My last blog - the Big Apple and Boston

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(Just incase you haven't read my last blog - I am actually home now and catching up on my last blog...)

I was soooo jetlagged on arrival in New York; I guess having been on a 10-hour flight from Fiji to LA, spent 3 hours at LA airport, then spent another 5 hours on a flight from LA to NYC qualified me for that, but it didn't make it any better! I arrived at JFK at 12.30am on July 2nd (having already 'enjoyed' two July 1sts) and promptly called a shuttle bus, which took 45 minutes to appear and then about an hour and half to take me to my hostel which was on West 103rd Street, right up near Central Park.

It probably wasn't the best idea for me to get over my jetlag by going out the first night I arrived, but it seemed like a good idea at the time, so I joined most of the other people in my hostel as Big B (a huge black man who worked at the hostel) took us on a bar crawl to some local places - it was a good night and it's rather like London in the fact that a lot of places are open until about 4am! After almost recovering from my jetlag and hangover, I did some sightseeing that day, and visited the Empire State Building, which I enjoyed (I got one of those audio guide things!) but the queues were horrendous! I also walked through the Rockerfeller Centre and around the Plaza but didn't go up to the top - there were so many flags around there! The next day I took a boat to Liberty Island to visit the Statue of Liberty and then stopped off briefly at Ellis Island to look at the Immigration Museum. I then took the Metro to Ground Zero which is essentially a building site now - a little disappointing but I don't really know what I expected. It threatened to rain the whole day, but held off until I had taken all of my photographs and got back to the hostel, by which time my feet were also killing me - clearly all that time in Fiji lying on the beach took its toll haha! Since it was 4th July, the hostel was supposed to be holding a BBQ, however the BBQ wouldn't light, so we ended up with dry burgers from the shop down the road - not a very appetising meal - but we did get 2 free beers to make up for it! We then all traipsed down to the East Side somewhere, where we watched the fireworks from the bridge - absolutely awesome - and then went on a celebratory bar crawl to some cool places (none of which I can remember apart from the Coyote Ugly Bar, where the staff were extremely rude!) After recovering from my hangover the next day, I felt the need to do some more sightseeing, so I went to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) which was pretty cool (I'm not going to go into detail about the exhibitions as I'm not a huge art fan, but they did have a Dali exhibition on on the top floor which was PACKED - luckily I'd seen a lot of his stuff before), and although some pieces I did question as to whether they were actually art (it's amazing what they'll disply in galleries and call art nowadays!) I did enjoy myself. I also popped into St Patrick's Cathedral where mass was taking place, and it looked gorgeous by candlelight, and then dropped by Sak's Fifth Avenue to browse through their designer collection (but left after about 10 minutes as I felt very out of place in my t-shirt and shorts!) My last day in NYC for the moment was spent at the Guggenheim looking at some random art and sculptures - a good way to kill a couple of hours - and then I visited Grand Central Station which was rather impressive and Macy's, where I ended up succumbing to the sales and bought a DKNY top. By the end of this, I didn't really have much motivation to do any more sightseeing, and just ended up wandering through Central Park and chilling at the hostel.

The following day, Tori (my crazy American friend who I used to play lacrosse with) picked me up from the hostel around lunchtime, drove me to a village near her and took me to lunch at a cute little cafe, where I actually had some healthy food for once (a yummy portobello salad with feta, roasted peppers and sun-dried tomato). We then went to the mall (look at me, I'm turning into an American!) and she drove me back to her parents house, who live just on the border of New York and New Jersey, where we chilled for a bit (they have a huuuge pool and 3 dogs so I was right at home) and then her parents took us out for sushi. Having eaten sushi before but not really known precisely what I was eating, I got the menu and was rather overwhelmed with the amount of choices I had, so just went for the plainest-sounding things, which turned out very well in the end, and I had a great evening as I roared with laughter at her parents' tales of her graduation and various other hilarious stories. We then watched The Bucket List when we got back to her house, and I had a comfy bed with a non-plastic mattress for once to sleep in - bliss! Tori then kindly drove me to the bus stop in the morning, where I caught a bus back to NYC bus station, and then a Greyhound Bus on to Boston.

Really, I did nothing in Boston, which was great except for the fact that I actually want to go back there and look around properly as I was so lazy then! The hostel rooms were huge compared to the ones in NYC - three person dorms with heaps of space for me to spread my mess around. I spent my first couple of days just wandering around with good intentions to do the Freedom Trail but never actually made it further than the park (which was the beginning), but one of the days it was about 93 degrees (or so I was told) so I just lay in the park reading my book and watching some people play frisbee. I decided I would spend some time in Salem on one of the days (I had looked into going to both Cape Cod and Newport but these were both rather expensive day-trips, and since I had just finished reading a Jodi Picoult book called Salem Falls, thought it rather appropriate), so caught the high-speed ferry there, which took about 45 minutes. I did the whole tourist thing of hopping onto a tour bus which drove around Salem for a bit and the drivers were full of interesting facts about the town and the witch-trials, so I hopped off at the Witch Dungeon Museum to watch a live re-enactment of one of the trials and have a tour through the dungeons. I then perused the gift shop, hoping to find some interesting little knick-knack to buy, and came out with a $1 anklet, that when it falls off will bring me luck or something. Apparently. Anyway, I then stopped at the House of Seven Gables, where Nathaniel Hawthorne lived for a bit (but me knowing nothing about American History didn't have a clue who he was) but still found the house and the history rather interesting. I then wandered around until my return ferry was due to take me back to Boston and headed back for another early night. On my last day I managed to get tickets to a Red Sox match (baseball for all those of you who are only slightly more ignorant than me!) which are apparently really difficult to get hold of, but the hostel was selling some, so I enjoyed a beer with my room-mate Jennifer who finally had the evening off from studying and spent 3 and a half hours watching a baseball game. It was rather a novelty for me, having never seen anything like it (sooo many hot-dog stands!), but honestly, I just thought it was a rather more complicated and drawn-out version of rounders! We then headed for pizza and wine to top off my stay in Boston.

Was k-nackered after my bus journey back to the Big Apple, but met a nice lady to talk to on the way which made the 5 hour journey go slightly faster (although she, like loads of other Americans I'd met, was astounded that I could travel on my own!) When I got back into my dingy, small 12-bed dorm (mixed this time) at first it appeared that I was the only girl in the dorm, but then (thank goodness) three Irish girls arrived in the early evening, who I got chatting to, and we ended up going out that night after drinking a few bottles of Smirnoff Ice(!), until the wee hours of the morning (I distinctly remember noting that it was light outside as we got out of our yellow taxi at our hostel following our trip to the kebab shop)! My last day in NYC was spent seeing The Lion King on Broadway, as one of my friends had managed to get me tickets (yey!) Although I had already seen it in the West End, it was just as good here, and Mary (one of the Irish girls who came with me) was delighted as she hadn't ever seen it and hadn't had the money to get tickets, so at least I felt I had done my good deed for the day! We then did a small amount of shopping, managed to accost an NYPD cop to get a photo, stood in front of a fire engine too to get a photo and headed back to the hostel, for my last night on a plastic mattress. I had a few hours to kill the next day as my flight wasn't until 9pm that evening, so we wandered to Strawberry Fields in Central Park where there was a mosaic and a little memorial for John Lennon and sat there for a bit.

I was actually looking forward to going home at this point - America isn't the best of places to be travelling by yourself, as in it's not as geared up for people to do that as places like Australia and New Zealand were, and as I got on my flight, I took great pleasure in thinking that that was the last time I'd have to carry my backpack, the last night I wouldn't have to sleep in my own bed, and the last time for a while I'd have to worry about whether I had any clean clothes to wear! So, I walked through the door at Heathrow Terminal 5 having got through at least 5 pairs of sunglasses and 8 bottles of suncream on my travels, and at least 10 kilos heavier (and that was just my bag!) to be greeted by...nobody! My flight had arrived an hour early and my parents had got stuck in traffic on the dreaded M25 and so the final chapter to my travels ended with me sitting drinking a cup of tea all on my lonesome in the spanking new terminal awaiting my lift home 😞 They did arrive eventually, and as we drove home it was like nothing had ever changed; everything looked the same, the weather wasn't great and the traffic was still bad! We managed to spend one whole day together as a family the following weekend as Nicola passed her third year exams and returned after her results for a lovely family BBQ, only to jet off to Malawi a day later. As for me, I'm bumming around at home, trying to adjust to reality and contemplating how soon I need to get a job (and please don't ask me what I want to do - I just don't know!) So, TTFN, until the next time - which could be soon 'cos I think I've really caught the bug...

H xxx

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