we got off the boat it was raining so we ducked into a deli on the way to Times Square and had some lunch. By the time we'd finished the rain had stopped so we wandered over to Times Square. I liked it there. It reminded me of Piccadilly Circus but spanning blocks, not justone intersection, and with many more lights and signs and things. Even the NYPD had a sign with flashing lights rippling all across it. 

From Times Square we walked up past the Rockefeller Center to the Museum of Modern Art. Unfortunately on Fridays between 4 and 8pm it's free, so it was really busy (though with our passes we didn't have to queue at all). I liked it though, despite the huge numbers of people taking photos of the paintings/their friends in front of the paintings. We saw Pollocks, Oldenburgs, Warhols, Matisses,  Mondrians, Lichtensteins, Picassos (including sculptures), Klees and many more, I forget! We did a pretty quick tour as it was so busy. Afterwards we went to a cafe and shared a piece of NY cheesecake and a cannoli, two foods we had been meaning to sample whilst in NYC. I liked the cheesecake, though I don't like cheesecake in England much. Refreshed by those, we went to Bloomingdale's again to look for a bracelet for Oz because his came off yesterday in the Natural History Museum and we couldn't find it again, but we didn't have much success. We walked all the way down Lexington until we stumbled across Grand Central station, which I'm glad we saw. Then we got on the subway there and went back to the hostel, because we were pretty tired.

All in all I didn't like NYC as much as I thought I would. I think this is mainly because it was so hard to get around - the subway and subway maps were extremely confusing, and though it was good to see the city on foot it did take ages to get around and was very tiring. Also it's not as if we could go on a massive shopping spree or find amazing places to eat, I think it would be much more enjoyable if you had a lot of money to spend (and could get taxis everywhere). Anyway, I think another trip to NYC will be on the agenda at some point in the distant future, after all we still have the Guggenheim to see! 

Statue of Liberty, see, she's really not all that big

New York skyline

Times Square

Oz in FAO Schwarz (New York's equivalent of Hamley's). He gets unimpressesed every time I try to take pictures of him with things. Especially giant London figures fashioned out of jelly beans, it seems. 

NYC: Thursday

The hostel gave us free breakfast of a bagel and tea/coffee. As this was served from 7am-9am, it was a good incentive for us not to sleep too long even though we'd had a late night the day before. So we got up and breakfasted then headed out. We walked around Central Park a little bit, then decided to do the Central Park Safari, where you can see some of the animals native to Manhattan before the colonists came, as well as some others they'd imported (obviously the giraffes and zebras are not native but we were interested to learn about the Manhattan Lion, which scientists believe arrived from the Appalachians several hundred thousand years ago, though they have yet to discover what prompted its migration north). For an extra dollar you could get bagels to feed to the gazelle.

We learned that in the cat family, the lion is the only one where the males and females look different.

Most of the animals were very tame, completely ignoring the Safari Humvee as it drove past. 

All right. In case you hadn't guessed, this was actually the Natural History museum, where they have dioramas of animals from lots of different areas (we couldn't find the actual Manhattan lion, I think it was in the same room as the Maine coastal moose, which we somehow passed by). In the entrance hall they have casts of dinosaur bones. There's a brontosaurus-type dinosaur - I forget what it actually was - rearing up on its hind legs to protect its offspring from the attacking allosaur. Rather dramatic but it seemed just somewhat scientifically questionable to me. Apparently it gets people through the doors. There were free tours showing you the highlights of the museum, which we did part of but then had to break off to go to the planetarium to see the Robert Redford-narrated show, Cosmic Collisions. It was pretty cool, especially the bit when they showed a planet smashing into the Earth and forming the Moon. 

After looking around the rest of the museum we walked across Central Park and had some lunch before visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We saw some Monets and there was an exhibition on Turner, though most of the works were borrowed from the Tate :P There was also an exhibition on superheroes, and some cool sculptures on the roof. I'm not really into art galleries but neither is Oz, so we wandered through fairly quickly, though we did spend a while in there because it's so big. We wanted to go to the Guggenheim but when we turned up it was shut for some reason. They were doing building works around it so perhaps that was why. Still, we saw the outside of it, and it gave us time to go to Chinatown and Little Italy, which all in all we weren't too enamoured with. But we had a tasty dinner in a Cantonese place where we were the only Caucasians, then went back to the hostel and did not much of anything before getting an early night. 

NYC: Wednesday

So, we had arrived. We managed to navigate the subway like pros, buying our Metro cards (which give you an extra 20% free whenever you top up) and going through the turnstiles without incident. We got to the hostel (Jazz on the Park, on the upper west side) at about 4, but they were changing shifts at reception so wouldn't check us in for a little while. Our room was rather lovely, apart from the plastic cover on the mattress which squeaked whenever you moved and also meant you couldn't tuck the fitted sheet in properly so it came untucked in the night and you woke up sticking to the mattress cover. But it had air conditioning and three mirrors (are New Yorkers really so vain?!) and we were right next to the bathroom so we didn't have to wander down the corridor dripping wet in a towel after showering. We spent a while figuring out where to go and what to do. I was getting annoyed because we'd got to NYC at 3:30 then didn't leave the hostel until 6, but some parts of it never seem to close, so we actually did a lot on Wednesday night. Having spent the day on the train we were pretty well rested. We went to the Apple store (which is open 24/7) so I could get a new iPod, as my trusty old mini (that I got for my 18th birthday, mind, so in iPod terms it is rather old. In fact I can't think of anyone who's had an iPod as long as that...) had started leaking power. I charged it in Concord to test it out and didn't use it, then when I checked it two days later it was down to 2/3 battery. So we went to the Apple store and I got a red nano. The red ones are the same price but some of the profit goes towards getting AIDS medications for people in Africa, so I felt more justified in spending $200 on it. Not to mention that even with tax added on I got the iPod and a nice case for it for about the same price as the iPod alone would have cost in England.  

The Apple store - basically a big glass box. You go down the stairs (or take the elevator) to the big shop that's all underground. On the way out I made us take the elevator because it was cool and futuristic.

After that we went to Bloomingdale's to get the brown bags (you know - the ones with the knockoffs that are ten a penny on Tottenham Court Road). We asked a sales assistant...

Oz: Do you have the Bloomingdale's little brown bags, you know, the plastic ones?

SA: Yes... Are you from London?

Us: Yes...

SA: Right. Only people from London buy those.

Then he directed us to them :P

We went to the Empire State building, because it's open until half past midnight. The queues were rather long so we got dinner first at Maui Tacos about 100 yards down the road, recommended if anyone's ever nearby and wants a cheap and tasty dinner. When we went back to the Empire State, the queues were less long, which was good as first you queue for a ticket, then you queue for the security check (like an airport where they scan your bag and make you take off your belt), then you queue for the person to check your ticket and let you in, then you queue for the lift. Unless you want to walk up 86 flights of stairs, though I don't think they'd let you even if you did. The first lift takes you up the floor 80 then you can walk the last 6 if you want, so there's optional queuing for the second lift if you really enjoy queuing (being English and lazy, of course we joined the second lift queue). These queues go around several corners so you can't see how epic the queuing is when you first go in, so it was good that we didn't go at a peak time really.

We got City Passes, which give you entry to the Empire State, the Natural History Museum, the Guggenheim, the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Circle Line Harbour tour. These passes were $74 and we were planning to do most of these anyway (Maureen recommended the Circle line tour, so it was good that we knew about that beforehand), and we did end up saving a lot of money that way. We also got extras such as a free audio tour at the ESB - always good to know what you're looking at - and a free show at the planetarium at the NHM.

The Empire State was cool and I'm glad we had the audio tour because then we learned facts about things like when a pilot accidentally flew into it when it was really foggy (5 people died but the building was fine...) and how quickly it was built and how long it took to build, and also obviously the things you could see from the top. It was very strange at the top because it was so windy and there were birds chirrupping about and lots of moths flying around, which were all lit up by the lights from the building, so it seemed sort of eerie and exhilarating and beautiful all at the same time. The lights of NYC seemed to go on until the horizon in all directions. I think my favourite things were the Chrysler building, 5th Ave and the airport, which you couldn't actually see, but because it was nighttime you could see the planes in the air lining up in their landing pattern and going down one by one. We left at about quarter past midnight and attempted to get the subway back, but it was too confusing and no trains going the right way were coming, so we gave up and got a taxi, arriving back at the hostel at about 2am to collapse into our squeaky bed and get a good night's sleep. 

Queuing, but at least we had Tony, the nice Italian American, to listen to on the audio tour

The Chrysler building

5th Ave

we were hiding from the rain, we were riding on a train

Last Tuesday in Concord we didn't do much of anything. Well, we discovered that we'd booked a hostel in Charleston, South Carolina and a train ticket to Charleston, West Virginia, which was slightly less than ideal. So we spent the afternoon re-jigging that part of the trip. The hostel hadn't been paid for, so we cancelled that and got another train ticket to Cincinnati, so we're going there instead of Charleston, WV and are staying in a Travelodge that's costing us £18 each for the night. We're actually saving money as the train is at such antisocial hours. We get in at 1am and leave at 1am, so that saves two nights' accommodation :P

On Tuesday we were going to go to the beach but it was apparently going to rain, so we went to the aquarium with the Concord Cownies instead - Boris took some time off work so we could have a fun family outing. We had a tasty lunch in Quincy market, where the waitress couldn't understand Oz's English pronunciation of "ranch dressing". Then we went to the aquarium and saw fish and penguins and got to touch some stingrays (with their stings removed) and some extremely small sharks. Afterwards we went back to the market for ice creams and a wander. It was dark when we got back but Oz and I took Blackie to the lake because he'd been indoors all day.

Maureen drove us to the station on Wednesday morning. We chose the right day to leave Concord, as it was raining a lot and was forecast to do so for the next few days. We got to the station early as we had to pick up our extra tickets, and we wanted to make sure we knew what we were doing. But Boston South is easy to navigate and we soon found ourselves on board the Acela regional, which runs from Boston South station to Washington, DC Union station. From Boston to NYC is 431 miles, and we went through Rhode Island and Connecticut on the way. I spent most of the time looking out of the window at the scenery. It might not sound too thrilling but it was so very different from the English landscape that it seemed to be worth looking at: all forests and swamps and lakes and bridges, until you could see the skyscrapers crowning the distance and we went into a tunnel and came out on the other side in New York City.

Pictures from Sunday 3/8/08

I am aware we haven't given a proper update in a while. We're now in Maryland with Ethan, just a few miles from DC. It's nice to have some chilled out time as NYC was verrrry busy, as we were only there for 2 1/2 days we obviously wanted to make the most of it. I'm going to do several posts because I can put more pictures in that way, so advance apologies for spamming your inboxes/RSS feeds.

First here are a select few pictures of the twins when they came over to Concord on Sunday. There are more on my flickr page at http://flickr.com/photos/alisoncownie/sets/7215606656327270/

(I've made a special set for USA photos, so I'll be aiming to get some more of my shots up there at some point) and on Oz's at http://flickr.com/photos/yearofoz

I already said about how we couldn't go to the lake so we ran around with the hose instead. The twins found a bucket and some brushes so they decided to clean the playhouse and polish it. Then they decided to clean and polish me. I was already all wet from when they sprayed me with the hose (apparently I was on fire), so I didn't mind. Probably the scrubbing was good exfoliation for my legs...

Perhaps Jason wants to be a fireman when he grows up

Doing a good job cleaning the playhouse, I think I'll train my toddlers to like cleaning too

Cleaning me...

...aaand "polishing".

District Sleeps Tonight

Hey everyone,

Just a quickie to say we're not dead O:-) NYC is a big place and we got back pretty late last night (shops don't shut. Ever).

We've got loads of photos and some good stories though. Li will be doing a complete report of it all in a day or so.

Bye!

Oz

New York, New York

A quick one to let you all know we've arrived safely in New York and successfully navigated the subway to our hostel. Oz is waiting in line to check us in, as they wouldn't let us when we first arrived and now there's a queue. Bit of a pain seeing as we got here just before 4 and were planning to go to the Natural History Museum this afternoon, but seeing as it shuts in just over an hour's time and costs $11 to get in, I don't think we'll be doing that now. 

The train here was pretty good, easy to get on and off, lots of legroom and space to recline the chairs. So I think we'll be ok on our subsequent journeys =)

So we're going to the Budweiser brewery on my birthday

What have we been up to in the past few days? Oddly when we're not rushing around sightseeing we tend to slow down completely, so while we've been chilling out more than in Brookline and therefore more time to blog, we've just become too lazy to do it!

On Saturday Tich and Lori were possibly coming over with the twins, so in the morning Maureen was running around writing shopping lists and shopping and tidying, and Boris was trying to mend the mower so he could cut the grass. We went to Burlington mall and got hideously lost going both there AND back. Having no map didn't really help matters. Probably it's good that Tich and Lori didn't make it over that day as we wouldn't have been there! On the way we took a wrong turning and ended up going south on the highway not north, then had to do a very convoluted turn-around. Then we got confused again and missed another turning and ended up coming to the mall from the opposite direction. On the way back we just got confused because the road was labelled north when actually it was going south, so we drove around for a bit getting even more lost before going basically back to the mall then guessing the way. Also it was raining quite torrentially by this point so we couldn't really see where we were going, apart from when a car went through a puddle when overtaking us, at which point it was like being under a tidal wave and we simply couldn't see anything at all for a scary 10 seconds.

Tich & Lori came over on Sunday instead. We were planning to go to the lake with the twins, but it was thundering so the water was shut (when they hear thunder they shut it for half an hour afterwards just in case lightning should miss all the tall trees around and strike the water and electrocute everyone in there). So we ran around the back yard with the hose instead. Oz has some pictures of me spraying the twins/getting sprayed by the twins. Possibly because I never got to run around anyone's back garden with a hose, it was very entertaining for me. 

Today we haven't been doing much of anything, apart from re-jigging some of the central part of our trip. Oz decided to read up on all the hostels we're staying in, at which point he discovered that we're booked into a hostel in Charleston, SC, whereas our train tickets take us to Charelston, WV. Not ideal. However with a little guidebook-reading and creative thinking, we've sorted it so we don't stay in Charleston at all, but go straight from DC to Cincinnati for three days, then from there to our next destination, Chicago. Oz phoned Amtrak so we have tickets, and we booked a Travelodge online (technically we're staying across the river in Kentucky, though the main body of Cincinnati is in Ohio, so that adds another state to our trip, which I am rather excited about). The timing is not ideal as we arrive in Cincinnati at 1am on the 14th August, stay overnight, then hop on the train again at 1am on the 16th. Still, our journeys on that leg were all long/at antisocial hours anyway.

Tomorrow Maureen's planning going a trip to a beach somewhere (it had a weird name and I can't remember it). Then on Wednesday we begin our journey across the USA on the train. I am excited!

PS - if anyone is desperate for us to bring them back anything in particular, please let us know. It might not be possible if you want a 5 foot tall scaled model of the Statue of Liberty - bear in mind we will be carrying everything ourselves on and off trains until we get to San Francisco - but once we get there we'll most likely be buying a suitcase to bring things back, so we can buy things there such as foodstuffs you can't get in the UK  or clothes that are dirt cheap over here, if you have any requests of that sort. Or if you are desperate for state/city-specific small things such as I *heart* NY hats then we can carry those too =)

So far the gift list is:

- Cool mug for Crin

- Bloomingdale's brown bags

- Bottle of Everclear for Ali (Texas - The only place that will legally sell it to us!)

- Pepperidge Farm goldfish (I love my cheesy snacks!)

- Baking chocolate, for brownies of course 

Grace Kelly Blues

*Yawn*

Well, as Li said, we're now in Concord. It's a bit further out from the city than Brookline (T-lines have been replaced with corn fields and more trees). This means, however, that I get to drive a very powerful, very fun Subaru around to see the sights. I'm just about used to the differences and only need to be reminded to drive on the right every now and then. Li, whilst qualified to drive, is better suited to being a passenger. She can't kill anyone that way.

Today was a pleasantly relaxed day (most days are when you start them at 10:30...) and

we didn't really get around to doing anything until after a lunch of reheated Chinese food. 

One of my favourite parts of being in America are the takeout containers with their cute little handles. Simple pleasures and all.

Feeling like we'd been a lazy recently, we borrowed a couple of Boris' bikes (complete with goofy helmets) and pedaled down to Concord village to buy Li a scrapbook and have a drink (and, in Li's case, the biggest 'medium' ice cream cone we've ever seen). The journey there was quite pleasant and we worked up a bit of a sweat. We didn't realise how many hills we'd been coasting down until we had to ride up them on the way back! 

More relaxing this evening (what? It's HOT) and we had a lovely dip in the lake. Maureen and the girls are back now and we think the whole Cownie clan is descending on Concord for the weekend so we're going to be busy =)

Pictures: sculptures at DeCordova and Blackie.