Start spreading the news... (Beck's in the city)

I know it's been a while since I updated this, but I have a load of really bad excuses. I meant to do it in New York, but we never got a chance to spend ages in an internet cafe. So here is, a little late, what we got up to in New York City...

I arrived in New York 2 weeks ago and met up with Beck. It was (of course) great to see her after so long as I'm sure you can all imagine. The first couple of days we were in the city, we just hung around checking out some of the sights. We went to go see the wrecked globe sculpture from the World Trade Centre which was moved to Battery Park as well as taking a walk down the Esplanade to look out at New Jersey and at the Statue of Libery. In the evening we walked over the Brooklyn Bridge and back again, it gives a great view of Manhattan. Later, we got a dinner at a nice Thai restaurant, that I think that was once in a TV show I don't watch.

The next day we planned to go and see if Coney Island was just like an American Skegness. It is. We got there a little too early and it was too cold to stand around on the beach so we went for a visit at the Aquarium. The Aquarium was a good choice because I finally got to get a picture of a Parrot Fish, which is by far my favourite fish. They had a massive 3000lb walrus that (as some schoolkids kindly pointed out) was obviously a male. Once the rides were open we headed over to the rides and attractions of Coney Island. Apart from big rides and an awesome wooden rollercoaster, The Cyclone, which we rode and Beck spent most of the ride saying "Oh My God!", it was pretty much like any fairground, crap prizes, games you can't win etc. Except it is the birthplace of the Hotdog. We tried hotdogs at Nathans, the place where they have the annual hotdog eating competition, where some Japanese guy has been smashing records for 5 years by gobbling over 50 in 12 minutes. Nice.

It rained on Friday so we went to the Natural History Museum and Planetarium. We saw a pretty decent IMAX video about the Galapogas Islands and an awesome display about "Cosmic Collisions" in the Planetarium. We met up with our friends Sarah and Adam and we spent the evening at Madison Square Garden watching the Jordan All American Classic. It was basically schoolkids playing basketball in a giant stadium. Only, it's not like schoolkids from home, one of these lads was 7ft 1in and as I understand it they are going on to college on sports scholarships. It was great to go to one of the the most famous venues in the world.

Sunday morning we did something that Beck had been looking forward to for ages, we met Sarah and Adam again and went to BB King's club for the Harlem Gospel choir's all you can eat brunch. This consisted of the Harlem Gospel Choir singing gospel songs (erm obviously) and us stuffing ourselves with the all-you-can-eat buffet. Their voices were amazing, I can't say we were as moved as some of the other patrons, but they were very impressive. Beck and Sarah then found the New York Hello Kitty store and, I don't know if it was the Christ infused music or the greasy food, went a little crazy. After some more wandering around we took a trip up the Empire State Building. We managed to pick the cloudiest day ever, but we still got some great views of the city. The queue to get to the observatory floor is unbelieveable. Essentially you spend hours queueing to get in to a series of smaller queues. Then you get a lift to some more queues. We spent 90 minutes waiting to get up there, this is on a cold cloudy day. Last time beck went, it took her over 3 hours, in the middle of Winter! Still, great view though, really.

Beck had a surprise for me on Monday morning. She was right, I would NEVER guess. She'd signed us up for trapeeze lessons. These were great fun. We both did pretty well, but I ached so much afterwards. We went to get "The Greatest Cheesecake Ever" from Grand Central Station to celebrate. It was pretty damn good. We did some more shopping (this is what we did when we were doing nothing else, I even know the difference between US and UK sizing. Just kidding.)

Tuesday morning was gorgeous so we took the boat ride to Liberty and Ellis Islands. We saw the immigration museum and the statue of liberty. I've had a lot of people tell me that the statue is pretty small in real life. I disagree, it's huge, but Manhattan is bigger! It was really cool to see such a famous landmark upclose and personal and
the nice weather made up for the cloudy Empire State Queuing ride. We didn't get to go up it, but it was no big deal. Ellis Island was also cool, it was interesting to hear some of the stories from the immigrants that made the USA what it is today. In the evening we went to the Bronx to Yankee Stadium where we saw the Yankees take on the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Tampa were crap, the Yankees took them apart. We sat up in the nosebleed seats which was great because we were almost covered from the rain. We left in the 8th inning because we had to leave at 5am to catch our flight home.

Which is where I am now. Home sweet home. It really is nice to be back. I've had a great time and have really enjoyed writing about it. Hope I didn't make you all too jealous. I've changed the site so you don't need to login to make comments, so feel free to let me know you've been reading :). Once I'm a bit more settled and had a chance to go through my photos, I'm going to make a post with of favourite photos. Thanks to everyone for reading, I hope you all enjoyed reading.

A long time ago in a state far far away...

Tim and I revised our plans. We decided not to go to Montreal, mostly because we couldn't get tickets for the hockey game and it's full of French-Canadians. We ended up going to Boston (Mass, not Lincolnshire). I guess the sad truth is that we were swayed by Boston because the Museum of Science had an exhibition on called Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination. It was basically a load of old props, models and costumes from all 6 movies and some science stuff about how possible the science in the films is. For the most part, impossible. It was really cool to see some of the old costumes from the originals, like Chewbacca and C-3PO and I was really surprised to see how large some of the models were. They also had a load of child orientated play areas where we got to make our robots and see if they worked, mostly they didn't. We took a look around the rest of the science museum, there was a huge T-Rex which I managed to completely miss. I liked the maths area where they had models of certain maths principles which I still won't even pretend to understand, but they looked cool.

The next day we went into the city to see the other really famous part of Boston, the Cheers bar. Yes, we went to the bar where everyone knows our name. We didn't see Sam or Norm, but we did drink from branded Cheers glasses. There are actually 2 Cheers bars, the one that they filmed the outside of, and a new one in a mall where the layout is the same as the TV show. We went to the real one, then looked at and ran away from the fake one. Boston was a pretty cool city, I never realised how close Harvard and MIT are I guess it must be the smartest city in the Country, if not the world!

The Full Vermonty

We had a really good weekend out in the woods. We went in to the Adirondacks National park in northern New York. Tim, Nate, Ama (the dog) and I set up camp on the edge of Indian Lake which was cool because it was still half frozen. We spent most of Saturday hiking up Snowy Mountain. It was 3898 feet high and it was a pretty hard climb. The top part of the mountain was still snowy and in places it was very deep. At one point I was in up to my waist in snow. The dog seemed to love it, she went crazy, running up and down the mountain, then coming back to make sure that we were all behind her. The last part to the summit took us ages to get past because there was only a thin layer of snow on top of ice. So every step we took, we slid back down. Once we got to the summit, the view was amazing. A little further into the trees there was a Fire Tower which we climbed. It was high, cold and windy and covered in ice and snow. We planned on eating lunch up there but as you can imagine the conditions were not really favourable enough. On the way back down we put on snow shoes for the snowiest part at the top. Knackered, we headed tp a local bar where I had one of the best burgers I've had in ages.

We hung around the National park for most of Sunday and then we made our way back to Tim's parents in Utica. Nate went back to Syracuse and Tim and I hung out in Utica before making our way to Burlington Vermont. I've spent the last few days hanging out with Tim, unfortunately I have been feeling pretty ill. Today we went to the Ben and Jerry's factory, a company that was started in Burlington. It was pretty cool to see where the magic happens. We got to sample one of the Caramel flavours which was tasty. The plan for now is to get myself well, then head to Montreal for the weekend. Then do some more hiking next week before I go to New York.

Farewell Philly

I spent my last couple of nights in Philly as expected, we bowled on Tuesday night. I was appalling. I have never bowled so bad in my life. By the 5th game I was getting better, but I have no idea what happened. I blame the balls, they were crappy. Wednesday, I walked around South Philly and got on of Pat's famous Philly Cheese Steaks. It was amazing, well, it was greasy and meaty and covered in hot sauce, so I suppose that makes it great. I watched football for the first time in ages (Juventus vs. Arsenal) and we met up with my friend Pedro and headed to the Bodyworlds exhibition in the Franklin Institute. The exhibit is put on by Gunther von Hagens, the crazy German who did a live autopsy on Channel 4. Essentially, it's a load of plasticised human bodies and organs in different poses. These are real bodies that have been donated by people for this dude to use. Apparently it's quite contraversial. I didn't find it contraversial, just really gross. I'm pretty squeamish about this kind of stuff and it really made me feel uncomfortable, especially the organs. But I have to say that it really was fascinating, despite my weak stomach for these things, I was impressed by it all. It was also quite educational seeing how the body all fits together. One thing is for certain. If I smoked, I would quit. Yuck.

I left my good friend Matt, yesterday morning (thanks once again Matt and Dan for your hospitality) and after a lovely Greyhound ride I arrived in Syracuse New York yesterday evening. Don't be confused. This is NOT New York City. It's a university town upstate. I met up with another good buddy, Nate, and we went for barbeque food and listened to some blues music. This afternoon we are going to meet yet another friend, Tim, and then tomorrow we head into the mountains to hike in the snow. Apparently there are bears. Cool.

New York Preview

Over the weekend Matt and I went on a little trip down to New York City. It was my first time in New York and it was great. We spent Saturday daytime wandering around a couple of the parks in Manhattan and we went to The Strand bookstore which boasts 18 miles of books. We saw a great band playing on the street called the Hypnotic Blues Ensemble. In the evening we went to an improvised comedy show at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. It was really funny, they spent the 2nd half of the show improvising from music brought in by the audience. On Sunday we took a walk
around central park before joining the traffic on the way home, I never want to drive in New York. In a way it reminded me of London, in that you see it all over the place, on TV, in movies etc, so you expect a lot from it. When you actually get there, it's just another big city, albeit one with some excellent sites. I'm really looking forward to meeting my lovely girlfriend there in two weeks and spending some more time looking around the sites properly.

Yesterday I met up with a friend that I met in San Fransisco and we took a road trip with a couple of his friends down to The National Aquarium in Baltimore. It was very impressive and massive. I really enjoyed seeing all the big sharks and rays. It very different seeing fish in tanks rather than in the sea and it's great because I get to stay dry! I got all excited spotting fish that I had seen whilst diving, especially the clown anemone fish (Nemo). I felt like a kid. The highlight of the aquarium though, was predictably the Dolphin show, those fish are so cool. I had mixed feelings about it, it's amazing how they teach them to do things like walk on their tails and slide along the side of the pool, but it's kind of sad to see them confined. Although they looked pretty happy and they seemed to enjoy themselves. Especially when they kept getting fed fish. My plan for the next few days is to hang out in Philly, We're off bowling tonight and probably to the Franklin Institute for a Bodyworks exhibit tomorrow which will freak me out, yuck. Then on Thursday I'll be travelling up to upstate New York to Syracuse to meet up with another good friend of mine, Nate.

More than just cream cheese

For the past few days I've been having a really good time with my friend Matt in Philladephia. I've seen a lot of stuff that I didn't even know was here. For Example the steps that Stallone runs up in Rocky. I spent yesterday looking around the historical part of the city. They are very proud of the fact that Benjamin Franklin lived here for most of his life. He was a pretty interesting fellow, not only was pretty important in founding the country, but he also did a load of science things. He was a printer and head of the Masons twice. He is totally worshipped in this city, I even paid $2 to see his grave. After walking around all the Franklin stuff I checked out the Liberty Bell. It is famous for being the bell that was rung to call people to hear the reading of the Declaration of Independance. After this I went to see Independence Hall which is famous for being where the Americans gave up on the English by signing the Declaration of Independence. It was here that they also signed the Constitution as well as having been visited by many other famous American presidents. I basically had a day being schooled in American history. In the evening, Matt and I went out to West Philly to watch an acoustic bluegrass band who were absolutely outstanding.

Today I saw another famous part of the city, the city hall and it's free mason lodge. The some of the rooms in the lodge where very impressive and the view from the city hall was amazing. Upon the top stands an 11 metre statue of William Penn, the city's founder. In the afternoon I walked around the art gallery, which is the building that Rocky runs up. There were some really good classic impressionist European paintings that appeal to me including paintings by Van Gogh, Monet and Cezanne. However there was also a lot of modern stuff that does nothing for me. We spent this evening rock climbing, which I need to practice more at because I like it but I'm not very good. We're off to New York City for the weekend where we're going to a comedy club night. So it's been a pretty eventful couple of days.

Dallas

Howdy y'all (sorry couldn't help it). I've spent the last week hanging out in Dallas with my good friend Elliot. We've had a good time. We've sampled the local bars and a lot of the local cuisine, I've never had Mexican food like it. There seem to be a lot of Mexican restaurants around Texas which is good as Mexican food is tasty. I never had a Chimichanga though which is a shame. Elliot and his friends did introduce me to Margaritas though and they are tasty. We spent most of our time in Dallas seeing friends and sleeping on their sofas. It's been really good to catch up with Elliot and to get out of dorm rooms. There's only so much sharing space with 8 other people you can take!

We took a ride down to Waco where Elliot used to live where I learned to play shuffleboard where you have a long salt covered table and you slide metal discs down the other end to score. It's sort of like curling but not at all. It turned out that I was really good and I showed those Texan boys how to play haha. I ate a Chicken Fried Steak which is kind of hard to describe, I guess it's basically deep fried battered steak covered in a white gravy. It was nice, but it has absolutely nothing to do with chicken. We checked out the Texas Ranger Museum which was cool, they are basically this elite Texas law enforcement agency who are specific to Texas. Back in the day they were set up to stop rustling and fence cutting. They were responsible for bringing in serial law breakers Bonnie and Clyde. We also looked in on the Dr. Pepper museum, but we decided not to look all the way round as neither of us thought there was enough Dr. Pepper memorabilia in the world to justify the entry fee.

A group of us went out bowling on Monday night which was good fun, I actually beat a couple of the guys which is great because these boys can take bowling as a college course. The night ended up pretty messy and hence we had a pretty subdued Tuesday, but I did manage to meet up with some old friends of my parents who took us out to dinner. Then this morning I flew into Philladelphia, the city of brotherly love, to meet up with another old friend of mine Matt where I'm going to hang out for the week before I go bother another old friend.