New York to Witherslack

How we felt - sad to see the end of the trip.

Have to admit that when we set off I couldn't see so far into the future to really get my head round the coming back bit - it seemed too far away.

But here we are getting on the plane at JFK heading back to the UK. Sadly there was no trauma, nothing out of the ordinary, everything worked and was on time.

Return to Oxenholme

Closing thoughts about our world trip, what earth shattering observations can I think of?

Well......

Melbourne has the best coffee in the world - they invented the flat white after all.
The best steaks and sushi are defintely in America.
The most exciting and interesting country to visit was, for us, Vietnam (and the cheapest by a long way!)
Of the cities we visited, if we had to live in one of them it would be Sydney, they've got the best combination of town, countryside and coast anywhere.
India - I don't think we saw the best of India, what we did see was tough, sometimes ugly, sometimes stunningly beutiful, but always interesting, well worth the effort (South of India next time?)
Singapore -  a shoppers paradise or hell depending on your point of view but fascinating and dedicated to taking money off you in the nicest of possible ways.
New Zealand is possibly the pleasantest, most "English" country we visited.
The Uk has the best beer (but some of the colonies(!) are catching up) and the BBC news program is  undoubtably the best in the world.

As far as the people; we really only ever met nice people; friendly, helpful, only too willing to show off their country, tell us good places to go and things to do.  We often went into bars, ordered whatever the local beer was and then chatted to the locals to find out where to go next.  This is not to say we didn't meet some really weird or dodgy people but none was a real probem.

It was great not to have fixed plans, our only deadlines were flight times, everything in between was flexible.  Can't recommend this approach enough.

We had planned to backpack around the world but the shoulder injury changed that as I struggle to carry a rucksack, consequently we became 4 star back packers (flashpackers?) with our heavy duty wheeled packs.  To be honest we had a better time and whilst it cost a bit more, the difference between OK and good accommodation was not usually that much. And we've obviously got soft in our old age!

As far as cost, it was more than I hoped but less than I feared, so can't complain. If anybody wants to go - try roundtheworldflights.com - they were cheap and really helpful. Best advice though is don't plan too much - it only increases stress.

The future holds an opeation for me and then the summer here sorting out our house and a list of jobs, together with us earning some money for the next trip!

We have got an invite to sail in a police competition in Hong Kong at the back end of the year so that's a trip worth looking forward to! Maybe we can squeeze in a few days in SE Asia  - as we're passing....

So far this blog has been viewed 1,959 times -this has amazed me but I hope you all enjoyed it.

Best Regards

Dave and Carole

New York New York

We've had three nights in New York at the Time Hotel just off Times Square, great location and a hotel that does some good deals.

We hit the tourist trail a bit, doing the Staten Island Ferry to see the Statue of Liberty,

got to the top of the Empire State Building 102 floors of it, wandered around Grand Central Station,

and walked for miles around the various neighbourhoods of the island.

Central park was lovely, full of people enjoying themselves and the Guggenheim building is just amazing.  It had the best collection of Old Masters of different styles that we've seen, not big, but placed together so that you could see the different techniques.

The view from the top of the Empire State Building is simply fantastic, a faff getting up there through security but worth it.

The 9/11 memorial was ever so tragic but tasteful, not maudlin which was a relief.

                                                  A small part of a very long list of names

There is a lot to impress us, but Time Square was a lot smaller than we'd expected and the city is pretty scruffy, oh and some of that steam that escapes from the underground heating system, the stuff you see in films, stinks. 

That said again the people were good, not as nice as those on the west coast but always helpful.  They had a great accent, we asked a cop for directions but both of us were so busy listening to his accent we didn't hear what he said.

Yellow cabs are everywhere just as in the movies and the traffic is bad but I didn't think it was as bad as all that.

Pretty much every street had a photo waiting to be taken.

New York State to New York

After leaving Lake Placid we meandered our way south, we’d spoken to a chap in a bar who said that route 22, a back road, went all the way to New York city so we decided to follow that and see where it took us. We weaved along the line of the New York State, Vermont and Massachusetts borders

We came upon beautiful weatherboard villages by frozen lakes, places that the tourist boards would never have mentioned.  We also found small town America,  sometimes really down on its luck, chatted and had a beer with people who couldn’t believe that someone from England had found their way to their town, people who said they wanted to travel but I suspect they never would, even if they got the opportunity.  We found places where if I’d heard a banjo I would have floored the accelerator, places where food kitchens and thrift shops seemed the norm.  At one small town we walked into sporting goods shop to find that this meant lumber jack shirts and guns - loads and loads of them, he'd sold 5 that morning.  We'd just listened to a local radio advert where a women with a sultry voice was saying she wanted a Glock 9mm handgun for Valentine's day so she could protect herslf whilst her man was away...  

But everywhere we stopped and chatted, had a beer or a coffee, the people were great, sometimes a little weird, but always friendly – once we’d worked out just what each other was saying.  Normally a few blank looks while we tuned our ears to each other’s accents.

         We caught glimpses of Amish communities en route but no chance to talk to anyone.

Great trip, and so much better than getting on an Interstate and pushing the miles away with the cruise control on. It took us three days to do a couple of hundred miles but definitely worth it. We stopped at B&Bs and motels we found on the route or just off it in small towns and villages.

Eventually we got to JFK Airport, just to return the car, where we explained the electronics woes of our Kia to the girl at Enterprise, she dropped $80 off the bill for our inconvenience – not complaining about that but we’d had to listen to each other singing for three days as the radio had also stopped so it was probably not enough.  Anyone who’s heard me sing knows that Carole got the raw end of that deal.  Despite the electronic problems – a dicky fuse I suspect, I was sad to see the Kia Sorento go, possibly the best car we’d rented on our trip, even the number plate was good.

Got the subway from the airport to Manhattan, dumped the bags and walked about – Times square was just next door.  The cop wasn’t that impressed with Bob and Jan’s tenner.

 That evening we got half price tickets on the Broadway show “The Jersey Boys”, so had a full day of it before crashing out back at the hotel. Great show.

                                                                    Time Square

We’d got a cheap deal on the hotel, through the website - booking.com, but the laundry was stupid money - $5 for each pair of knickers or socks, hence the laundry look to our room – did just enough to get us home – praying for no delays!

New York State - Lake Placid

We left Niagara and went east along the shores of Lake Ontario and then a little north up into the Adirondack Mountains and Lake Placid.  The temperature slowly dropped as we got closer to Lake Placid. Lake Placid is the site of the 1932 and 1980 Winter Olympics.

At Lake Cranberry nearby the locals were holding a golf tornament on the ice, driving their trucks on the lake between holes. The temperature was now about minus 12 Celcius.  The sheds were for ice fishing - some even had wood stoves inside.

As we got to Lake Placid we saw trucks and dog sleds going across the lake, unbelievably cold but not a lot of snow. The lack of snow is affecting business with a lot of the lower cross country ski routes closed. Some of the locals were saying that many businesses were likely to go under without an increase in snow and hence trade.

We're stopping for two nights here as we hoped to go skiing. This morning we woke to find the temperature had dropped further, so cold that some of the electronics on the car stopped working. Drove to the ski lifts to find that the higher slopes were all shut due to the temperature and only two lifts on the lower slopes were open.  Despite being Sunday, very few people about, probably due to the temperature now being minus 23 Celcius at the top of the Gondola ski-lift, at Little Whiteface, and that was without the wind chill added!

Gave the skiing a miss, our clothing simply not up to that cold, but took the gondola to the top for a look anyway.  The cold was incredibly intense, even more so in the wind. Carole's Buff froze solid! The gondola operator said the temperature was "brutal" at the top and warned of frost bite - he was not wrong.

At lower altitudes the cold was still intense but just bearable so we walked along a trail to some frozen waterfalls. These are about 60ft high.  

There was also a log fire by the river for us to toast some marshmallows

 Later in the afternoon we just got chance to go to the top of the ski jump slopes -

The view from the top.

Carole getting in to the zone..

I thought these guys were nutters until we went to the bobsleigh and luge runs and watched the USA team practising for the world cup that's here next week. They look fast on TV but close up the speed was just incedible.

 

This is a as close as we and Bob and Jan's tenner got to a moose!

New York State - New England

We picked up a hire car at New York JFK airport and headed up into New England and New York State. We'd no real plans on where to go but after chatting to locals and other tourists we decided to swing up through the New England states and then end up at Niagara Falls.

                                    
Great wooded hilly countryside, with some pretty weatherboard villages.

Our first covered bridge. Apparnetly they put the roofs on to make the bridge last longer - 15 years without or 75 years with a roof keeping the supports dry from above.

Stopped at place in the hills called Hancock, real small town stuff, there I braved a haircut at Jerrys, he's been cutting the hair of the townsfolk for over 50 years in the same shop.  Top guy.

Over the next couple of days we worked our way up to Niagara Falls. Stopping on Grand Island, about 5 miles above the falls on the American side, before driving up on Friday to see the falls themselves.

It was so cold the mist from the falls was freezing onto whatever it landed. 

Pretty amazing though, nowhere near as high as the falls in Washington at only 176 feet but still very impressive.

About 90% of the water flow goes down the Canadian side of Goat island that splits the falls into the two parts. The buildings in the mist are in Canada, the viewing platforms were closed due to the ice build-up.

Too cold to hang about for long so we are planning on following, roughly, a route suggested by a chap in a bar next to Jerry's Barbers and head off towards the Adirondack Mountains and Lake Placid before returning to New York.

Las Vegas - Hoover Dam

After booking out of the hotel in Las Vegas we had most of the day before catching a flight to New York.  We hired a car to drive to the Hoover Dam and into the dessert around.

Its a huge iconic structure, a tremendous piece of engineering; 700 ft high, 660ft thick at the base, 60ft thick thick at the top, completed in the 30's. Couldn't resist driving along the top to Arizona and then back again into Nevada.

The white line you can see around Lake Mead is 56ft high and shows the peak water level, apparently the authorities would like the water to be half way up to the line but low rainfall has meant that this level has not been reached for 10 years and it was 37 years since it reached the peak level.

We saw marinas on Lake Mead - its 110 miles long - that had had to be extended into the lake to reach the water and launch sites that had been left high and dry. The way the work had been done suggests that they don't expect the water level to return to normal for a very long time.

It was strange to have a huge man made reservoir in the middle of the dessert.

The fish in the lake are enormous!

We later drove into the dessert, tremendous feeling of emptiness and silence, not even birds making any sounds, despite only being 40 miles from Las Vegas. 

Overnight flight to New York to Look forward to now.



Las Vegas

Sin City is just as it likes to describe itself - the entertainment centre of the States. The hotels are just truly unreal, atriums with canals and opera singing gondoliers sculling guests about, pyramid shaped hotels with the Sphinx sat outside, the Statue of Liberty stood outside a hotel in the shape of the New York skyline (not fogetting he roller coaster looping around the hotel and statue), a 1/4 scale copy of the Eiffel Tower.

                                          (this picture is taken inside the Venetian Hotel!)

They all have one thing in common - a huge casino on the ground floor.

We got an out of season deal at the pyramid hotel - the Luxor. The lifts here go up diagnally along the slope of the pyramid - doesn't half feel weird.

(this is the inside of our hotel , the white lights are the doors to the rooms, we were on floor 13, about half way up!)

Loads of shows to see, we got to "Cirque de Solier ; O" at the Belaggio - stunning, and "Menopause - the Musical" at the Luxor (believe me every man should see that one - it explains a lot!) very, very funny

Well, when I said that San Francisco was great for people watching I hadn't been to Vegas, this place is in a different league.  Every stereotypical character you've seen in movies is alive and well on the streets here.

We watched the super bowl game in a restaurnat bar on the strip - fascinating, didn't understand the game at all, the adverts throughout the game, not just at half time, irritated but the best bit for us was when we spoke to the waiter and asked him to explain, he said he was from Argentina and he'd got into trouble with his colleagues for calling the game "rugby for girls", he's a Puma fan. Clearly earning himself a large tip.  We also got tips on where to go in Argentina for a future visit...

                      (Our Puma fan with Bob and Jan's Tenner and me in a free Superbowl hat)
Have to admit that I came here expecting to hate the place - I didn't hate it but grudgingly admired it for having the balls to do what it does with such pride and, if not finesse then, panache.

Oh, and Brandon's can't fail gambling system: it can.