Tag: featured

America, done.

Well, it’s finally here, day 90 🙁

I think America has been fairly comprehensively ‘Done’. We’ve had an absolutely incredible time and we’ve been lucky to experience so many things for the first time, from riding a helicopter into the Grand Canyon to quad biking in the desert, standing atop 4 of America’s tallest buildings, swimming with some amazing animals, watching shows on Broadway, jazz clubs in New Orleans, driving a speedboat, flying a jetpack, standing where JFK was shot and feet from where Martin Luther King was murdered (and learning a lot of history in the process). We’ve seen Kurt Cobains house, Graceland, stood on the edge of a meteor crater, riden Segways past the White House,  visited Alcatraz, Roswell, stayed in a lighthouse, seen the most beautiful national parks….. I could go on…

It’s been an absolute dream come true and we both know how lucky we are to have got to experience it.

Anyway, I thought we should collect together a few stats and favourite photos to finish this blog off properly…

 

Days: 90
Miles driven: 13,059
States driven through: 35
Hotels stayed in: 41
Visits to blog: 1824
Friends met:  4
Modes of transport used: 15 ( car / airplane / seaplane / quad bike / jet pack / speed boat / catamaran / segway / zip line / ferry / bus / helicopter / team / monorail / cog railway)
Number of photos taken: 12,613
Number of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups eaten by Jon: We lost count.

 

People also keep asking us where our favourite place has been so we’ve given it some though and pretty much agreed on our top 5 places in America

  • Heceta head / pacific coast
  • Las Vegas
  • New orleans
  • Lake Tahoe
  • Boston

 

… and our top 10 things we’ve done while we’ve been here (we tried to do 5 but they didn’t fit).

  • Quad biking in the Valley of Fire
  • Helicopter tip into the Grand Canyon
  • Flying a Jet Pack in Key West
  • The world’s longest zip line in Whistler
  • Riding the speed boat along the Chicago shore
  • Swimming with sealions, dolphins and manatees
  • Seeing The Lion king on broadway
  • Visiting the jazz clubs in New Orleans
  • Taking a seaplane to Dry Tortugas and snorkeling there.
  • Riding Segways in Washingto D.C.

 

While we’re compiling lists, here are some our favourite things about being in America…

  • Turning right on red lights
  • Free refills on coffee and soft drinks without asking
  • Conversations with strangers
  • The food (most of it)
  • The weather
  • The scenery (it really is incredible)
  • Air conditioning, everywhere!!!

And there are a few things we won’t miss…

  • Not being able to get a cup of tea (Jen)
  • Not including tax in any of their prices
  • Mosquitoes
  • Their money (specifically the coins)
  • American Cheese, Bacon and Beer – they can’t make any of them.

 

We’re really going to miss being in America, but we’re both looking forward to a roast dinner and a good night’s sleep 🙂

Anyway, we tried to pick our favourite 50 photos from the trip but only managed to get it down to 74, so here goes…

 

 

 

 

Last day in New York

Today was our last day in New York and we still hadn’t seen the Brooklyn Bridge , Grand Central Station or Ground Zero itself. So with the few hours we had left, we decided to jump in several cabs and dart around New York seeing a few of the last remaining sights.

We started with Ground Zero and although all tickets to see the memorial sell out months in advance we were able to see it from a distance. The memorial garden has been designed around two square waterfalls that have been built on the exact same spots that the two towers stood. Its a fitting and beautiful memorial that sits next to what will be a great piece of architecture, the new World Trade Tower, currently almost half built.

After Ground zweo, the next cab took us to Brooklyn and over the Brooklyn Bridge, we walked the full length of the bridge back to Manhattan with great views of the skyline along the way before visiting Grand Central Station, which is far more impressive than any train station should be, and a quick dash around Macy’s for last minute shopping.

New York has been really good fun and has some of the best sights in America, especially the view from the top of the Empire State Building, the lights on Times Square and the Manhattan Skyline. Having said that, I couldn’t spend more than about a week here, the people are way too impatient and nowhere near as friendly as the rest of America. There’s also not really any green space outside of Central Park. I’d say it’s a very impressive looking city but it’s not very ‘pretty’. Maybe it’s just me because Jen says she could happily live here (although she concedes that she’d need to be very rich to enjoy it properly).

Anyway, after our last 200 mile cross country drive, we are now back in Boston, where we started 90 days ago, and tomorrow we fly home. So that’s us pretty much done and that’s this blog pretty much done. Dont log off yet though, we’re going to put up one more blog post later on with a few of our photos and our Jerry Springer like ‘final thoughts’.

 

New York Sightseeing

Our last full day in New York was totally unplanned and having seen some of the bigger sites like the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty already we decided to do some “mopping up” of some of the sights we hadn’t seen by taking an open top bus tour of Downtown Manhattan.

These bus tours are always really busy and often not great, but they are the easiest way to see most of the sights in a city really quickly and that’s exactly what we did.

It took us through all of the districts we hadn’t seen yet like Greenwich Village , Little Italy and East Village . We saw Wall Street , Macy’s , the Brooklyn Bridge , Ground Zero , The Waldorf Astoria and most of Broadway . I think we can say we’ve done New York (or Manhattan Island at least) quite comprehensively. The photos aren’t great but remember they were taken from inside a moving bus!

After saying goodbye to Scott who flew home today, we spent our evening watching ‘The Lion King’ on Broadway. I know it’s a bit cheesy but we’ve seen it in London too and it really is an amazing spectacle. The sets, costumes, puppetry and special effects are just so clever and the cast were excellent, from the great comic actors that play Zazu and Timone to the very talented singers who played Simba and Nala. I imagine the standing ovation they got was a nightly occurrence but it was thoroughly deserved.

 

Statue of Liberty & Ground Zero Workshop

Monday was our day to visit both the Statue of Liberty and the Ground Zero Museum Workshop , two very different experiences but both iconic and unforgettable in their own ways.

The park service provides a fascinating audio tour around the island, starting with a moving account of how the narrator’s Grandma sailed to the United States as a child of six, scared and unsure of what was happening until she was lifted up and shown the ‘pretty lady’ welcoming her to her new home.

It hadn’t really occurred to me exactly what the sight of ‘The Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World’ (as it’s full title was) had come to mean but listening to the different stories it comes across that she is much more than just a statue to so many people, especially to the 12 million immigrants who came through Ellis Island from 1886 to 1954.

To get to the Statue of Liberty you need to buy tickets in advance for the boat trip over to the island plus access to the pedestal of the statue or the crown of Lady Liberty, depending on availability. Unfortunately we were too late to buy anything other then the basic island access but, on arriving in the queue for the boat, we found we were lucky enough to have been given a free upgrade to a ‘pedestal pass’, meaning we got to climb 156 steps up to the top of the base of the statue as well as walk around the island.

The structure and origin of the statue is fascinating, the suggestion is that the statue was a ‘dig’ at France who had promised liberty through the revolution but not delivered, by creating a monument to liberty for the US instead. It was designed by the same engineer who went on to create the Eiffel Tower, using very similar construction techniques and transported from France to the US in hundreds of numbered pieces, like an extremely heavy jigsaw puzzle to be rebuilt on American soil by immigrant labour.

We have yet another day where Scott managed to stay out of any photos, but we promise he was with us! The three of us spent around 3 hours walking around Liberty Island before realising we had less than an hour to get to the Ground Zero Workshop meaning unfortunately we had to miss out our stop at Ellis Island and the immigration centre.

After a slightly hectic cab ride, we made it to the Ground Zero Museum and Workshop. The mission statement of the Museum is “To raise awareness of the heroic efforts of the Ground Zero Recovery workers through the exhibition of Gary Marlon Suson’s photographic collection”. Suson was the only photographer allowed into Ground Zero after the mayor of New York banned all photography at the site 3 weeks after the tragedy occurred. He worked without pay for months to document every facet of the recovery process with the only stipulation being that no photographs would contain the remains of victims or be publicised without consent. Profits go to the charities supported by the museum including collections for recovery workers medical bills and support for children who lost parents in the attack.

Each ‘tour’ of the one room exhibition starts with a 20 minute video describing the events of the 11th September 2001 and contains over 100 photos and artefacts from the day and the subsequent recovery and clear up, each with a narrated description by Suson. The result is an extremely moving record of the pain and commitment from current (and retired) members of the New York Police and Fire Departments who dug for the remains of civilians and their colleagues for over nine months.

It was interspersed with moments of lightness, such as the thousands of mysterious cans of german beer that kept being uncovered in the rubble: It turned out that they were from the original construction workers who would drink beer with their lunch and then hide the empties in the beams that they were constructing.

It’s a difficult experience to describe, suffice to say, if you get a chance to visit or to see the collection, I’d highly recommend it.

Later that evening, Jon and I got the chance to eat a gorgeous meal at The View , a rotating restaurant on the 48th floor, overlooking Times Square. It was a fabulous end to an amazing day – huge thanks go to Craig for organising it for us xxx.

 

Empire State Building and 5th Avenue

Our second day in NewYork with our friend Scott was ear-marked for shopping, but having been to the top of the second tallest building (well, second tallest that has an observation deck) the previous night we thought we’d do the Empire State Building as well. I think we did it totally the right way round too because we went to the Top of the Rock by night which allowed us to see the midtown skyline at night (including the Empire State Building itself illuminated)  and do the Empire State Building during the day so we could actually see for miles. They say you can see for 80 miles on a clear day, which it nearly was.

The Empire State Building has two observation decks; one on the 86th floor and one on the 102nd. We went to the 86th first which is very big and also outside which allowed me to take some nice photos. Then we went in our 3rd elevator to get right to the top on the 102nd, which is a great thing to say you’ve done but actually not nearly as good for sightseeing as the lower one.

The view from the top really is incredible. We’ve been to the top of tall buildings in several cities, including Chicago and Seattle, but none of them have quite the number of famous landmarks visible from one place. We saw the Financial District, The Chrysler Building, The Rockerfeller Center (with binoculars you can see the people standing on the observation deck we were on yesterday the previous night) , Madison Square Garden , Central Park , Yankee Stadium , Times Square … I could go on… and the photo below of the tall skyscraper being built is the new World Trade Center going up.

After the Empire State Building we went shopping on 5th Avenue. The highlight for me was FAO Schwarz , the largest toy shop in New York and the oldest in America, famous for its massive piano used in the Tom Hanks film ‘Big’, which we had to have a go on. It’s also got a fairly large Lego department and a muppet workshop where you can design and build your own muppet!

The highlight for Jen was going to Tiffany’s . As far as Jewellery shops go it’s pretty impressive covering 5 floors and Jen has always wanted one of their little blue boxes. We finished with a really nice Dinner near Central Park and I couldn’t help taking a photo of Scott’s 3 mini cheeseburgers (all with different cheese apparently).

 

First Day in New York

Yesterday was our first full day in New York . We arrived on Friday having picked Scott up from the airport on our way from Philadelphia. We have hotels just off Times Square so went out for a meal and drinks on Friday ( in pouring rain and 90° heat) then met up at the Guggenheim Museum on Saturday morning.

The Guggenheim museum is a fabulous example of architecture by Frank Lloyd Wright , but we weren’t as interested in the current exhibitions so we stopped to see inside the foyer and then took a yellow cab (of course) over to Central Park and the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art .

The New York Metropolitan Museum of Art is unbelievably huge and you could easily spend several days, if not a week, wandering around without duplicating anything. We managed to visit 5 or 6 of the halls and were amazed to see some of the most famous paintings and sculptures in the world, without glass cases or any ‘protection’ apart from a thin metal rope barrier: Monet’s “Water lillies” and “Bridge over a pond of Water Lillies”, van Gough’s “Self Portrait in a Straw Hat” and “Wheat fields with Cypresses” several Andy Warhol’s, plus, to our complete amazement, Rodin’s “The Thinker” mounted halfway up a wall (replicating, we think, its originally designed position above the gates of Hell, either that, or just putting it conveniently out of reach of visitors!)

We also spent a while in the Modern Art hall, with mixed opinions – Scott was particularly (un)impressed with a piece that looked very similar to a Dulux colour chart! (see it behind the white plaster woman in the photos below).

Our final tourist-stop on day #1 was The Top of The Rock , the observation platform at the top of the Rockerfeller Centre. Its not as high as the Empire State Building , but from it you get to see the ESB itself, and we were there at night, so the lights and colours of New York were just fantastic.

By the time we came down, it was 11pm, so the perfect time to revisit Times Square for night time photos: Another cab ride (I have no idea how they get the cars through spaces so small, it seems to defy any known laws of physics) and Jon spent a little while taking some great pictures of the neon lights, his favorites are below.

By this time our feet were exhausted and we realised we hadn’t eaten since lunch so we found a restaurant off Times Square where I had my first authentic New York bagel (toasted, cream cheese & lox (smoked salmon) with capers on the side; I could move here just for these!)

More tomorrow…

 

 

 

Philadelphia Independence park

We managed to pack quite a lot in during our fleeting visit to Philadelhpia on Thursday.

The main reason for going to Philadelphia was because of the part it played in the history of America’s creation and it’s independence and most of these historic sites and modern day museums are located very closely together in “Independance Park” .

The first thing we noticed when we got there though, was that the National Constitution Centre was closed that day (the only day of the year) because they were holding a ceremony to give out ‘Liberty Medals’ . Luckily, everything else was open.

The highlights of Independence Park included standing in the room in which the Declaration of Independence , the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights were signed. We also got to visit the original “Upper” and “Lower” floors of the original congress building where the very first senate and congress sat (which apparently is why they are still called the upper and lower house to this day) and we got to see the Liberty Bell , which hung above Independence Hall and was rung during the original reading of the Declaration of Independence (and was ironically cast by a London firm!).

So, all historied out and with a few more hours to spare before we had to head to New York we decided to take a duck tour. For anyone who hasn’t seen one of these, it’s basically a bus which can float on water, so it can give you a city tour vie the streets and rivers. It’s also incredibly tacky and usually involves a ‘crazy’ tour guide who tells bad jokes and makes everyone make quacking noises using their “quackers” as they go round. It was quite fun though and luckily they didn’t give out the quackers until the end. The tour covered a fair amount of Philadelphia, including Benjamin Franklin’s last resting place and the US Mint and Federal Reserve.Oh, and we also got to see the original building used as the tower block in Ghostbusters 🙂

We’re now in New York, our last city! We’re one day in already so I’ll update you tomorrow.

 

 

 

Gettysburg Battlefields

I’ll be the first to admit that my grasp of American history is a little shaky, but we are learning lots as we visit the different cities around the states. Gettysburg was the site of a huge battle between the Northern (Union) and Southern (Confederate) troops in the American Civil War in which over 50,000 soldiors lost their lives. It only lasted 3 days but was the culmination of many years of fighting and its conclusion (spoiler alert – the North won) led to the “Four score and seven years ago…” speech by Lincoln in the ‘Gettysburg address’ made in November of the same year.

We first went to the Gettysburg History Museum which has a re-enactment of the entire 3 days – in miniature. It is the largest military diorama in the United States covering over 800 sq ft and each of the 20,000 odd models have been hand painted and positioned to show the path of the battle over the 1st, 2nd and 3rd of July 1863. With a 30 minute light and sound show to illustrate the battle it’s oddly impressive, although Jon and I both felt we suffered from not always understanding completely who was fighting on what side!

We walked around a second museum showing more of the history and several dioramas with full sized models – a little bit like a Tussards Wax Museum, but with more of a story (and a lot of guns)

Once we’d looked around the models, we then decided to get back into our car and follow an audio tour around a circuit of the battlefields. Its really interesting to be able to see history and then drive around where it actually happened – there is a 40 mile route around the path the fighting took over the three days, with thousands of statues and plaques commemorating the batallions, soldiers (and in one case, a small dog) on both sides.

We loved the idea of a driving tour but, in reality, keeping to a steady 15 miles an hour to be in sync with a CD and following an artistic interpretation of a map in a small leaflet got a little confusing, so we called it a day after the first third of the battle and decided to move on to Phillidelphia where we have more history waiting for us tomorrow.

 

 

Washington D.C. by Segway

 

I was really looking forward to yesterday. Partly because we were going to be in Washington D.C . but mainly because I’d always wanted to ride a Segway .

The day started badly. It was chucking it down with rain as we drove into D.C. and there was an hour long traffic jam. If we actually made it there on time, which seemed unlikely, then we were sure the tour was going to be cancelled due to the rain. However, we were only a couple of minutes late and they don’t cancel due to rain so we quickly grabbed a couple of ponchos and jumped on our Segways.

We’ve tried quite a few new modes of transport this holiday; quad bikes, boats, even a jetpack! But I can honestly say that none of them feel as natural as a Segway. There were about 10 people in our group and they were all trained up in about 2 minutes.

They really are fantastic machines because you just lean in the direction you want to go and if you want to slow down you just lean back. You can’t go too fast and you can’t fall off it because it won’t let you.

I should probably talk about the sights we saw on the way, although they felt secondary to whizzing about on the Segway. We saw the White House , Lincoln Memorial , Washington Monument and the Korean War Veterans Memorial . All of them were very impressive actually. The Washington Monument is currently closed because of the earthquake last month (they’re still checking it to make sure it’s safe) and the reflecting pool (You know the big one Forrest Gump ran down?) is currently being restored so has no water in it, but the Lincoln memorial was very impressive (see photos) and the Korean War Veterans Memorial seemed very fitting and very original.

As fun as it was seeing those and The White House though, the star of the show yesterday was the Segways.

I can’t wait to have another go on one.

 

 

Swimming with Manatees

Our detour to Crystal River to swim with manatees was just under 24 hours long but, for me, was one of the best experiences that we have had so far.

Crystal River is a small river in Florida running into the Gulf and is home to a small population of endangered manatees all year round. During the winter, when it gets colder, there can be up to 400 living in the river, during summer months, there are about 25 adults and babies staying in the bays.

Our day started around 6am and, once we were fitted out with wetsuits and snorkel gear we were out on the boat with our guide in time for a gorgeous sunrise.

After about 35 minutes we stopped alongside 5 or 6 swimmers who were watching a mother and her calf playing in the water, we joined them for a few minutes and did manage to see them both, but having been in the same place for a while, they moved on (that’s the nice version, the more honest one is that Jon ‘interacted’ with a manatee by accidentally kicking it, then they swam away…) so we went down river to three amazingly clear pools/springs, called the Three Sisters – I managed to get some photos of an underwater crater filled with trees with Robin & Esperanza’s camera which they kindly left with us but the crater was too deep to take the camera down when I dived into it, so the crabs I disturbed didn’t get to have their photos taken.

As we took the boat further to look for more manatees, we found Cici, a small male recently returned to the wild from captivity; he has a small buoy attached to his tail and is being monitored to see how he behaves in the wild, so no one is allowed to swim near him, in case these behaviours are altered. Our guide then took us into a bay where, to my delight, we found four manatees, three adults and a calf, just floating about (that’s pretty much all manatees do, float and eat!). The water was really quite murky but I swam in their vague direction and then just floated (as we were told to, manatees are meant to approach you, not the other way around) After a few minutes the river bed appeared to move under me and a manatee’s back came into view – it was a little like a ‘magic eye’ picture, suddenly the floor had shape and was swimming!

Adult manatees weigh up to 2000 lbs and they certainly made me feel very small and ungainly as they swam around. The white marks you can see in the photos are scars from boat propellers; they all have them, even the little calf, even though the rules for boats on the river are pretty strict. Fortunately, most propeller injuries heal and don’t seem to cause too many problems at slow speeds (keel injuries are another matter, hence the strict speed limits).

After stroking the backs of two of the adults as they hovered near me, I couldn’t believe it when the little calf suddenly appeared in front of me and nudged me in a similar way to the way a dog will head butt you to get attention. I stroked down its back and it promptly rolled over and presented its belly for a rub! We’d been told that they were remarkably affectionate and inquisitive, but to actually see it was quite amazing.

I have a few pictures of the calf – the one with it’s nose very close to the camera wasn’t using zoom; 2 seconds later it headbutted my hand, then my mask. This was extremely cute but a little nerve-wracking, it may have only been a small calf but was still about 8ft long and a much better swimmer than me.

By the time the manatees swam off I could no longer feel my hands or feet (even with a wet suit it was really cold) so we decided to spend the rest of our tour time going out to the entrance to the Gulf and to an islands there called Shell Island, which did appear to be made entirely of shells. Beautiful views and huge banana spiders – some things I won’t miss when we come home!

Back at the hotel we slept for a few hours and then drove about 180 miles towards Washington – we’ve got a little behind because of moving our trip to Crystal River to after Orlando (we meant to go before but Labor Day weekend meant everything was booked up) which means we have a 700 mile drive to Washington tomorrow (Monday) to get us back on track. Good thing I have such a lovely chauffeur!