NY Did we go There?

Hello readers.

As I write this entry we Cassons are 37, 000ft above planet Earth and about an hour away from landing in Los Angeles. So far we have been in the air for some 13hrs, and will still have another 5hrs to do once we have boarded our plane to NY. eNwhY (deliberate, relates to this post’s title) are we going to New York? Birthdays! Lucy’s 18th and my 50th. So what better place to celebrate two big birthdays than one of the planet’s biggest cities? New York . . . . . . in early spring . . . . . . when it’s chilly . . . . . . and I’ve packed shorts . . . . . . could be interesting.

So far the journey has gone well and I’ve only got annoyed once. At Melbourne Airport. In a queue. Not a pastime of mine. Then, to make the whole stand in a line like a herd of zombies worse, some crazy old ninja biddy pushed her way to the front of the line and just stood there. Totally ignoring the many requests to go to the end of the line. As keen as I was to discuss the ninja biddie’s erroneous behaviour with her, I was less keen on seeing what was behind my wife’s death stare.

Two Days In

Crikey! Where do I start when tackling the subject of NY City? Breathtaking is certainly an apt adjective for this concrete jungle. It’s busy. It’s crowded. It’s noisy. It’s tall. It’s rough. It’s polished. It’s unusual. It’s bland. It’s colourful. It is fantastic!

In the two days we’ve been here we cassons have walked 25km but only seen a minuscule amount of the place. Our hotel is a short walk from Time Square so we’ve gotten used to that and we’ve managed to see the 9/11 memorial, Brooklyn Bridge, the Guggenheim Museum and Central Park. All these places are as amazing as you think they’re going to be. Oh, and we shopped in an artists’ market that had an exuberantly dressed man dancing in a window in a very camp manner. Only in NY? Probably.

The people are awesome too. Not gushy and in ya face, but friendly and helpful and happy to chat. Even the homeless ones. Here’s the abridged story behind my chat with a homeless dude: learning on a railing taking a photo, took photo, turned to walk away, caught foot on railing, stumbled, cursed, nearly faceplanted, recovered, heard a giggle, saw coloured dude smiling, laughed at myself with him, sat down and had a great chat. An awesome few minutes with a happy man that didn’t have much.

Or maybe he had everything.

Seven Days In

Crikey! Where did those five days go? It’s hard to prècis the past few days since NYC isn’t really a place that lends itself to summaries. It’s just too bombastic to be hamstrung by the simple word, so I shall accompany my words with good ol’ fashioned pictures. Lazy? You betcha!

My Birthday

This was a groovy day that started with a ride in a stretched limo to an amazing cinema to watch Ready Player One. Fantastic! This was followed by a little light shopping and rounded off with a dinner in one of NYC’s finest steak restaurants. It’s the only place I’ve seen that has it’s shopfront filled with ageing cuts of meat. Well funky, and an amazing dining experience too.

Central Park pt2: Snow Limits

One of Lucy and I’s best days EVER (Bec doesn’t like the snow, whaaaat!). Amazingly NYC got smashed by snow during the night of my birthday and on the 2nd April we woke up to a winter wonderland. It was great. I hadn’t seen the stuff for years (ye have to travel a fair distance in Oz to see the stuff). Since the white stuff was only forecasted to last a few hours, Lucy and I decided the most iconic place to play with the stuff was Central Park. It didn’t disappoint either, everything was a crisp white and everyone was a child again.

Great Place For a Museum

The next thing to inform you about is a museum in an unusual place, that place being a WW2 aircraft carrier. Now normally I stay well away from anything with the word museum in it’s name due to the fact that they have queues, billions of people to dodge and tons of info to read. More than enough reasons to keep me away. However, this museum was in a WW2 aircraft carrier which itself was part of the museum, that also had the original prototype Space Shuttle stuffed inside it. This museum was like a Russian doll. It was awesome too. I even practised my reading skills.

Big Building Day

Everyone knows NYC has its fair share of tall buildings. So we decided to spend a day exploring two of the tallest ones: the Empire State Building and the Rockefeller Center.

Although not thee tallest buildings in NYC they both offer awesome views of the city. They are also very popular with tourists, which means queues. These queues are exacerbated by airport like security with body scanners and x-ray machines. Grrrrr! Then there are some more queues for the lifts, but thankfully these move quite quickly. The lifts in the Empire State Building were the best as they had TV screens in the roof playing a short movie about the building.

Regardless of how the buildings differed neither of them disappointed when it came to the views. It really is breathtaking to see a city like NY from the perspective these buildings offer.

Washington DC

The middle weekend of our trip was dedicated to America’s capital city, and to make sure we did it justice we spent four days exploring it’s landmarks, museums and history. We also decided to make the trip from NYC to DC by train since there was no real advantage by flying. Suffice to say the journey was fast, effortless and comfortable. The best mode of transport by far.

Unbeknownst to us our trip to DC coincided with the annual Cherry Blossom Festival, a festival that brings thousands of people into DC to take part in festivities that celebrate the arrival of spring.

Most of our visit, though, was spent taking in as many landmarks and museums as possible, rather than welcome in one of the four seasons. None of what we saw a did was a disappointment. Everything in DC is worth looking at, it’s a very clean place and all the buildings look like photographs. Washington has a very polished vibe about it, it’s almost like you’re walking through a model village where everything is shiny and new and you feel privileged to be amongst it.

Our days in DC were busy and crammed full of sightseeing and walking, but thankfully not too much queueing. Of note, I would say the Washington Monument and Abraham Lincoln Memorial were my standout landmarks; but the place that will haunt me the most has to be the Holocaust Museum. For obvious reasons, but mainly because it brought an added sense of reality to this shocking piece of history. A must see museum that is worthy of many visits.

There and Back Again: A Return to NYC

So after Washington DC it was back to NYC for three more days before heading home to Oz. It was decided that this part of the holiday would be used for shopping, revisiting places we’d already enjoyed, and checking out sights we’d discovered earlier in the holiday. One such place was the ‘High Line’, a section of disused elevated rail line that had been bought by local residents and turned into a picturesque walkway through their neighbourhood. It sounds ordinary and not really a tourism icon but it was probably one of the best sights we saw on the whole trip, and one of the best walks I’ve ever been on. A tranquil experience doing something that, on the surface, promised to be anything but. NYC is full of surprises.

Summary

Coming soon.