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Published: July 24th 2008
New York
From the tour busNew York is one helluva town. It is on the go 24/7. Masses of people rushing to and from at any hour of the clock. The swarming cabs are thick on the street and rarely does 15 minutes go by without a siren of some sort go screaming past.
We arrived after the 7 hour flight at about 4 am but had to put the clock back 5 hours making it still before midnight. Immigration took 1 ½ hours as we had to wait for all the yanks to go through first. A set fee for the cab to anywhere in Manhattan saved the hassle we had with the driver in London.
Some of the things we’ve noticed here;
The city never sleeps. (Some-one else said that)
The people are very polite.
They’re mostly in a hurry.
There are no small cars.
There are no motorbikes.
There are no KFC stores.
The Statue of Liberty is just as great as it looks on TV
Addresses such as the corner of W 54th & 6th is not as confusing as it seems.
Taxis are cheap. (There’s 13,000 of them)
Traffic jams happen often.
They love honking their car horns.
Manhattan
From the tour bus
A very pretty Church near the Warwick Hotel Island is bigger than we thought.
Macy’s (the department store) is really, really, really BIG!
You spend most of the time looking UP.
Police helicopters are always in the air.
There are lots of cops.
There’s lots of people, 10mil with 3mil coming into work every day.
They mostly make crap coffee.
We did the bus tours and went to Ground Zero. You can’t see much at Ground Zero as its pretty well a construction site. The new constructions won’t be ready til 2012. Apparently the World Trade Center comprised of 6 buildings including the two towers. All 6 buildings were destroyed, of course. There’s a little church adjacent to the WTC called St Paul’s Episcopalian Chapel, the only remaining pre-revolution church, either in NY or US, not sure which. Anyway, this church, which was where George Washington was inaugurated and regularly attended, was unscathed in the midst of the calamity.
Included in the bus ticket, was a ferry ride, which we took. The ride, naturally, took us to the Statue of Liberty, which lived up to expectations. It also took us under the Brooklyn Bridge on a half tour around Manhattan and between Long Island. It was
Times Square
Busy, busy, busy! sunset and all looked pretty good. In our time after that we mainly either shopped at Macy’s or just soaked in the New York atmosphere. I visited B & H Camera shop which sells more cameras than the whole Australian market and also called into another Worlds biggest. J Racensteins is a window cleaning supply warehouse and I met the people whom I had been dealing with for 10 years. They were very obliging and enthusiastic to meet with me.
We flew out of New York thinking “This is a place we’d like to come back to”.
We landed in Las Vegas just after midnight local time and found that our hotel was smack bang in the middle of the Strip. Across the road was Caesars Palace, next to that was Bellagio and adjacent was Bally’s. Our hotel, unfortunately, was not as grand as those. It’s part of the Harrah’s group, which owns several casinos in LV and 20 or so across the country. Ours was the minnow in their pond.
My Nephew-in-law, Tony the Ding, raved about LV. Everything he said was probably an understatement. Vegas’s power bill is probably more than the whole of Australia’s
put together. Each hotel tries to outdo the next and each new hotel is bigger and grander. There are probably 10 new hotel/casinos being built atm. Each will probably hold more rooms than the whole of Perth’s hotel room market. The attractions at each hotel are varied and grand/ostentatious. The replica of the Eiffel Tower is exactly half size the original. The fountains outside the Bellagio are extraordinary with a fountain/light/music computer-controlled show every 15 minutes during the evening.
As you may or may not know, we are not adverse to a quiet, friendly game of Texas Hold-Em. Well, we tried our best to visit all the main casinos. Trouble was that it took 2-4 hours to do just one. Once we’d walked up the entranceway which was a block wide, entered the casino, found the main lobby, checked out the Lions (or similar) on the way, walked through 400 metres of pokies, found the Poker room, had a game or two, there was half a day gone. Then it took half an hour to walk to the very next door casino. On the first couple of days, the temperatures were blistering. Luckily most of the casinos were linked
WTC site from the water
Just behind these buildings was where the WTC was. If you double the size of the larger building in the foreground, it's a little less than the height of one of the Twin Towers. by covered walkways over Las Vegas Boulevard, but jeez it was hot outside.
As I said, there were 400 metres of pokies, but that was in one arm, and there were usually 4 arms. Each casino would have had a minimum of 10 eateries ranging from cheap to exorbitantly expensive. Each had a highlight main show plus free shows. Each had at least 2 nightclubs. One time we came out of a poker room to find 200 young nubile females lined up to get into a nightclub. Their dresses were the shortest, tightest, lowest cut, patches of cloth that you have ever seen hardly on a female form. And… I think the upper body enhancement specialists had been working 36 hour a day!
Then we walked past the eligible guys line. They keep them separated until they’re inside the niteclub! On the Saturday, we went to see our highlight which we’d booked prior to leaving, Bette Middler at the Bellagio Colosseum! Hey’ the Divine Miss M puts on a great show! Everything you would expect of a Las Vegas Show. Razzle dazzle and tinsel everywhere.
The Grand Canyon was the next highlight on our list. Because of time
Statue of Liberty
At dusk from the ferry constraints, we decided on a helicopter trip which took 4 ½ hours instead of the bus trip which takes 12-16 hours. Never having been in a helicopter, Fran and I were nervous as you could imagine. (Me, cos there’s no toilet break hah!) The company we went with is the biggest charter helicopter company in the World with 27 jet helicopters. We were picked up by a bus limo and taken to the airport to be weighed. My actual weight was slightly more than what I’d written down on the form. Only a little, honest! Well Um! Mostly honest. Our pilot, would you believe it, was an Aussie. He ran through the safety list with us listening very intently for change. Then he allocated our seats and hallelujah, Fran and I were allocated front seats next to the pilot. OMG!
On take-off neither Fran nor I, were not scared contrary to our expectations. It was just pure exhilaration. Roller coasters have got nothing on this. We headed out in a line of 7 choppers just like a scene from “Apocalypse Now” sans the Wagner music. It took about ¾ of an hour via the Hoover Dam to get to the
Famous Gap
Yessiree, that gap is Wall Street lip of the Canyon. We followed the Colorado River to our landing spot deep inside the Canyon. This section of the Canyon is actually an Indian reservation and as such is a fully independent sovereign country. The helicopter company gets special permission to land at this point which is further into the Canyon than anyone else is allowed.
Again, Tony the Ding (I say that in a very loving way) will tell you that the Canyon exceeds all expectations. No way can you actually describe it in words that would do it justice. We stayed about a half hour enjoying a bit of champers and taking plenty of pictures before heading out to a refuel half way back. Just before refueling, we flew over the section that they use in movies when they need a Martian landscape.
Second highlight of the trip was buzzing down the Las Vegas Strip just after dark. Incredible, I kid you not!
Now, as to Las Vegas itself! The town is glitzy and tacky at the same time. The custom of tipping is a real rout and got us down in that it was expected even to the extent of putting the
Empire State Building
The grand old lady of skyscrapers. Pardon the lean. It's not really like Pisa. We were on a ferry at the time. required amount on your bill whether you wanted to pay it or not. Oh they always said “Thank you very much” but it was just the fact that you had to pay it every move you made. Some of these guys made at least a week’s wages in tax free tips per day! And, they’re so Over-the-Top in their “Have-a-Nice-Day” and “Every thing OK?…. Oh, AWESOME!!!! (Pronounced Arsome) The guys on the Strip who hand out the “Visit you in your Hotel Girls” cards were tiresome after the first 10 or so.
Luckily the weather dropped 30F degrees at the end of our stay.
All in all, Vegas is a unique experience, but we weren’t sorry to leave. One last not so unique experience was the taxi driver who took us to the airport and managed to drive the 10 minute trip in 30 minutes getting us to the check-in exactly 4 minutes late and us having to wait 4 hours for the next 1 hour flight to San Francisco. He definitely did not get a tip!
We have arrived in San Francisco. Nice here, but a cold wind most of the time.
We are both
Hudson Bay
Looking back on the statue. pretty well ready to come home and are looking forward to it, but we'll hang on in for the last part.
Next contact after the drive down the Californian Coast.
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Lib
non-member comment
Glad to hear from you
All messages from home will read the same. Its freezing here and raining most days, soooooo - should it get hot in Hawaii - make the most of it. So sorry to hear you got the flu Fran. New York sounds like such a buzz, I dont think anyone dislikes it, but your report and photos were great. Keep them coming. Have some Chilli n bowl down at Fishermans wharf to warm you up. Loved that place.