My youngest sister, Jude, got married on Saturday to her fiancé Liam. I think she looked gorgeous.
The wedding service was at St Chad’s in Hopwas, a small but beautiful little church in a village just outside of Tamworth. Yes, I did shed a tear or two. Thankfully, I was sat next to Mum, who was worse than me and had come armed with a ready supply of tissues.
Dad came up on Sunday, and we went looking for Dorrie. Unfortunately, it was too late. We found her lying under some bushes. Although there wasn’t a mark on her, we think she was probably hit by a car, and managed to get away from the road before dying.
We took her up to the pet crematorium, and I took off her collar and tag. I’ll get her ashes tomorrow.
Born July 2006. Died February 2008. She may have had a bad start in life until I rescued her at 6 weeks old, but I think she was happy with me - I certainly received enough ‘gifts’!
Love you, chicken.
Thursday, and our last full day in New York. It’s surprising really how quickly the time seems to have gone.
We had to be up early this morning to get to central Manhattan well before 9am if we wanted any chance of getting a good vantage point for seeing the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. We’d read in our guidebook that the best seats were all taken by as early as 7am, and whilst we weren’t quite tough enough to be up and about in time for that, I did nudge Chris out of bed in time for us to get a subway train at 7.15ish. We reached Times Square for 8am, and it was already bustling, although we did get to very near the front of the barriers. We asked a police officer or two when we could expect to see the parade pass by, and when he told us it would be at least 9.15am, we decided to abandon our good position and go and sit down in a nearby McDonalds until a bit nearer the time. At just after 9am we pushed our way through the crowds, and whilst we didn’t get quite as good a space as earlier, we still had a great view of the larger floats and balloons. The first of them paraded past at about 9.30am, and just kept going. There were a load of stars on some of the floats - Dolly Parton, the band Good Charlotte, the cast of the film Hairspray, and several others who I didn’t recognise and only found out about when I read the news reports online later. We didn’t stick around till the very end of the parade - by around 11am our feet and legs were killing us, so we pushed back through the teeming crowd - a near impossible task - and headed downtown on the subway to see if we could find any open stores. There was a Christmas market in Union Square, and a Virgin Megastore that we disappeared into for a while. Other than that, very few places other than some cafes and newsagent type stores were open. Given that there wasn’t much opportunity for us to frivolously spend money or engage in sightseeing, we headed back to Brooklyn and decided to take it easy for the afternoon.
We went out at around 5pm for a Thanksgiving dinner. Perry’s, the diner around the corner that served us a giant breakfast back on our first day, was doing a fixed price Thanksgiving menu - $18.95 for a three course meal. I can’t think of many places (if any) in England who’d do a 3-course turkey dinner for that amount! We had a bread basket on our table, then got chicken noodle soup to start, although not the kind we’re used to. This had large pieces of spiral pasta in it, and proper pieces of chicken. Nice, mind. The main course was unusual. We were brought out a platter with peas and mushrooms on (together), a baked potato wrapped in foil for Chris, a sweet potato in foil for me (the top of the potato came off with the foil), and finally two plates with turkey breast piled high over stuffing. It looked like the same amount of turkey each that Mum would carve off to feed our family of eight at Christmas! They obviously don’t believe in doing things by halves here. The turkey was topped with a yellow sauce that had Chris poking at it dubiously. It turned out to be gravy, but I’ve never seen yellow gravy in my life. The stuffing wasn’t UK-traditional chestnut or sage and onion. It turned out to have a hundred and one ingredients. On my plate alone, I found apple, cashews, pineapple, raisins, and cranberries. More of a fruit sauce than a stuffing, really! There was far too much food for either of us to finish. We only made it so far before giving up. We were then brought desserts of vanilla cheesecake (me) and chocolate chocolate chip layer cake (Chris). And no - neither of us could finish. We staggered back around the corner to the house, and avoiding any kind of movement for at least half an hour!
Tomorrow is well known in the US for being Black Friday. All the post-Thanksgiving sales start, and people have been known to camp outside stores on Thanksgiving itself. In fact, outside a branch of Circuit City in Union Square, we saw a small line of people in camping chairs waiting outside the doors - and this was only at 1pm or so. The sale isn’t due to start until 7am tomorrow - there must be some fantastic bargains in there for that kind of devotion!
We’re not completely sure whether or not we should brave Manhattan tomorrow morning. We have to be at the airport for 3pm, but there’s still the opportunity for us to do some shopping (i.e. spend what money we have left) if we feel crazy enough. For now, some bag packing is in order.
After a late night last night at the comedy club, we were out late this morning, but planned to pack in as much as possible, with the first stop being the up to that point unseen Statue of Liberty. We figured that as it was the day before Thanksgiving, the queues wouldn’t be bad. How wrong we were! When we arrived down at Battery Park, the queue for tickets stretched out and curved back on itself for what looked like half a mile. On top of that, there was a further queue once tickets were bought to actually get on the Liberty Island ferry. Given it was later in the day, we decided we didn’t want to spend ages queueing, so instead just took photos from the harbour. Bit of a hazy day, but better things to do than spend several hours in queues.
We left Battery Park to head up the road to the World Financial Center. Chris wanted to see Ground Zero - not something I wanted to see myself - I find it hard to get to grips with the fact that a place where 3000+ people died, and what is nothing more than a construction site currently, has become a tourist attraction. I find it in very bad taste. We skirted around the site, and continued up the hill to the other parts of the Financial District, passing close to, but not directly by, Wall Street.
After getting something to eat, we took a wrong turning on Fulton, and found ourselves on Pier 16 at South Street Seaport, overlooking the Brooklyn Bridge and several old clipper ships. It was still hazy, but a nice wrong turn to make, nevertheless!
When we finally found our way back on track and got to a subway station, we rode back uptown to find the Rockefeller Center Ice Rink. Chris had mentioned that there was a statue of Prometheus that overlooked the ice rink, and that the Christmas tree should be up. The plans for going to the Top of the Rock were shelved because of the haziness - visibility wouldn’t be good enough to make it worthwhile. We did get slightly confused in the Rockefeller Center when we couldn’t find the way out of the building to the ice rink, but finally made it. The Christmas tree is up, but hasn’t been decorated yet save for the star on top of it. Unfortunately, we’re going to miss the lighting of it, which doesn’t take place until next week.
We decided that the hours of walking around central Manhattan were taking a real toll on our poor abused feet - every time we sat down for any appreciable length of time and stood up again, we felt like our joints were seizing up. To save our discomfort (and wussiness) we headed back home and got a takeaway from a local Thai place.
Tomorrow - Thanksgiving and the Macy’s Parade.
Unfortunately, the heavy morning rain scuppered our plans once again. Chris still isn’t feeling 100% either, and wanted to take things a bit easier. Instead of major sightseeing (Statue of Liberty), we decided to get off the subway earlier than usual, and took a stroll around downtown Manhattan, through Chinatown, SoHo, Little Italy, NoLIta and NoHo. It was nice to see a side of New York other than the madness and shine of central Manhattan, with little shops and cafes, market stalls in Chinatown, NYU, and changing neighbourhoods. Some of them do blur into one a little - how do you tell the difference between SoHo and NoHo other than the dividing Houston Road? I don’t think I could!
We got onto the subway again at Union Square, and headed back into Central Manhattan for lunch, before taking advantage of the much diminished rain to go and have another wander around Central Park. All we saw last time was the south west corner on our way to the Natural History Museum, so there was still loads of it to see. We focused on the south east / central / eastern area, and walked up the Mall to Bethesda Fountain, rambled through the Ramble, skirted around the back of the Lake and found the Boathouse, and walked back via the Carousel (closed, unfortunately), to exit around 61st street on the eastern side.
I found out this morning that there was a Couchsurfing meetup planned for Wednesday, so we decided to change our plans and go to the Comedy Club today instead. It wasn’t until 9pm, so we had around six hours to kill. Finding ourselves in Times Square - which still dazzles me every time I see it - we stopped into the Coldstone Creamery for some gorgeous icecream, and nipped into the cinema for the second time in the week to watch 30 Days of Night. Vampire movie, many townspeople die, gets very silly indeed towards the end. Neatly killed some time, though. We went to find food downtown and got diverted into a huge Barnes and Noble bookstore for 45 minutes or so, and had just enough time to grab a quick McDonalds before we had to catch the subway back uptown to get to Broadway.
What we hadn’t been told when we bought the tickets for the show was that reservations should be made in advance - having the ticket isn’t enough, you then have to phone and book a seat. Luckily, we were only the second group on the reserves list, and we were ushered into the show a good 10 minutes before it started. The other caveat on the ticket that we had known about was the 2 drink minimum. Bar staff came around and took our orders, and brought the drinks to the tables, very welcomed as it saved gathering around the bar. There were six comedians, including the emcee, and the show lasted a good 2.5 hours. I’d never heard of any of them before, but all bar one were extremely funny. The one I didn’t find so funny still got laughs, but just wasn’t to my taste. Far and away the best was a comedian called Erik Rivera, who had us all in stitches with his race / ethnicity inspired monologues. Towards the end of the night, the bar staff brought round the bill for each group, and it was here that Chris and I discovered how they can sell discounted tickets. For a bottle of Bud Lite and three Cokes, the bill came to $29.07. This included $8 for the Bud (£4 for a bottle of American beer!!!), and $5 (£2.50) each for the Cokes. There was also an obligatory gratuity of just over $4 added to the bill, and tax of $2-ish. Chris and I were disgusted. Talking to a friend of his in San Jose online later, Chris discovered that comedy clubs do generally make their money through the price of drinks. Well… at least the comedy was great.
By the time we’d got back to 7th and 57th to catch a train, it was almost midnight. The journey back to Brooklyn was as long as ever. We finally got in at just after 1am - a long day!
Staying way out in the south of Brooklyn, it takes a while to get into central Manhattan. There’s a 20 minute walk down Avenue U to get to the subway, and then the Q train takes around 45 minutes to get into the city. There’s not much to do apart from people watch and wait for the brief glimpse of the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan skyline as we cross from Brooklyn into Manhattan.
As is the case with most mass transit, there’s always going to be the crazy person. You see them everywhere - even up in Sheffield on very rare occasions - but they’re most visible in the big cities. New York is right up there at the top of the list. There was a guy on the subway just the other day who stank of alcohol, and loudly complained to anyone in his proximity about the crass commercialisation of the holiday season. For a busy train, there was a large open space around him! Another guy was sitting with several empty seats around him. When someone tried to sit down across from him, he yelled something sharp and incoherent, and thumped the window with his fist. The other guy moved as if something had bit him. The crazy person started muttering to himself, rubbing at his face, taking off his glasses and putting them back on again over and over, picking his nose, and scratching his cheeks. Everyone studiously ignored him. Eventually, he started rustling through a plastic bag, finally pulling out a book. I had to suppress laughter when I saw the title: ‘The Lexicon of Stupidity’.
When me and Chris got up for our stop, the crazy guy stood up too and started pacing the floor of the train, back and forth. For a minute, we thought he was going to get off to, but apparently not. I often wonder what their stories are.
Chris and I were up late today. I think our jetlag is finally easing off, and we’re not waking at 6am or earlier. Instead, we woke late enough that we didn’t get out the door until around 11.30am. For the first time, it was raining. We decided that visiting the Top of the Rock wouldn’t be that good if visibility was reduced with the poor weather, so we settled on Times Square instead. We’d passed through it on the subway several times, but hadn’t actually gone above ground. When we did - well, it’s insane. You see it on tv and movies all the time, with the bright lights and the bustling people, and so on. Seeing it in person is amazing. Everything is aglow, all neon lights and noise and traffic and people. It’s kind of sensory overload, but it’s also so fantastic. Whilst we were wandering around gawping like the stereotypical tourist, we got stopped by two guys selling tickets to a comedy club show. As the Broadway theatre shows are closed because of a strike, there’s a lot of people avoiding Broadway, and people are selling discounted tickets to other things, like the comedy clubs. We paid $20 for 4 tickets to the Broadway Comedy Club show on Wednesday. Moving on to find something to eat, we found we were overwhelmed with choices. In the end, our feet hurting, we picked the next one we came across, which turned out to be Planet Hollywood. Good grief, it was loud in there. 360 degree screens advertised forthcoming movies, notable clips from films, music videos, and loads of other stuff. It was almost hard to hear one another. Thankfully, the food was decent.
Deciding that the weather kind of made things a bust, we decided to go to the cinema. Chris wanted to see Beowulf, and we found an AMC theatre just around the corner from Times Square. It wasn’t until we got in there that Chris realised the film was CGI-animated. He was a bit put out. The film was ok - nothing brilliant. However, the trailers were excellent - The Golden Compass, Cloverfield, and a forthcoming sci-fi film called Jumper that had me oohing and aahing excitably. I do like a good sci-fi film, so I’ll be looking out for that one eagerly.
After the movie, we made a beeline for the Rockefeller Center. I discovered that I’m actually getting to grips with the layout of the city now. The grid system takes a little bit of getting used to, but I’ve got my head round it, and I made it from Times Square (Eighth and 34th) to the Rockefeller Center (Sixth and 49th) without having to look at the guide book once. I was very pleased with myself - up until I had to check the guidebook to find the subway. Thing with the subway stops is that a stop called 42nd Street could mean Times Square (7th avenue) or Bryant Park (8th avenue), so you have to know exactly which line you need. Confusing! Thank god for the subway map in our Lonely Planet Guide. Chris bought himself a game at the Nintendo Store, and we headed back to the subway to catch a train back to Brooklyn, stopping briefly at a Subway’s to get some sandwiches. These long days are wearing!
Tomorrow, weather permitting - the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.
We got a bit of a later start this morning, going out around 9.30am. It was Chris’s birthday, but he’s still not completely 100%, poor mite. Despite spending the last 72 hours with him, I haven’t yet - touch wood - caught whatever he’s got. As long as I can get through the majority of the week healthily, I won’t complain. In the meantime, he’s taking some Tylenol cough/cold syrup at 4 hour intervals.
We headed down Avenue U and had breakfast bagels at a Dunkin’ Donuts we’d passed on the way back last night before catching the Q train. The weather isn’t fantastic at the moment - slightly drizzly and cold enough that I bought a big furry hat on Fifth Avenue. After failing to find the Empire State Building yesterday, we finally tracked it down with the help of the Lonely Planet guide. The queues are a bit of a pain, but we got to the 86th floor and out onto the observatory into snow flurries (!) to admire the view. We could just about see the Statue of Liberty in the distance, which we’ll be visiting later in the week, but the view of the rest of Manhattan was just fine, including landmarks like the Chrysler Building and the Flatiron Building. Unfortunately, it was a bit too cold to stay up there for long.
We headed further down 5th Avenue to get a closer look at the Flatiron Building around 19th Street, then turned around again to walk back north. We’d arranged to stand in front of a webcam for Dad’s benefit at 3pm, and had to be at 5th and 45 by then - 26 blocks, or around 1.5 miles. Easy normally - not so fast in a city the size and population of New York! Cafe 28 offered a welcome break for lunch. The New York Public Library with its gorgeous architecture was great for me, and offered Chris a chance to write a postcard to a friend in California. Just a block away from 45th, Best Buy let us kill some time in the last half hour browsing DVDs and games - although we refrained from blowing our money! We were at the corner right as scheduled, and hung around for 10 minutes or so, letting Dad get the picture he wanted.
Cold from hanging around, we continued north up 5th Avenue, through the expensive and prestigious part of the road, passing by shops like Prada, Gucci, Saks, and Cartier. We went briefly into Saks, and felt woefully inadequate looking at Burberry and La Croix scarves with price tags of $250 upwards. They do have a very pretty Swarovski crystal Christmas star, though (which I felt too hesitant about taking a picture of, lest they looked down their noses at me at such gauche behaviour!). It would have been interesting to go into Cartier, but it seemed like a dress code or status sort of place, and in our furry hats we might have looked a bit out of place! Instead, we went into Gap and I came out with two much more reasonably priced tops.
We made it was far north as 56th Street and the Apple store and FAO Schwarz, and our feet were about ready to give out on us. Dinner and drinks were definitely called for, which meant trudging back to 49th Street and TGI Fridays - much welcomed food and relaxation.
We also stumbled upon Bryant Park on the way back to the subway station at 42nd Street - a pretty little place with an ice rink (which you wouldn’t catch me on, ever) and some markety stalls. Great views of the tops of the skyscrapers at night too.
Tomorrow’s plans - Rockefeller Plaza and Top of the Rock, the Chrysler Building, and Times Square.
We had to be out of the apartment pretty early this morning, as Phil’s clients (he’s a psychologist) have appointments with him on Saturday mornings from 9-12. Our jet lag put paid to a decent night’s sleep anyway, and neither of us needed the alarm clock to get us out of bed.
Phil had mentioned a diner just round the corner that did a good breakfast, which I figured would be something like Waffle House, a favourite of mine when I’m in Georgia. Perry’s was just a short walk away, and bigger than we’d thought it would be. It was nice in there, though. The hostess pegged our accents immediately, and imitated them badly. She bemoaned British food - “good food in England? Fuhgeddabahdit!” - but said the public transport was great - “except it’s so expensive!” - and warned us to watch our belongings on the subway. Both of us ordered pancakes, sausage and eggs, and ten minutes later we each had an unbelievably huge oval plate in front of us. Two hot-dog type sausages, scrambled eggs, and 3 pancakes almost half an inch thick and as wide as the plate. We were both staggered - and so were our stomachs afterwards, even though neither of us could finish!
We headed for the subway, making a wrong turn that led us astray for 5 minutes, then walked 13 blocks to the Avenue U station. Compared to the London Underground, the subway has seen better days. I don’t think there’s anywhere near as much spent on its upkeep as there is on the Underground - it’s pretty dingy in places. That said, it’s great for getting into Manhattan. We got Metrocards to last us the week ($24 compared to a £21 similar card in the UK) and hopped onto the Q train. It took around 40 minutes to get to the middle of Manhattan. It was cold, but nice weather, so we got off at Carnegie Hall and walked into Central Park. We were immediately accosted by a carriage bike driver, who offered to take us round the park and show us all the sites. Unfortunately, his accent was only slightly more understandable than the taxi driver last night. We moved on to find a map of the park - stupidly, I’d left our Lonely Planet guide at the apartment. We eventually found one, and decided to concentrate on the south west corner of the park so we could head straight for the Natural History Museum. Another carriage bike guy, an American this time, offered to take us around. He seemed a lot more knowledgeable and professional than the other guy, and he gave us his card. We said we were going to the Museum, but we may take him up on the ride later in the week. There’s definitely more to see than we did so far.
We passed by Tavern on the Green, skirted around the Lake and took pictures of the view, and found Strawberry Fields, the John Lennon memorial. Some guy had laid out green things in a peace symbol shape on the ‘Imagine’ plaque. A British guy complained quietly that he wanted to show people back home a photograph of the plaque, not some ’stupid green things in the way’. He had a point, although it was kind of pretty.
We found the Natural History Museum with no problems - in fact, it was right in front of us when we found our way out of the park. The queues inside to get tickets were a bit of a nightmare. More fool us for not booking them online in advance. As well as the museum itself, we booked to see the Butterfly Conservatory, the H20=Life exhibition, Mythic Creatures, and Cosmic Collisions in the Planetarium. Each of the shows was an hour apart, and I thought that might be a bit long. As it turned out, that was great timing. Our poor aching feet and our empty stomachs needed the breaks in between to recover!
The Butterfly Conservatory was excellent. My camera lens fogged up immediately as soon as we walked in - it was that humid! I took a fair number of photos in there though, once I’d cleared off the lens a couple of times. Very colourful indeed.
We wandered around for a little while after the butterflies, as we had 1.5 hours between exhibits. We found a cafe on the fourth floor and just about managed to find a place to sit down and eat. We discovered that we’d only just brought enough money with us - by the time we’d had lunch, Chris only had $12 left, and I only had $8. At least it curbed our spending! After $24 on the Metrocard, $30 on museum entry fees, and $10 each on breakfast, the wallet sure empties quick!
The H20 exhibit tended towards the educational. There was a tinted fog generator at the start that looked like a waterfall, which you could walk through. That was pretty cool. After that was a load of info and shows on how much water there is on Earth, conservation, etc. It wasn’t a bad exhibit by any means, but it wasn’t our favourite.
Mythic Creatures was an awful lot of fun. Rocs, dragons, griffins, unicorns, and the history of them. There was even some stuff on Pokemon that Chris liked!
Cosmic Collisions was in the Planetarium, a show narrated by Robert Redford on the creation and destruction of solar systems. Again, fun stuff, although I got a bit of a crick in my neck from looking up.
By the end of the show, we were ready to leave. It was getting on for 4.30pm, and we’d been in there for over four and a half hours! Back through Central Park, we decided to walk down Sixth Avenue and see if we could find the Rockefeller Center and the Empire State Building. So we walked. And walked. And walked. For around 25 blocks, and in some circles too. We asked a couple of people for directions, and got responses along the lines of “2 blocks, make a left”. Not too helpful. Eventually, we pretty much stumbled upon Rockefeller Plaza. Chris made an immediate beeline for the Nintendo World Store - I swear, he must have some kind of homing device for these places. Once I’d extracted him, we tried to find a subway station. We found three that were closed, then found the Chrysler Building, which practically popped out of nowhere. Cool. Grand Central Station turned out to be our saviour - an information desk visit, and we were off on the subway shuttle, which linked to Times Square on the Q line. We had to wait well over 25 minutes for a train, which inspired more grumbling about poor comparisons to the Underground, but we eventually got there. We stopped at a Chinese on the 13-block walk back to the apartment, and were very glad to get sat down after the long, long day!
Tomorrow’s plans - Christopher’s birthday and the Empire State Building.
Chris and I left Birmingham at a hellishly early hour yesterday morning on a coach bound for Heathrow, to catch a plane to New York. I’d usually take the train down, but as Chris works for a coach company, we got free travel - not to be sniffed at.
Heathrow was as soul crushing as an airport ever is, but our plane boarded on time (if not departed!). I’d managed to check us in early to get seats with a bit of extra leg room, but it was still a long, dull flight with mediocre food. We arrived in New York slightly late, and got through Customs eventually with a minimum of bother - in fact, the US Customs Officer was one of the friendlier ones I’ve encountered, asking Chris if he was there for his birthday, telling him to back up for the camera check because he was ‘one big guy’, and wishing us a happy stay.
We caught a cab out to Brooklyn, where we’re staying with a couchsurfing family, Phil, Minna and his daughters. They’ve very kindly given us a place to stay in their basement apartment after the original plans we’d made fell through. They’ve also given us loads of info on how to get around town, what to see, and what’s on at the moment.
We’re off to Central Park today, with a side order of National History Museum. The weather seems to be good at the moment, if cold, but we’ve come prepared with warm coats and furry hats and gloves, so unless we suddenly get sub-zero ice storms, we’ll be just fine.
I’ve got my camera at the ready, and I know there’ll be plenty of excellent photo opportunities.
Dad came up to Sheffield today, to be in the house when a guy came to look at my boiler. I told him I’d take him out for dinner and a movie when I got home as a thank you.
“Stay the night,” I told him whilst we were driving down to Centertainment. “You don’t want to drive home in this terrible weather.”
“Nah,” he said. “I’ll go when we’ve seen the film.”
“Oh well,” I said, “I’ll just have to nip outside during the film and nick your spark plugs. You’ll have to stay then.”
“Shows what you know about cars,” he said. “Diesel engines don’t have spark plugs.”