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Published: November 23rd 2006
blog by Bronia... so grab a cup of tea/coffee cos you know it's going to be a long one... New York
Where on earth do you begin describing a city like
New York?
Famed all over the world, the winter-summer-anytime-of-year destination for thousands, the
"city that never sleeps", the
"big apple" etc. etc. To try and describe
New York would be to simply repeat the words that you've probably heard a thousand times, so I won't even attempt to as I'll end up making clichés. What I can say, is that everyone who comes here will have a different experience, as there is literally so much to do during your stay that I cannot imagine people leaving and saying they didn't enjoy it.
Here's some stuff you might not know about
New York that we found out when here:
* It is 309sq miles (half the city of
London) * Population is 8 million (
London is 10 million) * People actually do say
"fuhgeddaboutit" and talk with that accent you see on TV. Yes, that tickled us to no end as we eavesdropped on far too many conversations. * In the cold, which we had
plenty of whilst we were there, warm smokey steam really does pour out of the manhole covers and drains. We can also tell you that it doesn't smell that great, especially when you are standing on the curb and waiting for the "Walk" signal. * The Dutch first colonised it in 1625 followed by the British in 1664. After the American Revolution,
New York became the first federal capital in 1789. * By 1905 four out of five New Yorkers were either immigrants or immigrants children.
For Dave and I, our first impression of
New York was that we had walked on to a movie set. Everything was... well, familiar. Years of TV watching, advertising, reading, media coverage have made
New York a city so familiar to so many of us that visiting it doesn't actually feel foreign. If anything, it feels surreal. You know you haven't been, yet you feel you have. Each time you round a corner you hardly needed to consult your guidebook as buildings or street signs come into view that you recognise.
This is the city of
Times Square, the
Empire State building, Yellow Cabs, TV shows like
"Friends", "Sex in the City", "Late Show with David Letterman", "E.R." etc and more movies that I would possibly be able to list were filmed here and broadcast to all of us at home across the world. I can't forget to mention of course that it is also, sadly, the location of
Ground Zero, former home of the
Twin Towers.
If you've been to
New York, which no doubt many of you have, then you already know what I'm about to say - so this is for people, like Dave and I, that were... well... clued out as to how the city actually lay geographically.
New York is in fact a series of islands and inlets as the
Hudson River spreads out into a wide river delta before meeting the
Atlantic Ocean.
Manhattan Island is the main island rising out of the delta and it's the one where most business head offices and tourists end up. If you imagine it as a rectangular sort of shape it is broken into three sections of
Uptown, Midtown and yes.... you got it,
Downtown.
All of it is divided into the famous NY city blocks which mean you are never really lost the way you can
be in some European cities.
Brooklyn, Queens, Chelsea, Bronx are all together on an island inlet and are linked to
Manhattan via the
Brooklyn Bridge.
New Jersey is across another inlet with the famous
Lincoln Tunnel, under the river, linking it to
Manhattan. In fact,
Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and
Staten Island make up 92%!o(MISSING)f the
New York Metropolis area so
Manhatten accounts for very little of the population and size of
New York.
We only were there for a few days, but despite the brevity of the visit, we did manage to pack in a great deal. Every day we caught the E-line subway from our hotel to the centre of the city getting off at the various stops along the line near to the attractions we wanted to visit that day.
The NY subway is, as I already said, like a movie set. Descending the steps into the subterranean world we smiled in recognition at the stainless steel carriages and squealing wheels of the trains that we've seen televised so many times before. Tickets let us through familiar iron bars and enclosures and we followed signs to names of places such as:
Times Square, World Trade Center, Broadway etc. that we've known for years.
Our first day in
New York we went to see an American Football game in
New Jersey. The game was the
New York Jets against the
Detroit Lions. After catching the subway to the major bus terminal near
42nd street we joined the crowds of
New York Jets fans all in their green and white football shirts with baseball caps (some on backwards - oh stylish!), flags, banners and faces painted and climbed on board special "Game" coaches that took us to
New Jersey via the
Lincoln Tunnel to the
Giants Stadium. The buzz of pre-game excitement was infectious and despite our "non-fan" status we got caught up in the fever.
Arriving at the stadium was mayhem. We'd never seen anything like it. The game was on a Sunday afternoon and it seemed that every fan and his family had driven down their pickup trucks, huge Winnebago camper vans and buses - painted green and white of course!
Outside these gas-guzzling beasts of the road they had set up picnic tables, trestle tables, canopies and awnings with the
mother-of-all barbeque's outside each family station cooking your All-American grub
of burgers and hot dogs, downed with copious cans of beer. Amongst all this kids and parents threw footballs back and forth missing heads, hot dogs and vans with television screens balancing on all kinds of improvised platforms to get the best reception from the aerials.
It was as if we'd arrived at a huge weekend music festival, not at an ordinary three-hour home game on a Sunday afternoon and Dave and gawped with amazement as our coach piled in behind several other coaches and unloaded us into this festive chaos. The festivity and excitement continued right throughout the afternoon. We found our seats in the open air stadium and put on our winter layers as the cold wintry wind set in and the game began.
The game was fascinating to watch and the crowds participation with chants and claps and roars outweighed any hockey game or soccer/football game we've seen. We
"fine-dined" on typical game food of hot dogs, a New York pretzel, beer and pop and roared and hollered along with all the
New York fans when the
Jets won 31 to 23.
Back in the city that night we walked around
Times Square, named
after it's long time resident the
New York Times newspaper and gaped at the dazzling array of neon flashing lights and TV screens that advertise everything from
Coca Cola, to
Desperate Housewives and the new
James Bond movie that it currently out.
Times Square is not a square as such, but rather huge meeting of streets, intersections, businesses, people and traffic where the place literally buzzes with the amount of voltage that lights this place up. Standing on a wide median between the traffic of honking yellow cabs, we just literally gawped like little kids in a toy store.
We visited
Times Square several more times during our stay as we passed it on our way to somewhere else and each time the buzz was the same. We even got to see the famous
"Naked Cowboy", a buffed-up muscled busker who stands in his white jockey underpants, cowboy boots and guitar every day, rain or shine, snow or heat and sings - yep, you got it - country music.
Yeehaw! You can even buy postcards of him. I managed, along with a number of other giggling tourists, to get a picture (or five), see below.
One day in
particular we spent the whole day walking.
New York city blocks are big but we felt that a subway underground defeated the purpose of seeing the city, so we walked. And walked. And stopped for a bite to eat. And then walked some more.
We explored the swanky ritzy areas of
5th Avenue (home of
Tiffany's the jewellers),
Park Avenue (posh apartments) and
Madison Avenue (publishing district). We walked to
Trump Tower and nosily peaked inside it's gold doors. We wandered up to the security gates of the
United Nations, which interestingly, technically sits on a slice of international territory not belonging to the
United States.
Along
42nd Street we wandered past the huge beaux arts
New York Public Library and into
Grand Central Station with it's marble arched hallways and signs pointing to the various platforms for far off
USA destinations. Here too, on this same street is the
Chrysler building, an art-deco stunner built in the 1930's with huge gargoyles jutting out from its roof which we squinted into the sun to admire.
Our meanderings led us past the
NBC Studios, the
Dow Jones stock building,
Radio City Music Hall and the
Empire State Building that since Sept 11 has again becomes
New York's tallest building at 102 floors and 1472 feet.
We had to, of course, walk along the famous
Broadway strip with theatres advertising the
Lion King, The Grinch that Stole Christmas, Mama Mia, The Colour Purple, Chicago, Phantom of the Opera etc. It was actually on Broadway that we were approached by a young lad with a clipboard. Ever wary of clipboard people as they notoriously try to keep you from your day with a 47 page questionnaire with questions such as
"Do you think Persil or Tide is a better detergent?" We try to evade him but he was good. He got us. There goes the rest of our day in
New York I think to myself.
Hi, I'm Brad,
I can't remember his name but that seems an appropriately stereotypical American one to insert in this dialogue.
I wondered if you'd be interested in free tickets to the David Letterman show tomorrow night?
Hello? Did we just hear the words "free" and the "Letterman Show" ? We try and nod nonchalantly whilst giving each other a look to keep acting cool.
All you have to do is answer a question correctly and you win tickets.
Uh-oh, we hardly watch the show. He's going to ask us a question a fan should
know not UK residents who hardly watch the show. Amazingly, the question is about what kind of shop appears on the show with David's aid regularly and somehow I manage to remember from the dark recesses of my mind that the shop he refers to sells soup and sandwiches.
At this point "Brad" tells me I'm right but need to be more specific. I panic. I've got no clue what more info he needs.
Is it a deli?
volunteers Dave casually who has watched the show even less than I have.
Perfect
replies Brad.
See you tomorrow at 4:30pm.
And that was how on Oct 24 we got to sit in the
David Letterman studio audience and watch the taping of the show to air that night with guests including a couple of USA sport commentators off
ESPN,
Tina Fey - the writer/star of the new hit TV series
"30 Rock" with
Alec Baldwin and the music band
"The Killers", which was a real treat as we're both fans. I have to say that it was a first for both of us watching a live TV taping and it was, in a word, very
cool. Ok, so that was two words. You get
the picture.
The Late Show with David Letterman is filmed at the
Ed Sullivan Theater - famous also for where the
Beatles and
Elvis played to deafening crowds on national TV many moons ago. Thinking we were being "authentic" we grabbed a hot dog from a street vendor right before the show. It was awful. The worst hot dog either of us have ever eaten. Nothing
"New York style about these
'dogs.' Just cold meat and a cold bun. Apparently there are food awards handed out to the NY vendors for 'best pretzel' 'best hot dog' etc. - we can tell you the one on
50th Avenue outside the
Ed Sullivan Theater didn't qualify for any award. We're not even sure he should have had a licence.
Right after the taping of the show finished at 6:30pm we rushed outside and along
Broadway to the next corner to the theatre where
"The Colour Purple" was playing. It was a book, made into a movie with
Oprah in it, made into a musical. It was a Tuesday night and the theatre was only half full so when the lights dropped the usher motioned for a small group of us
to move forward to spare seats closer to the stage.
As people sitting behind us caught sight of us sneaking down they too stood up and started running down in a massive wave trying to get seats before the curtain came up. The giggling, whispering and bumping of arms and legs died down just as the musical began and it was a fantastic three hours of entertainment. Especially considering we got seats worth about three times the price we'd paid !
We did of course, make the pilgrammage of sorts one afternoon, to
Ground Zero and the gaping hole that once was the
Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. It was a sobering experience. We walked, along with the many other tourists, around the metal perimeter of the fence, gazing into the whole lying below where construction trucks are swallowed up in the enormity of the hole.
Construction of the new towers and memorial areas is well underway. This is much against the wishes of some of the families and relatives who lost loved ones on 9/11/01. They believe that not enough clean up was done before the construction was started. By clean up, they mean
looking for more body parts. Building officials stated it
was clean and denied their claims.
Coincidentally, during the few days we were in
New York, some construction workers opened a series of manhole covers as part of their construction work and found bones, limbs and other pieces of 9/11 victims. Daily we heard of femur bones, arm bones etc. being unearthed. We stood looking at this crater of a hole knowing that undeniably, people still lie here buried.
Around one section of the fenced in zone is a photography exhibition of poignant moments at the moment and in the days following 9/11. Photos of men running with fear across their faces as dust chases them down the street. A woman comforting a stranger. A soldier in uniform saluting with tears running down his face. A child, placing a teddy bear at
Ground Zero for a lost parent.
I took a picture of Dave staring at the picture of the child and teddy bear (see attached). It seemed somehow a poignant picture in itself. The whole experience of being at
Ground Zero was much more moving to both of us than we thought. We both spoke of where
we had been when it had happened, what we remembered, and what it meant to build two more towers defiantly in the same places where the previous two had fallen.
We walked from
Ground Zero in
Downtown Manhatten to
Battery Park, on the shores of the
Hudson River where we tucked our hands tightly down into our pockets and our woolly hats pulled down over our ears bracing against the freezing evening air.
New York gets cold at night and it's not even winter yet.
We ducked in out of the cold that night, to a small
Romanian restaurant on a side street near to
Ground Zero and
Wall Street continued our somber talk over good wine and hot food, combined with joyful elements about what we have had a chance to see in our travels this year that all mix into memories that will stay with us for always.
One of our excursions included jumping on the subway down to the
Waterfront, near the
World Trade Center, and walked through the streets clutching a latte (yes, it was
Starbucks) to warm our hands. We spent some time hanging out on
Wall Street, admiring the amazing architecture
of the
New York Stock Exchange and the surrounding buildings.
Dave rightly commented that this particular part of the city is like the old part of
London with its neoclassical architectural columns and imposing facades with men in suits loitering outside rotating glass doors on their mobile phones. We then walked along the harbour front with views of
Brooklyn Bridge, the world's first steel suspension bridge.
Catching the
Staten Island Ferry, which can accommodate 70,000 foot passengers (no cars), we then went on a free hour round trip from
Manhattan Island to
Staten Island and back. We stood on deck and froze as we went past the
Statue of Liberty and snapped away at the sweeping views of the
Manhattan skyline.
The Statue of Liberty, a gift from the French in 1865, was beautiful. We always knew she would be but it was still a real thrill to see her standing on her own little island, arm held up with torch in hand as ferries and other boat traffic passes by day after day. You can no longer climb up her crown as they closed it off after 9/11.
We couldn't help but point out to
one another the hole, which if you know where to look, is where the
Twin Towers would have soared above all other buildings on the island (see pic). It's in the left hand portion of the picture of
Manhatten Island and as we looked we commented on how anyone on that morning, standing on the ferry as we were, would have had a perfect view of the buildings demise. Just horrifying.
Despite this one sobering piece of the city's history,
New York was a fantastic place and a wonderful experience for us. We had enough time to get a feel for this fun city and know that it's also on our ever growing list of places we'd come back to, even just to feel the buzz that exists here again.
Next we are off south to the sun, sea and sand .....yet still in the
USA... .It's
Miami Miami
The
State of Florida, located on the southern most point of the east coast of the
USA, is where you come for all the famous attractions you've probably heard of but haven't realised they are all in the same state.
Florida is where you'll find
the
Everglades, Daytona International Speedway,
Palm Beach,
Kennedy Space Centre, Universal Studios, Walt Disney World and of course
Miami and
South Beach. So it was here, to
Miami specifically, that we flew for a brief two day stop before our next flight to
St. Lucia in the
Caribbean. Not long, but enough time to visit downtown and the surrounding area.
Leaving
New York on a freezing cold autumn morning, where the wind was biting through our thin shirts and blowing leaves in swirls off the trees, we stepped off the plane in
Miami to a warm, sultry breeze and palm trees everywhere we looked.
We joked about having landed in another country as not only was the weather so dynamically different but because everyone, and we mean everyone, was speaking Spanish. Porters, cleaners, airport attendants, taxi drivers, passengers all gabbled away in Spanish. Even airport signs were in English and Spanish which we found decidedly progressive considering that the
USA has developed the media reputation of being so anti-immigration across the borders into the
USA by Latin Americans and having recently decided to build a physical wall between the
USA and
Mexico to keep illegal immigrants out.
Miami however, has been Spanish for a long time, with a particularly large Cuban population that moved here back in the days when Castro came to power. There is even a fascinating and eclectically cultural district in the city known as
Little Havana which is a popular place for tourists to visit.
If you come to
Miami you come for the sun, palm fringed avenues and beaches. You do not, Dave and I decided, come to visit the city. Although the city is brimming with Art Deco architecture, so much so that they offer bus trips, walking trips and self-guided tours of the downtown buildings, it seems that that´s just about all you'd want to see of the city itself. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the downtown core seemed, in our admittedly brief sojourn there, a rundown, dirty area; lacking shops, brands and amenities that you would expect in any large city in
America.
I'll give you an example of what I mean. At a guess, downtown
Miami is comprised of about 20 blocks, maybe more. We'd come specifically downtown on one morning in particular to find a book shop to
browse the travel section for some Latin American info - that being the next leg of our trip. After ages of wandering block after block we found a used bookshop which sold mostly Spanish books and a few English. He didn't have what we were looking for so we asked where the closest bookshop was to him. And that's when he dropped the bombshell. That is the
ONLY bookshop in
Miami.
Yes, a used bookshop with hardly any English books is the only reading material you can buy here. We were reassuringly told that perhaps if we drove out of town to one of the many malls in
Miami suburbia that we might find a bookshop in there but we have to be honest that we gave up there and decided to just continue exploring the city.
What
Miami is however famous for, is its beaches. Its most famous being
"South Beach" or the
"SoBe" district, which is about 19 blocks of restaurants, clubs and long stretches of white coral sand. Located about four miles east of the
City of Miami, this is where the tourists and locals come to in order to hang out. It is here
you will see the movie stars, the models, the wannabe-stars, the gays and lesbians, the locals partying, and the flocks of tourists.
We spent an enjoyable day here wandering along the beachfront, looking at holiday makers and locals sitting under palm trees on beach chairs in the sand with the sea lapping up a few feet away. We walked around
Biscayne Harbour taking in the amazing marina with luxury cruise liners that must go into the millions of dollars.
We explored waterfront markets of
Bayside Marketplace and craft stalls as well as
Lincoln Road Mall where the famed 'beautiful and famous people' hang out.
Miami is where perfection is striven for in looks, life and weather.
We stayed at a cheap-Internet deal of a hotel that turned out to become one of the talking points of this part of the trip and which we have to share with you. It was part of a chain called
The Embassy Suites and if you come to the
USA on holiday we would highly recommend this as a 3* hotel.
You actually walk into a kind of indoor atrium with tropical plants surrounding a courtyard with bars and restaurants
etc. Your room is actually a suite (as the hotel name suggests) and this comprises a lounge with a TV, a fabulous kitchenette, plus a bedroom with a TV also and an en suite bathroom. Not bad considering that some rooms on our world trip have had barely room to put your backpacks. In this room we were in danger of losing one another!
Breakfast was included and turned out to be a huge buffet-style affair including a make your own omelet section (where Dave added a few too many jalapenos the first morning!) and all the pastries, drinks and cooked food you could wish for.
This "budget" hotel also provided free Internet, free airport shuttle and a laundry service to boot, but undoubtedly the best bit was the
Happy Hour at the bar.
When Dave enquired about exactly how
"happy" this
Happy Hour was, expecting to be told it was 2-for-1 or something, he was told:
Drinks are free, and it lasts for three hours
.
Yes...
free... 7 days a week. You should have seen his face. We still thought we had got something wrong but merrily supped our fill, returning to the bar for several at a time in case the mistake
became apparent and the dream ended. Needless to say, by the time the bar closed, we and all the other guests enjoying the same deal were more than a little tipsy!!
We unfortunately didn't have time to all the areas that we wanted such as Little Havana and its famous
Calle Ocho, nor did we see the upscale Mediterranean influenced
Coral Gables and
Coconut Grove which we were told were well worth the time to visit. Our time simply ran out.
It was time for our next flight - which was the 20th flight we'd done since we've started this trip......
St Lucia
St Lucia. Yes, well - the oh so
"tough" part of our trip. Okay... so we're lying.
I should start first by sharing a comment that Dave's dad, Roy, said to us before we left
England for this trip. On the phone, Dave tells Roy that we've just booked our tickets for the round the world trip and then proceeds to list off in order the names of countries and cities we will be visiting as we make our way round the globe. ¨
All goes well until Dave
says:
....and from Miami we fly to St. Lucia for a week holiday before we fly to Ecuador....
.
There was, as the story goes, a split second pause from Roy before an incredulous and laughing response of;
You what???? You're having a holiday to St Lucia in the middle of a year long holiday???!!!
.
Hmmmmm...... he has a point.
St. Lucia, a bit like our
Chicago visit, happened by accident. Honest. Our travel agent realised after we'd booked our entire trip that we'd not used two flights in
North America that was part of the package.
You can't pass up on two spare flights you've already paid for!,
he said, and promptly started typing who knows what into his computer. A short while later his eyes light up and he said,
If I was you guys....
and so that's how we ended up with a flight to the
Caribbean.
Seeing that this island wasn't on our original itinerary I needed to start first with a geography lesson. Pulling out a world map we carry with us we looked up
St. Lucia and found that it is in the
West Indies, part of the
Caribbean. It is 28 miles long by 12 miles wide and has a population of 165,000. It forms part of the crescent moon shape of islands in the
Caribbean that include
Martinique, Dominica, Montserrat &
British Virgin Islands to the north, and
Barbados, St Vincent and the
Grenadines in the
south.
Click here if you are wondering...
Where on earth is St Lucia? Upon arrival and after the rigmarole of entry visas and so forth, we hired a taxi to take us to our chosen resort of
Gros Islet about 1.5hrs drive to the north of the island along winding roads that led up and down rain forest covered mountains and beautiful little Caribbean villages along the way. Our driver would be the first of many incredibly mellow and super-chilled people that we met with a thick West Indian drawl and loads of warmth.
Unfortunately our first chosen hotel was a little too "budget" and the cheap "resort" we thought we had booked in to turned out to be a tiny village with very,
very minimal facilities (unless you count an unbearably loud street
Jump-Up street party every Friday night until 4am) - yeah we're definitely getting old - and so, after one night we moved.
We moved to
Rodney Bay one of the main towns on the island. It ended up being a superb choice for us with bars, restaurants and hotels everywhere. We settled in to the
"Coco Kreole" hotel that we chose having researched some options, and this choice
came with complimentary breakfast, free Internet, cable TV, and swimming pool. The best of it was that all of this came with a more than acceptable price tag, especially after we'd bargained
a la Asia travel-style. Oh yes, we have turned into bargaining kings!
Our days in
St. Lucia were filled with laziness. The fact that we had such an amazing hotel meant that there was little incentive to get up and be active. A couple of days into this heavenly relaxation our situation improved still further !
The hotel we were in apologised profusely stating that they had to move us to their sister hotel behind ours due to the fact they were about to redecorate. We knew we were in for a real treat as we'd seen the hotel behind and it was much nicer but felt that it was appropriate to make all the right subtle cheeky complaining noises
"was it going to be as quiet?".... "was breakfast and everything still included?" .... "were they sure we didn't have to pay any more?"
In reality, we couldn't have had a better deal. The hotel they moved us to,
"Coco Palm", was about 5 times more luxurious than where we were staying and such was their concern in moving us to a room that we felt satisfied with
that we ended up with a pool-front room (a bigger pool than our previous hotel) with sliding doors onto our own patio, plus all the previous amenities included. To ease the understandable pain of this terrible transition which included a complimentary bell-boy carrying all our baggage & scummy travel backpacks (!!)we were also given a bottle of red wine which we accepted graciously and stated in a suitable calm voice that we felt that yes, this room would
do for the remainder of our stay.
Giggling like little school kids we then proceeded to have the most fantastic week staying in a fabulous hotel-resort whilst paying peanuts. Our days were lazy and our evenings involved the stressful dilemma of trying to choose which delicious restaurant to dine at before retiring to our poolside room.
Dave was beyond thrilled when he also realised that the poolside bar TV also showed all the live
Champions League (football/soccer) plus there was a genuine Indian restaurant down the road which we went to a couple of times during our stay. For those of you non-Brits who don't know, Indian food in England has been rated the most popular takeout food and having
an Indian meal, whether home cooked or a takeout, whilst it might seem strange, is a very very British thing to do!
Added to that, the
West Indies loves cricket. They still form part of the
British Commonwealth and in fact
St Lucia is to be the 2007 site of the
Cricket World Cup which again put Dave in his element as he was able to chat at great length to some of the locals about various key aspects of the game and world teams. So for Dave,
St. Lucia was a week of British nostalgia!
Dave's parents are coming here to the south part of the island in February and we can say without a shadow of a doubt to them and anyone else of debating a holiday to this island, it is fabulous.
Even in the rainy season which is occurring right now, the weather is hot, beautiful and the people have that Caribbean friendliness that just makes you want to put a CD of Bob Marley on, lay back with a glass of rum and chill. Perfect.
And now it's on to Ecuador.....
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David Baker
non-member comment
that was....
Bronia, that was more than one cup of tea...! Great blog, you could have a career as a travel journalist... keep well, and see you soon. David