Across The Pond: 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: