April started quietly, with Liam wanting to stay home more and Rosie and Bruce both needing to rest their tired bodies after all the skiing and driving.
On April 5th, the exchange club organized a day at the zoo, since this was teacher’s day, so we could all get in for free.
We had already done a few zoos so the main reason for going was to catch up with the other exchangees and see what they were planning.
We did look forward to going down to the Canada section of the zoo so that we could see the animals specific to this section. Bruce had seen many of these animals in the wild, when he was in BC in 1991, and found it quite amazing that many of the Canadians hadn’t seen these animals in the wild. The Moose was quite a surprise, it was kind of like a cross between a deer and a camel. The legs were enormous and the body didn’t really match it.
It was also good to see a few bison and bears. The weather was superb and we were down to T-shirts later in the day.
Great to catch up with everyone and hear their plans, it gives us a few ideas for later in the year.
We procrastinated a while about where to go for Easter, but eventually decided to drive to New York city.
We left for New York on the Thursday evening and had a relatively good trip, getting through the border in only a few minutes before pushing on till 11pm where we had planned to stay near Binghamton.
On Friday we got up and had a leisurely breakfast before driving the rest of the way to New York City. We booked a hotel which we found on Trip Advisor, since it was close to NY city, but had free parking. It was right at the entrance to the New Holland Tunnel, so the traffic got pretty bad as we approached, and as would be expected, we had a lot of trouble finding it.
At one stage we stopped in a suburb near by and asked a lady on the street for help. She was great, as is everyone we talk to, and eventually we found the hotel.
The hotel was in New Jersey, which is just across the Hudson River from Manhattan. We had a short pleasant walk to the New Jersey PATH station, which was a train that took us under the river to Manhattan in 10 minutes. The walk also took us past a few restaurants so we stopped in at a nice Italian restaurant for lunch. A great New York experience, with lots of noise and atmosphere.
After this we took the train to the World Trade Centre stop and had a look around. It has changed a lot since Bruce was there in 2004, the monuments have been removed and the rebuilding process is in full swing. We then walked down to Battery Park, which is a long park running along the edge of the Hudson River, great to see families out playing with the backdrop of New York City, not what you expect in a city of this size and reputation.
A couple of bus rides and we were at the newly refurbished Staten Island Ferry terminal. The Ferry is a free ride which takes commuters and tourists across to Staten Island. It also takes you past the Statue of Liberty so it is another great way to experience both New Yorkers going about their normal life and seeing a major attraction. We all loved this ride and it was a great way to start our weekend.
From here we caught the Red Line subway to Times Square and Rosie and Liam got to experience night life in New York for the first time. It was just an amazing sea of lights and people and they both loved it. Liam thought it was much better than Las Vegas, which was an interesting observation, in terms of the lights and activity. We walked up Broadway, checking out the sights and to find the Theartre ticket booth for the next day.
This entailed walking past “Toys R Us”, so we had to drop in there. It was amazing, with a ferris wheel in the middle of the store. Liam raced all over the place, searching out Star Wars characters and Halo action figures.
The next morning we were a bit slow moving and by the time we had walked down and picked up our coffee, juice and pastry breakfast from the hotel foyer (typical light breakfast in these cheap hotels, not great but gets you through till lunch time), taken it back to the room and got ourselves ready to leave it was already 10am. Unfortunately it was raining, so we weren’t that inspired to get outside.
First thing was to go to the cheap ticket booth to see what we could get. The queue was enormous, the rain was pouring down and likelyhood that we wouldn’t get tickets to a show we wanted to see conspired to stop Bruce so we looked for things to do in the rain.
Ripley’s Believe It or Not became appealing, and was surprisingly good. Rosie and Liam particularly liked the Black Hole, which was a typical side show experience where you walked through a rotating tunnel which completely disorientated you into thinking you were falling over. The whole display was based around the Freak Show carnivals that were popular in the late 1800’s to early 50’s and, with that in mind, we all really enjoyed the experience.
Unfortunately the rain kept coming down all day so we continued to look for indoor experiences. The next stop then became FAO Schwartz, which is a famous toy store in NY city.
If you are a movie buff, you would recognize the Big Piano from the Tom Hanks movie “Big”. This is a very popular attraction in the toy store and Liam had a great time, along with everyone else from 8 – 40yo. We didn’t think this store was as good as Toys-R-Us, it was more expensive and not as diverse, though it did have a good Harry Potter section, which would have made Bec McKinney very envious.
After this we went to Grand Central Station for a bit of a rest and a snack. This is a really great piece of early 1900’s architecture and very opulent. It was also a good spot to meet up with Bruce’s friend John. He met John in 1994 when traveling around the world. They have kept up contact ever since and managed to meet up again in 2004. We organised to meet John at Grand Central Station and then go out to dinner with John and his wife, Cheryl.
We went to a New York cafe, which was full of hustle and bustle and served meals from the simple hamburger up to full a-la-carte. It was good to catch up have a talk and also to get to experience a city through the eyes of the locals. By coincedence, Cheryl liked to watch the golf and with the Masters finishing on Sunday, we organised to go to their apartment, which is nicely situated on Broadway, to watch the finish of the golf and to have a take-away dinner.
After a very long day, we left for our little hotel, with good directions from John. Unfortunately, nothing ever goes to plan and we spent 30 minutes going backwards and forwards on different subway trains, which didn’t stop where they were supposed to, until we finally managed to get back home. The subway system still isn’t working properly around the World Trade Centre and this was the cause of most of out problems.
Sunday morning arrived bright and early, and the Easter Bunny managed to find Liam. He left a little trail of footprints all over the room helping Liam to find his eggs and other gifts. As Liam crawled around the room searching, you could hear him muttering “You guys are going to get into so much trouble (referring to the footprints everywhere)”.
The weather was much better today and we ventured out to view the Easter Bonnet Parade. Again we had our subway problems, but it all adds to the experience.
The parade is really just an excuse for a lot of extraverts to go walking down 5th Avenue wearing silly hats. I think it is also a bit of a celebration of the arrival of Spring. We had a lot of fun looking at the hats and did find it amazing that you would close a major part of the city so that this quirky event could take place. (The “Easter bonnet” was fixed in popular culture by Irving Berlin,
“In your Easter bonnet with all the frills upon it, You’ll be the grandest lady in the Easter parade.”)
After this we went to the Rockefella Building to take in the views of the city. This isright next to Radio City music hall, which again is quite iconic. The Rockefella centre is the location for a huge Christmas Tree in December and also has an outdoor skating rink that was still open when we were there.
The “Top of the Rock” offered great views over all of New York city and the view of Central Park was quite amazing. This is really a huge park on very expensive real estate. We spent quite some time on the roof looking around, you got views all over Manhatten and could even see the Statue of Liberty. Although the Empire State Building is slightly higher, I think the views from the Rock are more impressive.
To finish off our day we went to the Natural History Museum to look around and also take the occasional sit to give our weary bodies a rest. As is normal, the dinosaurs were very interesting and we can always find sections of a museum that we haven’t seen before.
We then walked to John and Cheryl’s for the golf and another good dinner with great conversation. A nice way to end our visit.
The Holland Motor Lodge was an interesting choice of hotels. It was right on the tunnel so it was a bit noisy in terms of vehicles. The price though was extremely good, less than $US100 a night and free parking. The breakfast was better than nothing and the location to the train and hence Manhatten was very good.
The staff were very helpful and all up we were able to spend our money on better things than a bed and room that we hardly spent much time in.
We got up early on Monday and were on the road by 6:30am. The drive back was very good with no hold ups and nice driving weather. Liam spent the whole trip watching DVD’s that the Easter Bunny gave him. Unexpectantly, there was no queue at the border so we managed to get home in just over 8 hours which was fantastic. Gave us the chance to rest a little before school started the next day.
Great trip, now to start planning for the next one.
