Tony and Liz's Travel Adventures: USA: The BIG Apple, New York, New York

2 of the 'New" Towers in New York

Start spreading the news
I am leaving today
I want to be a part of it
New York, New York .......

Dah, dah, de darh, da.....

Anyone know the rest of the words ?????

Statue of Liberty

Central Park, Times Square, Ground Zero and the new Freedom Tower, Times Square, Rockerfella Centre, the High Line, Hudson River, Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan Island, the M & Ms Museum, Hershey's Chocolates, 1 Police Plaza, Uptown, Downtown, Westside, Eastside, Staten Island, subways. Just where do we begin with this part of our travels. Perhaps the most obvious is our arrival into New York in the late afternoon.

Columbus Circle, New York

We'd been keeping an eye on the weather and even before we left Boston there was a whole rain pattern in the north-eastern area covering Massachuettes, Conneticut, New Jersey and New York and we were heading to the centre of it. The temperature had also dropped significantly to around 52 degrees farenheit. That's Cold AND that's wet. Not something we were looking forward to but all that was about to change and besides, our main priority was to quickly work out the subway system and find our way to where we would be staying for the next week. As it turned out it was a fluke that we found it and the location, Westide Y was perfect (the abode not so much) but it was 3-5 minutes walk from the 59th and Columbus Circle, on 8th Avenue, Westside. The way we remembered where the subway line was by a world globe structure - with a map of Australia at the entrance we were to use. Easy!

They say that New York is a city that never sleeps and when there you can actually understand why. During the night you can hear a hum of the city, not necessarily traffic or people noise but just a strange hum. The other thing is that it just GLOWS all night, like a pending sunrise that just goes on and on until daylight actually hits. Strange!! But with Time Square and all the highrises it makes sense.

New York Subway system

The actual address made no sense to us either, but days later when the grid system was explained to us it all came together - I think! But that didn't explain the complexity of the subway systems because what we found was the even if you know your station, the exits were an issue because you had to know exactly which one you wanted. Otherwise you would end up about 3 blocks from where you wanted to physically be. In addition to that there were sometimes 3 levels of platforms underneather the city and it was easy to get it very wrong. We had a good laugh when we did!!

Because New York has so many sites to see and things to do our plan of action was to buy the 2 day Hop-on, Hop Off bus tickets, plus a New York pass which allows priority entry to the major attractions, togethere with various other benefits such as bicycle hire, boat cruises, museum tickets and discounts etc. So we made the most of it. Thankfully on the following day the rain had cleared, but I don't think rain would have stopped us anyway.

First it was collecting the New York pass, then on to the bus, and double decker Red bus (you can't miss it) where a guide provides commentary. We did the usual "recky" run where we decide the attractions we would go back to. OMG!! There were so many we wanted to cover in a week but we put together of the 'must do's" and here is our checklist AND we saw them all, not necessarily in this order but we did see them, or did what we had planned. Here goes.......

· Statue of Liberty

· Empire State Building

· Ground Zero/911 Memorial

· Times Square

· Chinatown

· NBC Studios and get on Today Show with message to the family

· M and M’s Museum

· Bicycle Hire & Ride complete circuit of Central Park

· Grand Central Station

· 1 Police Plaza (Law & Order)

· Federal Courts Building (Law and Order again !!)

· Walk across Brooklyn Bridge

· The Bodies exhibition

· The Chinese Warriors at the Discovery centre

· Ride the Subways

· Staten Island Ferry

· Rockafella Centre

· Battery Park and adjacent Marinas/Piers

· Go to Harlem

· American Natural History Museum

· Walk the High Line

· Eat at Taco Bell

· Try a New York Pretzel

· Cruise on the Hudson River

· Coney Island

· Water Taxi around Manhattan

· Buy NYC postcards and souvenirs (Oops how did that one get in here)

Old Subway tracks converted into Gardens and Pathways

One of the things that we found about New York was that the majority of people were really quite friendly and willing to help if we looked lost. I guess another sterotype portrayed by TV. Another fact is that large numbers of Aussies travel to NYC. One night we started a conversation with a family from Sydney - ( the Penrith Panthers shirt gave him away) they gave us the results of the 2nd State of Origin. The next night in a Chinese restaurant, we were sitting next to a couple of guys from Melbourne who were there on business. We told them the results because they were in transit and hadn't caught up on the news. But considering that we've travelled in the States for 3 months, (excluding 3 weeks in Peru), hearing an Australian accent sounded really strange !!(and almost quite welcoming)

There were so many pics taken in New York and if I wrote about the highlights it would take me a week to put it together. So instead I will post photos only with some captions below.

Hope you like them and you can zoom in to get a better look at the detail.

One big piece of news was that TJ made it to the 86th floor observation deck of the Empire State Building, but he wasnt having any part of paying an extra $17.00 to go to the 102nd floor observation deck, and I have the photos to prove it !!!

As was our custom in most cities in the USA, we visited Chinatown on the last day/night for some souvenir shopping and a meal, and it was glaringly obvious and we were devastated to see the number of "curries" selling merchandise. Come on you chinese americans stand up for your rights, send 'em back to Mumbai to sell their bloody wares, not on your patch. Anyway, we did the right thing and only bought goods from real chinese in Chinatown, had to have some racial equality.

Having done all the things on our checklist the very last task was for Liz to do up a big sign, go to the NBC Studios and get on the NBC Today show at Rockafella Plaza. This meant she had to get up really early, navigate the subways and challenge the crowd for a place in the spotlight. She did - and she did see Mark Wahlberg who was on the program to talk about his latest movie, Ted. Just so happened she was in the background behind him. And managed to follow the camera around at every opportunity. Ann actually came up and asked where home was in Australia. If you happened to miss the program, which showed at around 3am Australian Eastern Standard Time - here is a captured moment !!!

For us it is the end of our United States leg of our journey flying from JFK International Airport to Paris via Frankfurt. The trip to the airport took us 2 and a half hours on the Expressways (banked up traffic) for a trip that would normally take just on an hour. That's another story but I'm not even going to start......

We've travelled over 14,500 kms and that's not counting the extra distances in between. We travelled in 30 States in America. Our modes of travel were by Amtrak, Greyhound Buses, Jitneys, buses, ferries, bridges, double deckers, subways, cars, Shuttle buses, Samuel Adams/Doyle's Party Bus, Monorails, Metros, Charlies, Bicyles, Trolleys, Cable Cars, water taxis, and all those other train and bus systems across the States. One omission though - based on bad driving habits we witnessed we didn't ride in a NYC Yellow Taxis. LOL !!

It's ALL been one hell of a ride.

More to come about our travel adventures from Europe.

Bonne nuit mes petits choux.

Liz and Tony