Day 5 - Washington DC to New York

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Left Washington around 9am and had a bit of DC traffic to negotiate but soon on the freeway. Soon into the state of Maryland where we went passed Baltimore which is quite a big city and has a large harbor which we went under via tunnel. This town made famous by Big Mike in the movie "The Blind Side".

Next we crossed into Delaware which is America's first state. We stopped at the visitor centre which was almost as large as a major shopping centre. We asked the tourist guy whether we should take a slight detour off the freeway to see Philadelphia and he gave us some great advice as we drove over the Commodre bridge to Raccon Island. The kids were a bit shocked to hear me singing the Elton John classic "Philadelphia Freedom" but once Luke started playing the song on the Ipad they thought it was OK !

After 4 and half hours we pased by Newark Airport in New Jersey and soon caught our first glimpse of the Big Apple skyline. It looked huge. The Empire State Building looked particularly impressive. Now the IPad was playing the Sinatra classic "New York, New York".

Lots of tolls as we entered into NYC (I think we had two $12-00 tolls in the space of 5 km) and came in under the Lincoln Tunnel. We saw an interesting sign that said any honking of horns would incur a $350-00 fine (ounch !!)

Drove along 42nd street to the East side and found our Hotel (Best Western with no hassles at all). Dropped Kerry and the kids and luggage and then I drove around the block to drop car off at Hertz.

Room is an old condominium with a lounge, kitchen, bathroom and 2 large bedrooms on the 5th floor.

We then arranged to meet our good friends from Chicago (Dave & Michelle) who had travelled down from Niagra Falls the day before. We were thankful they had bought tickets for us all to go and see the Yankees versus Atlanta Braves MLB game. We caught the Metro to the game and it was an awesome experience going to the new Yankees Stadium which opened in 2009. The Yankees had been on a 10 game winning run but lost 4-3.

We had a really good run getting out of the ground and got the Metro back from the Bronx to our Hotel but very tiring day overall.

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