A boring long holiday post #3

Thought I'd forgotten about this, hadn't you? Nope, just other stuff got in the way.

So, New York state itself. It's easy to think of the Big Apple when you think of New York, but the state itself is an interesting one, with lots of beautiful countryside and winding roads parallel to the Hudson River, which is strangely beautiful when you look at it with the NYC skyline in the background. After walking around in the city for 2 days, Ivan and I were ready to get in the car and go exploring for a day.

Armed with an excellent guide that highlighted cool stuff to explore, we navigated down some fast, tricky, winding roads, which handily had viewing points located every few miles or so.

That's one of the viewing points we stopped at - see the helicopters? About 5 massive black choppers flew past us and I tried my best to capture them. God knows where they were going. We stopped off at a few mildly interesting places, but the highlight was West Point, and their fascinating museum which was free entry. I wasn't allowed to take my bottle of Fanta in, but I could live with that. I hid it behind a bin, in case you were wondering.

For some weird reason, I didn't take any photos at West Point, I really can't think why not. Anyway, here's some photos that I've nicked from the internet.

That's quite enough of other people's pictures. And yes, that brown bin there is indeed "the bin". The museum, considering it was free, was flipping brilliant, and I recommend it to all, although I fancy blokes might enjoy it a bit more than the ladies.

As we drove back towards our hotel at the end of the day, we passed through this quaint little village: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleepy_Hollow,_New_York I regret to inform we saw no headless horsemen, but you can see why it's called "Sleepy" and it was a bit creepy. We didn't linger for long there!

I feel like I should be telling you more about New York, but if I did these entries would go on forever. So, I'll just wrap up for now by talking about our hotel, which was in New Jersey. We deliberately selected the hotel, as not only was it a billion times cheaper than hotels in the city, but it also had a fantastic little tourist bus service which you hopped on outside the hotel, and then it took you into the city for a few dollars, and then the other way round at the end of the day. That was fantastic, and the hotel was fine, however, New Jersey.....

In his excellent series about America, Stephen Fry described parts of NJ as "hell on earth", as well as their casinos as "vulgar, tasteless and desperately sad". I can't talk about any casino, but the area of New Jersey we were in scared me. Actually, scrap that, it fucking terrified me. The only time we strayed out of the hotel was when we walked about a mile down to the McDonalds to pick up some dinner, and both times we walked quickly there, quickly got our food, and quickly walked back, our heads down, not saying anything to each other.

I swear I'm not joking when I tell you that I watched each car intently, because it was the kind of place where a drive-by shooting would have been met with a shrug and casual acceptance. The delicious irony being that 10 minutes away (by bus) from this poverty stricken, wasteland of an area, was downtown NYC, with Wall Street, Tiffany's, Trump Tower etc. It was something I came to notice most about the New York area - we would drive past areas of abject deprivation, and then literally 2 minutes later you're driving along and you see the Statue of Liberty and the glamour of the Big Apple. It's a queer old place, in that respect.

Thankfully, we weren't shot/stabbed to death in New Jersey, and on our final night there we opened our hotel room door and marvelled in the best thunderstorm you could imagine. Enjoy a good bit of lightning? Try looking out at a night's sky where there's about 15 different lightning bolts crashing around, amongst the most impressive downpour of rain I've ever seen in my life. New York doesn't do things by half, in any respect.

Time to leave this place. Next time, Connecticut!

A boring long holiday post #1

I can't quite believe it, but exactly a year ago I was staying in a hotel room in New Jersey, ready to go back into NYC for another blistering hot day of shopping and tourism, as well as attending a book signing for a former Yankee. So much has happened since then - some of it good, some bad, but most of all the year has just flown by. As I think back to the holiday of a lifetime, now feels like a good time to re-cap the trip, as best as I can. Because of the length of this re-cap, I'll split it into chunks, instead of one ridiculously long blog. This, funnily enough, is part 1.

Before June 2008, I had only been on a plane once, when I had vomited. Although as my dad pointed out to me, when I was 2 I pretty much vomited everywhere. Never the less, I was nervous, and my mother's fear of flying didn't help. But when you know that your friend will be waiting patiently for you in JFK Airport, you can't really back out. I'll admit now, I was terrified at Manchester Airport, mainly because once I went through to the waiting lounges, my Dad couldn't be with me - I was on my own, without having done this before. Gulp. I coped fine, but the trip over there was a complete nightmare. Firstly, the steps that go up to the plane weren't in the right place, and the pilot wasn't happy with the gap that remained. So, we had to wait for them to sort the steps out before we could get on the plane. Then, there was a leak in the kitchen area of the plane, so we had to wait for them to sort that out. THEN, the computers went down in London, so we couldn't get clearance to take off. So, about 90 mins later than scheduled, we had lift off. Funnily enough, all that delaying helped my nerves considerably - my attitude turned from "Christ, I'm a bit nervous about this" to "Fucking hell, let's just go, for Christ's sake". It was one of those things where at the time, you just take it in your stride and get on with it, but when I look back on it now, I think "Jeez, how did you cope with all of that?"

I know this sounds stupid, coming a few days after a plane crashing into the Atlantic, but I loved the flight, and there was no need to worry. The complimentary snacks and drinks, the choice of in-fight entertainment, the quality of the air stewardesses....oh yes, British Airways catered me very well. The food wasn't great, but that's understandable. The best bit, and if you are a nerd like me, I urge you to go on a BA flight just for this - is the "flight stats" you can get onboard, which I must have spent 80% of the flight itself looking at. A map, showing you how far along you are, the temperature outside, the speed you're going at, what the altitude is...oh man, fantastic. 

We landed safe and sound, and after spending almost 10 hours on a plane, I was relieved to get off. That was until I reached the customs bit at JFK Airport. Scary, genuinely scary. A headmistress type shouts at you, and you feel that if you don't instantly obey her, about 6 security guards will whip out scary guns and blow you into New Hampshire. And then I tried cracking a joke to the guy who was doing my fingerprints - which was met with a silence, a glare and contempt. Welcome to New York! After I had staggered to get my cases, moving my way past yet more security guards with guns, I rounded the corner - and there was my friend.

Coming up in Part 2 - NYC, baby.