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.