Last Day
It's my last full day in the USA.
We're going to head out to one of the Smithsonian's today and this afternoon I'll hop the Tour bus and see Arlington cemetery and some other locations I may have missed.
But I realise dear Flist that I have not updated you properly since Vancouver! That's mainly because my poor little laptop had a bit of a break down, but it's fixed now so I'd better bring you all up to speed huh?
So on Monday I flew out from Vancouver to Newark airport which is actually in New Jersey. I'd arranged a shuttle to take me from the airport to Staten Island where I was staying for a couple of nights. Funnily enough at Vancouver you go through American customs on their soil (ok it become US soil) but you do customs there rather than when you arrive in Newark, crazy.
I was staying with Rob and Lauren, Couchsurfers. There's this awesome website www.couchsurfing.org which is like a social networking site just for finding a couch to sleep on while you're traveling. If you think about it, we've been doing this for years, "My brother's girlfriend's Aunt can put you up" but now there is an organised place for it all to happen. So I had lost all hope of finding somewhere in New York to stay until one of the Manhattan CSers suggested looking in specific borough's (districts) and I looked at where Newark was close to and decided to look for someone in Staten Island.
Rob is a really cool Librarian and Lauren is an acupuncturist. It was a little intimidating to rock up ion complete stranger's doorstep but it was so incredibly rewarding. They were so lovely and chatty, we all got along so well. They both worked on Tuesday but they dropped me at the train station with instructions on how to get place.
So off I set for New York.
I caught the Staten Island Ferry across to Manhattan, can you believe it's free!? So cool. Great view of the Statue of Liberty from it too. I arrived in Manhattan and wanted to go to the Statue of Liberty and climb to the top (goodness knows why I wanted to climb more stairs after Vancouver!) but the line to get tickets was probably 1km long and there were no tickets to climb to the crown. So I decided I'd seen it on the ferry and that was good enough for me.
I walked a lot that day. I strolled through Battery park and along the Hudson until I got to ground zero which is heavily under construction now. I also stopped in at St Paul's which is right across from Ground Zero and was the site of so many tributes, memorials, gatherings, flowers, signs and so on. It's quite an old church anyway and had so much history to start with, now it has the enormity of 9/11 with it forever too.
There are a lot of parks in New york surprisingly, I went to the one at City Hall which had a fabulous fountain in it and is surrounded by great buildings and green trees. I stopped in at Grand Central station which was pretty busy, unsurprisingly. The public library was having a facelift but I went in and had a wander around. I made it up to Times Square where I met the Naked Cowboy who is running for Mayor. They've now closed off some roads permanently for pedestrians because it gets so busy with tourists. They now also supply garden chairs in the street to sit on and watch the gazillions of ads constantly spinning, flashing and generally being bright visual pollutants too famous to stop.
Then I took Miss Charlie's advice and went to the top of the Rockefeller Centre instead of lining up at the Empire State Building (which can have queues up to 8 hours long). The view from the top was fabulous. The whole of Central park sprawled out in front of me. I could see the Chrysler Building and had a great view of the Empire State Building too. The Rockefeller building building attaches to Radio City Musci Hall but sadly it was closed and I didn't feel like paying for a tour.
Eventually I headed home and caught the Ferry again (waved at the Statue of Liberty again) and caught the train and the bus to Rob and Laurens. It's a bit of a hike really. Anyway, that night we had New York Pizza and played Settlers of Catan with their friend Erin.I think we finally went to bed at about 1am.
On Wednesday Rob and Lauren were heading to the beach so they dropped me off at a station again and I headed in to town again. This time I hit the MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) as I had a ticket from the Rockefeller Centre the day prior. I saw so many of my favourite artists and paintings.
Oops, got to go out, more to come soon!
We're going to head out to one of the Smithsonian's today and this afternoon I'll hop the Tour bus and see Arlington cemetery and some other locations I may have missed.
But I realise dear Flist that I have not updated you properly since Vancouver! That's mainly because my poor little laptop had a bit of a break down, but it's fixed now so I'd better bring you all up to speed huh?
So on Monday I flew out from Vancouver to Newark airport which is actually in New Jersey. I'd arranged a shuttle to take me from the airport to Staten Island where I was staying for a couple of nights. Funnily enough at Vancouver you go through American customs on their soil (ok it become US soil) but you do customs there rather than when you arrive in Newark, crazy.
I was staying with Rob and Lauren, Couchsurfers. There's this awesome website www.couchsurfing.org which is like a social networking site just for finding a couch to sleep on while you're traveling. If you think about it, we've been doing this for years, "My brother's girlfriend's Aunt can put you up" but now there is an organised place for it all to happen. So I had lost all hope of finding somewhere in New York to stay until one of the Manhattan CSers suggested looking in specific borough's (districts) and I looked at where Newark was close to and decided to look for someone in Staten Island.
Rob is a really cool Librarian and Lauren is an acupuncturist. It was a little intimidating to rock up ion complete stranger's doorstep but it was so incredibly rewarding. They were so lovely and chatty, we all got along so well. They both worked on Tuesday but they dropped me at the train station with instructions on how to get place.
So off I set for New York.
I caught the Staten Island Ferry across to Manhattan, can you believe it's free!? So cool. Great view of the Statue of Liberty from it too. I arrived in Manhattan and wanted to go to the Statue of Liberty and climb to the top (goodness knows why I wanted to climb more stairs after Vancouver!) but the line to get tickets was probably 1km long and there were no tickets to climb to the crown. So I decided I'd seen it on the ferry and that was good enough for me.
I walked a lot that day. I strolled through Battery park and along the Hudson until I got to ground zero which is heavily under construction now. I also stopped in at St Paul's which is right across from Ground Zero and was the site of so many tributes, memorials, gatherings, flowers, signs and so on. It's quite an old church anyway and had so much history to start with, now it has the enormity of 9/11 with it forever too.
There are a lot of parks in New york surprisingly, I went to the one at City Hall which had a fabulous fountain in it and is surrounded by great buildings and green trees. I stopped in at Grand Central station which was pretty busy, unsurprisingly. The public library was having a facelift but I went in and had a wander around. I made it up to Times Square where I met the Naked Cowboy who is running for Mayor. They've now closed off some roads permanently for pedestrians because it gets so busy with tourists. They now also supply garden chairs in the street to sit on and watch the gazillions of ads constantly spinning, flashing and generally being bright visual pollutants too famous to stop.
Then I took Miss Charlie's advice and went to the top of the Rockefeller Centre instead of lining up at the Empire State Building (which can have queues up to 8 hours long). The view from the top was fabulous. The whole of Central park sprawled out in front of me. I could see the Chrysler Building and had a great view of the Empire State Building too. The Rockefeller building building attaches to Radio City Musci Hall but sadly it was closed and I didn't feel like paying for a tour.
Eventually I headed home and caught the Ferry again (waved at the Statue of Liberty again) and caught the train and the bus to Rob and Laurens. It's a bit of a hike really. Anyway, that night we had New York Pizza and played Settlers of Catan with their friend Erin.I think we finally went to bed at about 1am.
On Wednesday Rob and Lauren were heading to the beach so they dropped me off at a station again and I headed in to town again. This time I hit the MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) as I had a ticket from the Rockefeller Centre the day prior. I saw so many of my favourite artists and paintings.
Oops, got to go out, more to come soon!