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Published: September 1st 2011
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After celebrating Jimmy & Cali's wedding and seeing Kris & Kelly we now venture our way down from Northwestern New Hampshire to Connecticut to visit Jay & Melissa. Pete went to high school with Jay and now we get to experience their life on the East Coast in East Lyme, CT. (where Lyme disease was identified)
Jay works at Foxwoods Casino where many New Yorker's and Bostonian's drive to gamble since neither of those states have gambling. There are 2 large Vegas style casinos in the middle of small town CT which employee many people in the area and entertain thousands from all around. We wandered around the casino to see all the stores, restaurants and new high end bowling alley where Kim Kardashian recently wore heels to bowl. We ate dinner and headed back to their house to relax. Jay & Melissa have a 2 yr old daughter, Natalie, and are about to have another baby girl, Emma, in a few short weeks.
After our 1 night stay in CT we then headed to NYC. We turned in the rental car at JFK airport with another 600 miles driven in 72 hours. On the East Coast we hit
up 4 states and 600 miles and on the West Coast we drove 1850 miles in 2 states. Different Coasts and Different Mentalities. One thing that sticks in my mind is while we waited for Will to pick us up at JFK we were in the International Terminal with LOTS of Chinese as a flight has just arrived from Beijing airport. It quickly reminded us that we would be back in China soon enough, but were looking forward to the adventures, family and friends we still had ahead of us in the USA.
This was Pete's 1st time to the Big Apple and we also got to see 2 friends that we met in China during our 1st year. Will, lives on Long Island and just started his 2nd yr of law school at Hofstra University. Marty, lives in Upstate New York since he returned to the US from China this past April. Marty taught at a university in the same province we lived in last fall and he actually came to Hangzhou twice to visit us. He brought the train into NYC and the four of us went out to dinner and caught up. Marty had to get
on a train the next morning to go back upstate as Will took us on a tour of Manhattan.
We were in NYC when the 5.8 earthquake rocked the East Coast and I am sad to say we didn't even feel it. We were probably taking our photos with the Statue of Liberty when it hit and didn't even realize it. I won't bore you with all the details of our day as most of it was walking as my pedometer clocked 8 miles walked that day. The photos show most of what we did. We didn't get a photo of Ground Zero but we did stop by to see the construction going on there. It was an eerie feeling for me as I visited there in August 2002 to see lots of covered/damaged buildings and roads. It seems to me there should be a lot more done in 9 years but that is bureaucracy for you.
I think NYC would have been much more overwelming for Pete if we hadn't experienced Asia the last couple of years. NYC is a large, bustling city but compared to Hong Kong and many other Asian cities NYC is just another
city to us. I titled this blog NYC=The Hong Kong of the US as many people compare Hong Kong to the NYC of Asia but since we are more familiar with HK it seemed fitting to spin it around.
Our next stop was Illinois for 7 nights!
State Count: Elyse 40 & Pete 15 as I had already been to New York.
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Paulette
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Grimaldi's
Hey, can't believe you had pizza at Grimaldi's - we had pizza "Under the Bridge" at Grimaldi's when we went to NYC when the girls were juniors in high school.