6 weeks later...

6^th July

Going to Starbucks in the morning is becoming regrettably routine. After checking out of our hostel, we made the daily pilgrimage and checked in online. Despite it being a full 12 hours before the flight, most of the seats had already been taken so we have had to sit separately.  After Starbucks we headed to Wall Street, or at least attempted to. Whenever there is a train on the platform we feel the need to run and jump on without checking. This time we’d jumped on an express train (again). Luckily there was a stop just before we got to Brooklyn so we retraced our steps.

Outside the Subway was Trinity church. Apparently the church is quite famous. It was built in an English gothic style by a British Architect and is the oldest Anglican Church in New York. It has been used as a soup kitchen during the Great Depression and  as a refuge for many people during other hard times. Today it was being used by a male choir. When we walked in they were singing in Latin and were very, very good. We enjoyed the music  for a while, before quietly leaving (trying hard not to bang the doors when they closed!), for Wall Street.

Wall Street is a long, narrow (by American standards anyway) street which is lined with finance buildings, and a few restaurants. We passed the infamous New York Stock Exchange building. We were disappointed that we were blocked from entering by lots of metal fences; we’d really wanted to see the actual screens with the stock exchange information on them inside. It was rather fascinating to be stood on the site of the Wall Street Crash, where on 24^th October 1929 hundreds of people crowded; it was America’s most devastating stock market crash ever. It signified the start of the Great Depression, which was to affect all Western countries in the world for years after.

After a quick meal at a nice little restaurant along Wall Street, we headed east to see Brooklyn Bridge. Then making a quick turnaround, we went south to the ferry terminal to catch the ferry to Staten Island. Which by the way, does not house the Statue of Liberty, as was wrongly said on a blog post earlier- we were clearly pretty tired while writing it! Liberty Island has the statue; Staten Island has not very much apart from a view.

The views from the ferry in both directions were pretty phenomenal really- of both the statue, and of Manhattan, New Jersey, and Brooklyn from the water. We only stayed on Staten Island long enough for Gillian to grab some lunch (she hadn’t been hungry at the restaurant on Wall Street because she’d had such a massive breakfast at Starbucks that morning)- the ferry ride was free so we didn’t really feel the need to do anything too exciting whilst over there. Besides, it had started to rain a bit, so we were anxious to get back to the mainland.

Our final tourist stop this day was to the Ground Zero site. They’re currently building a new, single World Trade Centre, which is going to be 1776 ft tall, making it the tallest building in America! It’s being casually known at the moment as the Freedom Tower. Next door to this area is the memorial museum for the 9/11 victims. We hesitated a while over whether we wanted to go in. All of us were curious to find out more, and to pay our respects, but from previous experience at the Civil Rights Museum, and then again at the Vietnam War Memorial, we were painfully aware of the fact that none of us are particularly great at holding back our emotions in public places when faced with some of the awful results of the violence of mankind.

We did go in though, mostly because we felt we might regret not visiting it once we were, thousands of miles away back home the following day. Just as we’d predicted, it was a place that seriously tugged at your heartstrings. All of us walked around on our own- it was one of those places that you really needed a bit of individual time to be with your thoughts. It was a very simple museum; not much writing, and only a few videos. The writing there was explained some of the individual stories, and some of the worst panels had copies of the final phone conversations of some people. We were amazed by the courage people had in their final moments. The messages were all of love, and messages of hope and strength, and none of anger or vengeance. The following quote was written on one of the walls:
“Today a nation has become a neighbourhood. On this day, every American is a New Yorker.”
Perhaps the most moving room was one with no writing at all- just photos of every single victim and their families, all smiling out at you. Apparently 82 countries lost citizens on that day- it’s all pretty incomprehensible really.

Construction site of the next WTC.

Anyway, moving onto happier things to end this thing off- we next bought our NYC postcards, and then very reluctantly headed off back to our hostel, knowing this was it- the end!!

We arrived, got changed quickly (in the middle of a very public room, might I add!), and then hailed ourselves a yellow cab (in true New York style). Then we drove off into the sunset (I’m actually not kidding).

(Okay fine, we were driving AWAY from the sunset. I call it poetic licence).

Got to the airport, spend plenty of $$$s in duty free to try and get rid of them. Had dinner. Wrote up part of this blog. Got told to get on the airplane.

We were all really dreading take off because it really signified the end of this wonderful, wonderful adventure. But sadly our wishes weren’t granted, and sure as night and day, the plane raced along the runway, and took off into the sky of New York. It was pretty hard not to be emotional- we all reminisced over some of the funniest moments of our trip, laughing to ourselves and probably getting on the nerves of the rest of the cabin. We had a nice little dinner, with a cheeky glass of white wine, and then settled into our seats, wrote our journals, watched films, and slept. The film The Eagle was one of the film options, and Gillian’s grandmother is actually a prominent extra in this film, so she showed the scene to Alice and Bessie; it was all pretty exciting seeing her on a little screen on an aeroplane!

Before we knew it the 6 hours were up, and we were over a cloudy England. We landed- it was raining. Obviously. Then the connector to get us from the plane into the airport broke. Standard. Eventually we made it, gathered our bags, and headed through arrivals.

Although desperately missing North America already, and longing to go back immediately, there was something nice about being home. Suddenly we felt like experts at life- we knew what everything meant, and how to use every machine we saw. Coins aren’t all the same shape, you don’t have to factor in tax when making every purchase, you know exactly which way to look when crossing the road, cars as small as Ford KAs exist, no stranger ever talks to you (which sucks, but at least you know it’s not because they’re being rude or intentionally ignoring you, but because that’s just how it is), ATMs don’t cost you half the world to use (or cost you anything at all for that matter!!), and you know for sure that if for some reason you need to get to the complete other side of the country in a car, in a hurry, it will take you a maximum of about 10 hours (which, as the three of us now know, is absolutely no time at all). Plug sockets have three holes, a green man tells you to walk across the road, a red man tells you to wait to cross the road, cars aren’t allowed to turn on a red light (we had a very confusing first few days before we realised it was actually legal for them to do this, and they weren’t all just being complete, blind nutters), you don’t have to put on an accent to say the word ‘water’ and be understood first time round, there aren’t adverts on television every 36 seconds, there are puffin/pelican/ zebra crossings, and roundabouts... okay I think that’s all I can come up with for now.

So yeah it’s good to be back in a place where all those little things just seem to make sense, but we are all going to miss America and Canada a lot (at least until we return!)

We’re all so grateful to all the Americans, all the Canadians , and all the people we came across from other countries, for their incredible kindness and friendliness towards us. We met some great people, and had some absolutely amazing times, and we owe all of that to the hospitality of the two countries we visited, and their people we met.

And finally, all three of us would like to say an enormous thank you to YOU, whoever you are, for reading this and making all these entries, and all the hours spent uploading videos and photos worthwhile. We’ve had a fantastic time writing this, and we all desperately hope you’ve enjoyed reading it! We cannot stress enough how much it means to us that people are interested enough to follow what we’ve been up to.

We hope you have a wonderful summer ahead, and wish you all the best.

As a final note, we’d just like to say that we’re all very interested to find out who has been reading this, so although we know who a lot of you are already, we’d love you to let us know if you’ve been following!

Well I guess that’s it. Not promising we won’t put in a few extra posts after this with some extra bits and bobs (we’re planning a few reunions with some of the people from the tour, so might mention them in the future), but until this- this is it! This is the end!

Love to you all from,
Alice, Bessie, and Gillian xxxxx

Politics and Performances...

5^th July Tuesday

Decided that we absolutely needed to get up early today, and we almost managed it. We’d showered and dressed and were ready to go by about half past nine- well done us!

We’d decided to head to the UN Headquarters- because that sounded like a rather interesting place to start the day. But first we needed breakfast. We ate on the streets. Gillian and Alice got a tea and coffee from a street vendor. Gillian’s tea was ridiculously hot, and very strong, and Alice’s coffee was barely luke-warm, and weak- altogether not a great start... though Bessie was sort of pleased- she had a nice banana (unfortunately the peach was soft).

Okay I’m really sorry about that last paragraph. You were probably all wondering where it was going, and what exciting conclusion it was going to have, and then it just ended; talking about soft peaches and cold coffee. Great. It’s because I’m exhausted- we all are!

Moving swiftly on, we reached the UN building, after passing through an interesting office block which housed an indoor garden.

We had a thorough security check, and were admitted. First stop was to buy some stamps and postcards. It was a beautiful moment when we found ourselves paying at the till what was on the label on the products. No tax added for the first time in 6 weeks! See, in the building we were no longer on U.S. soil, but international territory- score! The audio tour we wanted to go on didn’t start for a while, so we bought even more food, and more coffee. Then we joined the tour.

It was really interesting, and to be honest, it was actually a bit emotional too at parts. First stop was in the room you’ve probably all seen on television on the news when important international conferences are being publicised. We looked out for the United Kingdom seats but we were only allowed in one area (the G part which had Germany, Ghana etc). What was really touching about this room was how every single country got 6 seats, and every single country received one equally weighted vote. So a country as populous as China with multi-billions of people, and one as small as San Marino with just 35,000 people, both have an equal vote on something- it was such a nice thought that small countries were just as empowered in this room as all the world-dominating super-powers.

Next stop was through a number of exhibitions about various things: land mines and the laws now preventing them, ‘schools in boxes’ which were literally that- cheap boxes with all the equipment needed to educate a child in an impoverished areas, human rights, and the terrible aftermath of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs (we saw statues that had been a mile away, charred and ruined, and glass bottles melted together in the heat of the it).

Our final stop on the tour was into the UN Security Council Room, where the 5 permanent members of the council (U.S., U.K., Russia, China, France), and then 10 countries elected on rotation held conferences in times of emergency (e.g. the recent Libyan conflicts).

Then we got a cheeky photo with Ban Ki Moon (Secretary General of the UN):

After finishing our tour we headed back to Times Square for lunch. We were originally planning on eating at the Marriott (in their rotating, rooftop restaurant), but it didn't open until 5pm, so instead we ate at a ridiculously expensive, non-rooftop, non-rotating restaurant. Then we queued for about half an hour in Times Square for tickets to a Broadway show. We'd all really wanted to see 'How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying' (the one with Daniel Radcliffe in), but it was fully booked. Instead we got tickets for 'Cirque de Soleil'- the acrobat performance, which we were all very excited about!!

We found ourselves with some free time, in the middle of Times Square, New York. Naturally, shopping was now top of our agenda. We headed to American Eagle Outfitters, and then Forever Twentyone - two very nice clothes shops! Sadly we didn't have much time, and before we knew it, it was time for us to move hostels.

We got the subway back to Columbus Circle, met up with Mike (one of the Americans from Toronto) to return to him the sunglasses he'd left in our room, had a bit of a catch up, and then rushed off to the hostel. Because the subway had been incredibly busy (as in when the doors of the train open, you just have to kind of jump in and hope you don't bounce out again), we realised getting the subway to our next hostel, with our suitcases, was an unviable option. Yellow taxi cab it was then.

The taxi journey was absolutely mental. Our driver seemed to have a bee in his bonnet about there being other drivers on the road, and seemed to be aiming to hit as many different vehicles as possible. Luckily, we made it in one piece (although I'm surprised our ear-drums survived the constant honking!). A hotel bellboy helped us unload our luggage, not realising we were staying at the cheap, shabby hostel across the road.

Our hostel, the Whitehouse Hostel in East Village, was definitely the worst hostel we've stayed in this trip, but it was an experience! We were on the 4th floor, there was no elevator, internet was down, our 3 person bedroom was about the size of three toilet cubicles stuck together (no kidding!!). Each room on the floor was pretty much just separated by a thin, wooden, free-standing wall, which didn't reach the ceiling.

Quickly changing, we raced off to get the subway back to the Rockefeller Centre, which was near where our show was being held.

Arrived in the nick of time. The show was absolutely breath-takingly amazing!! Some highlights include:
1. A lady who could juggle about 9 balls, bouncing them under all sorts of different sized boxes at once, and them climbing stairs backwards while bouncing them on lower steps.
2. Two people hanging off one rope, swinging around, flipping etc.
3. Two men holding a bendy beam while a women flipped around on it as if it were a trampoline.
4. Two men in a rotating circle thing, running around, skipping, and flipping on it, blindfolded.
5. Some trapeze artists- this was incredible, but impossible to describe.
6. A human tower of four people on each other's shoulders (getting into the position by being thrown up, and then flipping onto the person below's shoulders).
7. Lady doing amazing sand-drawings.
8. A man balanced on a vertical ladder, holding another ladder above him, with a girl on that ladder, doing a one handed handstand!!
9. Awesome tight rope walkers/

etc. etc.

After the show, we were pretty exhausted, so started out packing, had a few of our Bacardi Breezers, and then went to bed. It was pretty sad going to bed that night, knowing that it was our last night here in North America. None of us are ready to go home- but we suppose all good things must come to an end!

One last blog entry to come- let's make it a good one!

INDEPENDENCE DAY!

4^th July

We absolutely promised ourselves that we’d get up early so we’d have loads of time but 9am came and went and none of us did anything. At around 9 30, Alice got up and took the laptop to Starbucks to update the blog. Gillian joined shortly after and between us, we finally caught up with all the days we were behind. Starbucks, of course greatly appreciated our custom as we had several coffees and teas to keep us going.

We did very little else that morning and so by the time it was lunch, we headed back to the hostel to eat our pizza left over from last night. Hilariously for Alice and Bessie (Gillian doesn’t agree!), someone had eaten two out of the three pizza slices Gillian left unlabelled in the fridge; she had a meagre lunch, topped up with cereal bars. In the afternoon we took the subway to the Natural History Museum. At least we tried to; we actually got on the wrong train and ended up nearly reaching The Bronx. We got a stopping train back to 81^st street where the museum was.

The museum was 5 floors big and was full of information. We were baffled by the Space room, so moved swiftly on to the Mammals’ of North America room. You can see where films like ‘Night at the Museum’ got their ideas from, there were all sorts of huge mammals that had been stuffed and looked very realistic in positions found in their natural habitats. We also saw a room with a huge blue whale hanging from the ceiling and a giant squid and whale fighting.

We also saw displays about the people and mammals of Africa and Asia and a whole section about biodiversity, bringing us back to Biology days. Unfortunately, a really interesting looking exhibition about the brain was closing when we got there, so we had a look in the Dinosaur hall instead. The size of some of the skeletons are absolutely mind blowing, and look like weird versions of elephants/fish/bears etc.

After saturating ourselves with natural history we got the subway to the Rockefeller building to look at the view. Very impressive. You can see the whole of Manhattan with Central Park in the North and the Empire State in the South. The Statue of Liberty looked tiny all the way over on Staten Island. 

Getting hungry, we walked to an Applebee’s where we had some good, if rather expensive, food. We’d been to an Applebee’s in Virginia which turned out to be a hilarious meal, so we spent a bit of time reminiscing about that.

Dusk was coming in fast and producing a fantastic pink sunset so we hurried to the West side of the Hudson River to watch the fireworks.

Everyone else in New York seemed to have the same idea and the place was packed. I’m sure the city was expecting it though because there were loads of firemen and policeman dotted about, getting in everyone’s way. The fireworks started not long after we got there, and very possibly the best we’ve ever seen. Somehow the fireworks made the shape of flowers and smiley faces, they were glittery and colourful and probably hugely expensive, and we loved them very much.

After the firework display, we (and the rest of the world) walked back away from Hudson River. We headed to the Empire State building to redeem our unused ticket from yesterday. We had arranged to meet Paul there at 10pm but he must have got lost or something because he didn’t show. Fabio (Colombian from Toronto hostel) did though. We weren’t expecting to see him but Paul (German from Toronto hostel) must have told him about our rendezvous. We waited around for a bit then headed inside. 86 floors later and we were looking at Manhattan from the sky (and decided to listen to the Kate Voegele song ‘Manhattan From the Sky’ to better appreciate it). The view was beautiful; there is so much to see. It is very difficult to describe, so hopefully pictures will do it a bit more justice than I can ever hope to bring it:

It was very windy!!!!

WEST SIDE

NORTH SIDE (that's Fabio).

EAST SIDE

SOUTH SIDE.

At the bottom was walked a few blocks, said good bye to Fabio, and got the Subway back to our hostel.

More Illegal Activities...

3^rd July Sunday

Well we made it through. Breaking two laws before 2am;  smuggling in alcohol underage and not declaring it to a Customs Officer.  The rest of the 12 hour bus journey was fairly uneventful, apart from  a man snoring loudly next to Gillian and a rather overzealous lesbian couple in front of us. It was raining when we arrived in New York at 9am. We subwayed to our hostel on the Upper West side of Central Park only to be told we couldn’t check in until 4pm. We left our bags there and hit Starbucks. Paul (German from Toronto) had emailed requesting to meet up. We arranged to meet him outside the Empire State that evening.  Being surprisingly productive, we booked a hostel for our final night in New York (told you it’d be fine!). We headed over to Times Square for lunch and organised what we were going to do for the next couple of days. We went to the library and Grand Central Station. Took some touristy pictures:

Got a subway from Central Station to Canal Street next. Canal Street is famed for knock offs much to our excitement. When entering s shop, you only have to look interested and ask a few questions and the shopkeeper will open a secret draw or two and show you rows of fake Ray-Bans or Chanel purses. They only let you see for 30 secs then hurriedly get you to make a decision. We bought a few ‘Tiffany’ bracelets and Coach purses. As you walk down the street, men whisper “Rolex? Ray-Bans? Louis Vouitton? . The idea is to nod subtly and give a brief description of what you’re looking for. They tell you to wait by a phone box and disappear off somewhere. They come back and hand you a black plastic bag with your merchandise in. You give them the nod, discuss price and a Mafia-style exchange of money takes place. You walk away without a backwards glance. All very cloak and dagger.

Back at the hostel we have well needed shower and checked in. we headed out to the Empire State to meet Paul. We were a bit late so he was already there. Paul waited for us outside (he'll go tomorrow when his friends come) and we watched a film about New York's top 10 attractions and the history of the Empire State Building. Unfortunately the weather hadn't improved and visibility was zero. We decided to keep our tickets to go to the 102nd floor tomorrow.

At the bottom we meet with Paul again and walked to Little Italy. We passed through SoHo and a bit of Chinatown.

In Little Italy we had a very late dinner of amazing Italian pizza. After the meal we got the subway back home, meeting two French guys on the Subway who took this photo for us:

That subway journey was the closest we were going to get to having Europeans outnumbering Americans. It was strange was hearing Paul, the German, and the two Frenchmen conversing in English. As each of our stops approached, we all wished each other goodnight in the appropriate language. It dawned on us at this point that there are so many different languages in Europe (we counted up to 20 and then got a bit stuck, but we know there's more!), and the whole of America has just one official language.

YAY- a post which is finally up to date! Hope you appreciate the effort we've put into this, and the large amount of money spent on coffee in Starbucks while uploading these :) .



Boat to Toronto Islands and Booze Cruise

2^nd July

Unfortunately check out was at 11am so we dragged our bleary-eyed selves out of bed, packed up, cleaned up the 5^th floor patio from last night and put our luggage in storage all before 11. Having forfeited our breakfast food voucher for a cheeseburger last night, we ate leftover butternut squash soup for brunch. A friend we met the night before, Greg from Vancouver had the afternoon free so we arranged to met up with him after he’d been to a baseball game. We retraced our steps from the night before back to the waterfront but this time bought a ticket for the ferry over to Toronto Islands. Toronto Islands were created when a storm cut them off from the mainland. Now there is a small zoo, a theme park, beaches, bikes and boats from hire, and a nudist beach for Torontonians to enjoy. We made our way to the bike hire shop and hired a normal bike (although it didn’t have any brakes- you had to pedal backwards) and a tandem. Gillian and Bessie bravely tried out the tandem first with the result in some hilarious video footage:

Soon enough we got the hang of it, and rode down one side of the island, stopping (easier said than done on a tandem!) to admire the view of Toronto’s skyline with sailing boats and kayakers enjoying Lake Ontario.

We returned our bikes and in an attempt to get rid of our Canadian dollars before returning to the US, we splashed out on lunch at an expensive cafe. While we were eating our ridiculously overpriced salads, a reggae band we beginning to set up on the stage in front of us. Whilst we were enjoying the Bob Marley tunes they were playing from speakers, in  a frenzy of creativity, possibly inspired by our numerous trips to art galleries, we decided to draw each other on paper napkins and on the back of maps etc. As is what happens when any of us try to expressive ourselves through the medium of art, our drawings didn’t turn out to be the masterpieces  we had planned:

By Alice

By Gillian

By Bessie

Unfortunately, our rush of creativity bought some unwanted interest in the form of the lead singer/drummer of the reggae band. Mistakenly thinking we were skilled artists, he commissioned us to attempt to draw him. Left without an option of escape, and feeling more than a little conscious of the gaping hole in their artistic abilities, Gillian and Alice obliged. Here is the frankly, rather embarrassing results:

By Gillian

By Alice

By the way, his name is Sunray (lol) and his father is a ‘music legend’ and knew Bob Marley. You can Wikipedia him apparently; his name is Winston Grennan or something. You know you’ve made it if your dad’s on Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Grennan

Turns out he’s quite famous. Fancy that.

We watched his son play for a bit. He was also pretty good at singing and playing the drums. He even gave us a call out whilst he was playing. What a claim to fame.  All too soon we had to get the ferry back across, as the ferry sailed passed the pier that the band were playing, Sunray waved manically at us.

Back on the mainland, we met up with Greg. This was actually a brilliant idea. Greg was originally from Toronto and knew his way around. We used him as a personal tour guide although he didn’t seem to mind. As we were travelling to the States that night and there are obvious restrictions about age limits and buying alcohol, restrictions we don’t meet, we decided to stock up on alcohol legally in Canada and transport it across the border (illegally). We got the subway to Dundas Square and reached a liquor store before closing. Unsure when we’d next be able to do this, we possibly went a bit overboard with some unnecessary purchases. Weighed down with our brown paper bags of booze, we went to the grocery store to get rid of more Canadian dollars on dinner. On the way out we bumped into Fabio (Colombian guy from last night), he was on his way to New York that night too, and we exchanged contact info.

Back at the hostel we ate dinner, changed clothe, packed up, strategically hid alcohol in our suitcases, said goodbye to Greg and headed off into the moonlight.....JK we dragged our cases noisily through the streets, stopping to buy a stamp, and deeming it too far to walk so waited for a streetcar to take us 2 blocks. Possibly more effort loading and unloading our cases from the streetcar, trying to avoid crushing people’s feet, than it would have been to make the 5 min walk.

After a subway journey, we arrived at the Toronto bus terminal where we met Paul (german from last night) also heading to New York. We exchanged contact info as he was spending the first day alone. The bus journey was pretty boring, slept most of the way. At 1am we stopped at Buffalo to cross the border. Let's hope we manage to get our contraband across without getting arrested.....