New York, New York: Part 2

Monday

Monday was another massive day. We got up early and headed for the Empire State building, via Dunkin Donuts for breakfast!!! We had been advised to get to the Empire State building early to avoid queues, and it worked a treat. We went straight in and up the 90-odd floors to the observation deck. The views from the top were breath-taking. Out to the west we could see across the Hudson River to New Jersey, to the east Brooklyn and Queens, to the south the financial district, where the Twin Towers were and the Statue of Liberty off in the distance, and to the north, Central Park and down 5th Ave to the rest of the city. We spent well over an hour up there, listening to "Tony" on the audio guide, pointing out some of the buildings, bridges etc and giving us a little history lesson about each one!

It is unbelievable that such a massive building was put together in a little over one year, and even more so when you consider it is right in the middle of Manhattan. The steel beams that form the frame of the building had to be dropped off by truck at the exact time they were needed to be fitted, as there was obviously no room to store them next to the building site, like they usually do. So it must have been a logistal nightmare. We discovered that only 5 workers were killed during construction, which was a magnificent effort, as they had "budgeted" for one fatality per floor (around 100 in total) which was the norm at the time!

The rest of the morning was spent shopping. Megan shopped up a storm at Macys, Banana Republic, Bloomingdales and various other stores. She bought some really cool clothes, including a pink Rainbow Brite T-shirt! Meanwhile, Tim was searching Manhattan for a New York Yankees jersey with Jeter on the back. He eventually struck it lucky in a store in Times Square, and is now the proud owner of a limited edition Derek Jeter Yankees jersey.

After lunch, we headed over to Greenwich, which is a student area, quite arty and laid back. There were loads of really cool restaurants, bars and cafes and a lot of fun shops selling art, clothing, jewellery, etc. We also sat and rested in George Washington square. It was nice to see some grass for a change! The main reason we had visited Greenwich, however, was to go to the world famous cup cake shop, as featured in Sex and the City! The little corner shop was bursting at the seams, so we bought a couple of cup cakes and escaped while we could, across the road to a little park to eat them. They were very good, quite rich but well worth the journey! Word of warning for anyone planning on going to the cup cake shop: the icing melts very quickly in 30 deg temperatures and has a tendency to explode all over you. Eat with caution. Right around the corner from the cup cake shop is Perry Street, where Carrie Bradshaw supposedly lived in Sex and the City. Megan was proud as punch to get a photo on the steps of what we think was her apartment...

The evening saw us catch a train to Flushing Meadow in Queens to see the opening night of the US Open at Arthur Ashe Stadium. We didn't know until we arrived, but there was an opening ceremony / tribute to Althea Gibson (an African American female tennis player of the past, who struggled against racism and sexism to succeed in tennis and pave the way for future African American players). She passed away a few years ago, but was inducted in to the "Court of Champions" at Arthur Ashe Stadium on Monday night. As part of the ceremony, Aretha Franklin performed what else but R-E-S-P-E-C-T, and various people including New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and former tennis great Billie Jean King spoke. Then in very American fashion, we had a brass band play and some marines marched in with a huge American flag while the anthem played. Then there were some fireworks and finally...some tennis.

Fitting with the tribute to Althea Gibson, Venus Williams and Serena Williams were on centre court for the night session and both demolished their respective opponents with ease. Venus was absolutely brilliant to watch; she is such an amazing athlete, so agile and graceful, while little sis stood behind the baseline and bashed her opponent off the court with sheer power. There was at least one big name celebrity in the crowd, with Janet Jackson appearing on the big screen several times between games. Both girls spoke very well after their matches; they come across as very down to earth and humble, rare in tennis players these days! And especially rare for two who between them have 14 grand slam singles titles and 3 Olympic gold medals!

It appears that the "City that never sleeps" closes just before midnight on a Monday night, as we struggled to get an ice cream on the way home. Disappointing.

Empire State
Building

View to south:
financial centre

Chrysler

Building

View to west:
New Jersey

Famous

cupcakes from

Sex and the
City

Perry Street: Carrie
Bradshaw's steps?

US Open:
Arthur Ashe

Stadium

Venus

Williams

Serena

Williams

New York, New York: Part 1

Fans, we have just returned from an amazing 4 days in New York.

Saturday

We had a very early flight on Saturday morning, during which Megan slept for about 6 hours of the 7 hour flight time!!! We were greeted in New York with a guy at Immigration who obviously hated his job and his life. He was extremely rude to us and called us idiots because we weren't standing in the exact spot we were supposed to be standing (not sure how we were supposed to know exactly where to stand, or what difference it made!). He looked like your typical psychopath, who has bodies in his freezer, and he was wearing some dashing blue rubber gloves, which clinched him the title of a class A nutter. Anyway, Megan complained to his supervisor on our way out. Ha ha.

Our hotel, the New Yorker, was great. It was in a perfect location, right across the road from Madison Square Garden (where Muhammed Ali fought Joe Frazier in 1971 and lost - Ali stayed in the New Yorker hotel that night!). It was also just a few blocks from the Empire State building, Times Square and not too far from Central Park either. After checking in at the hotel, we set off in search of the Circle Line boat cruises and, after getting a little lost, we arrived in the right place and got ourselves on to a three-hour cruise around the entire island of Manhattan.

The cruise was brilliant. It was a good way to get our bearings and find out where things were in relation to one another so we could plan our next few days. The commentator was very informative, pointing out all the obvious sights, such as where the Twin Towers had stood and how massive they were, the Chrysler building, the United Nations building, the Empire State building (which was constructed in just 14 months in 1930-31), Yankee Stadium, and so on, but he also had lots of other interesting information, like showing us apartment blocks where various celebrities had purchased an apartment, or a floor of the building, for $30 million-odd etc, and he even showed us the lamp post next to where John Lennon was shot! Tim was very interested to hear that his favourite Yankees player, Derek Jeter, has an apartment in the big black apartment block just behind the United Nations building in central Manhattan...worth a lot of money. The highlight, though, was seeing the Statue of Liberty up close. Very impressive!

After our cruise, we headed for Times Square, where we stood on the crowded footpaths watching the enormous TV screens stuck to the side of buildings, showing live baseball and advertisements for all sorts of things. We were sucked in by the huge billboards, bright lights and flashes of colour, which I'm sure make you want to buy things...things you don't want or need, just for the sake of buying things. We had fun in the Virgin Megastore, where Tim got a photo with The Simpsons! We also found a New York Yankees store, selling almost everything you could think of with the famous NY logo on it...you could even buy a Yankees American football!

We pulled ourselves away from Times Square and had a couple of drinks at our hotel bar before getting some dinner at TGI Friday's. Solid American food - burgers with chips, extra cheese, loads of sauce. Just what we wanted after a big day.

Sunday

On Sunday morning we got up early and headed to a famous bagel shop, H&H Bagel, that Megan had heard about. We grabbed ourselves a couple of bagels each (and Tim grabbed a photo with Bert and Ernie outside) and sat in Central Park to eat them, how very New York of us! Central Park was very nice. We wandered through a small part of it and found the Jackie Onassis memorial reservoir - Tim thought that she probably deserved something better than a reservoir. It was however, very pretty and very peaceful. We were stunned at the massive number of people out running, cycling, roller blading, etc through Central Park early on a Sunday! We felt a little lazy to be strolling leisurely amongst them.

From the park, we headed for the shops of 5th Avenue. First stop was a pit stop at Trump Tower, where Donald was very nice and let us use his flash toilets!!! Trump Tower was pretty impressive, with its Trump pizzeria and Trump ice cream parlour in the lower lobby and some Trump clothing stores in the upper lobby, which you get to by using the Trump escalator, to the left of the Trump water feature. We had to wait around until 12pm for Tiffany & Co to open its doors, so we wandered up and down a few blocks, by-passing the stores like Prada and Louis Vuitton, but we did have a look at the Disney store!!! Four floors of everything Disney. Very fun, but a little overwhelming after a while, especially with several hundred over-hyped children running around!

Once Tiffanys had opened, we joined the crowds and had a look. The staff were very friendly and didn't seem to mind the dozens of tourists asking questions about the stock and even trying some things on, despite the fact that very few of them were ever going to buy anything! Megan had been looking forward to visiting Tiffanys for years, and she had a great time checking out all of the beautiful necklaces, rings, bracelets, etc. Tim's highlight, however, was getting a photo of the US Open tennis trophy, which was on display in the corner.

Soho was next on our list of places to visit. Soho, we discovered, is short for "south of Houston Street"...we did not know. We found a nice little cafe for lunch, where Tim had American hot dogs, extra ketchup and mustard, very nice! We enjoyed looking around the shops in Soho, partly because most of them seemed to have air conditioning, which made a very pleasant break from the 30 deg temperatures outside. Having lived in London for a few months, we are not used to such extreme heat!

From Soho, we made our way down to Ground Zero, where the Twin Towers had once stood. It is so difficult to imagine how massive they must have been. Most of the surrounding buildings are around 50-60 floors high, which is huge, but these were only half the size of the Towers. We couldn't see a lot of what was going on at Ground Zero, as they had some netting around the outside, but the foundations of the new Freedom Tower (expected to be finished in 2011) were well under way. The Freedom Tower, will be around the same height as the Twin Towers, but only 60 floors will be used; the top half will be decorative with a spire-type thing at the top. There was a billboard explaining that they plan to have a memorial next to the Freedom Tower, with two hollows cut into the ground, representing the two towers, with fountains in the middle and the names of those who died in the September 11 attacks written on the walls inside the hollows.

We returned to Soho that evening for drinks / cocktails at a place called Bar 89. It was very nice, and Megan was extremely impressed with the bathrooms. The toilets had clear glass doors, but when you lock the door, the glass turns frosted so that you can't see through it anymore...technology eh! We found a cool little restaurant for dinner, but after dinner we were pretty tired after our long day of exploring, so we called it a night.







Lady Liberty

Brooklyn
Bridge













UN Building

Times Square











And again













Tim with
The Simpsons:
Virgin
Megastore
Times Square









Tims' new
mates

Jackie O

memorial

reservoir

in Central

Park

Central Park

Megan on

5th Ave

Trump

Tower

Hot Dogs

Ground Zero

Harrods

Fans,

Just a short blog, as we didn't do much at the weekend, and there will be lots to say after our trip to New York next week.

We engaged in some true British fun on Saturday when by heading for Harrods, hard to believe that we had not made it there until now. As many of you will know, it is massive, we only really conquered the ground floor (4 more floors to go). We had lunch at the pizzeria, which was quite grand if a tad on the expensive side. However, there was value for money in that the chef was actually Italian, and he started singing while flipping pizza dough in the air. He was very good, much like Pavarotti but not as large. We were extremely impressed by the varieties of "food stations" on the ground floor, with sushi, general seafood, oyster/champagne bars, a rotisserie, a gelato counter, a bakery, a doughnut emporium and an "afternoon tea" area from what we could see. Quite remarkable. And all heaving, obviously.

After eating our pizzas we strolled around the rest of the ground floor, which consists of mainly food but also very expensive jewellery, watches and handbags, which Megan seemed to like! Turned out the confectionery and chocolate departments were more within our price range. We bought some beautiful Belgian chocolates, all packaged up in a little carry-box (no expense spared at Harrods). We also had a wander through the bakery (awesome doughnuts!!!), meat, fish and produce sections, before eventually finding our way to the Dodi and Diana memorial shrine, via the life-size statue of Muhammed al-Fayed. Very fun trip, and I imagine we will be back again before long.

On Saturday night we headed to Putney for Guy's 30th birthday party. The weather wasn't kind to us, which meant the garden bar idea went out the window, but it was a really fun night. We had planned to go to Richmond Park on Sunday, to try to spot some deer or foxes, but the weather was so awful we decided to stay indoors and watch DVDs, although Megan did venture out to do a little shopping!

This weekend we are off to New York for 5 days, exciting times. And more good news, we have booked flights and accommodation for Christmas time. We are flying to Prague on Dec 22, and we will have Christmas in the Czech Republic before catching a train from Prague to Zurich (through Germany) on Dec 26. We will have 4-5 days travelling around Switzerland and then fly back to London from Geneva on Dec 31. It will be a very white Christmas, guaranteed snow!!!

Harrods

Buckingham Palace

Hello

After recovering from Dublin last weekend, we had a relatively quiet weekend. Tim caught up with Shanan and Renee for a few drinks on Friday night, as they are about to head home to New Zealand via Africa, while Megan visited Anna in Putney.

On Saturday we went on a tour of the State rooms of Buckingham Palace, which was really good. Every summer, while the Queen is away at Balmoral, the Palace is opened to the public. The tour was very interesting. We were both blown away by the size of the Palace and of how much money must be tied up in it! There were dozens of massive paintings, mainly portraits of various monarchs of years gone by, all over the Palace. There was also a bronze bust of the Duke of Edinburgh...very niiiice. Aside from the priceless art work, there are literally hundreds of magnificent sculptures, porcelain ornaments, huge chandaliers, pieces of furniture and other lavish decor.

We wandered through the throne room, the Queen's Gallery, home to many of the paintings, the Silk Tapestry room, the Ballroom, the Ball-Supper room, and several drawing rooms! We also saw the special exhibition celebrating the 60th wedding anniversary of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh. It was pretty crowded but we managed to get a good look at the Queen's wedding dress and a few photos/video clips of the wedding day at Westminster Abbey! We also saw the wedding gift sent from the New Zealand government, a beautiful writing desk, made from native New Zealand timber.

At the end of the tour, we walked through part of the beautiful gardens out the back of the Palace. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take photos inside the Palace, but we got a couple from out in the garden (see below). The tour was a great history lesson of the Palace as well. We were interested to hear that the Palace had been hit by a German fighter pilot in WWII and one side of it was severely damaged. King George VI and Queen Elizabeth were inside at the time and very close to the part that was hit, but were not injured...lucky.

On Saturday night we caught up with Simon and some of his mates at a local pub for a few beers and we watched a bit of football on the big screen. Unfortunately some mongrel stole Tim's cellphone at the pub, not impressed.

On Sunday we headed off to Emirates Stadium (again) for Arsenal's first premiership match of the new season. The game wasn't that pretty, as Arsenal didn't really play well for most of the match, after conceding a goal in the very first minute, thanks to a Minties-type blunder from Arsenal's goalkeeper. However, things suddenly clicked in the final 5 minutes, as Arsenal scored twice to win the match. We'll definitely be back again, Megan has even been practising the Arsenal chants for next time!!!



Megs outside
the Palace












Back of the
Palace









Palace
Gardens








The Emirates...
we got there
early








Tim by the
Arsenal
cannons

Dublin, Republic of Ireland

Fans

We had a fantastic time in Dublin. As you can see from the photos below, the 3 days centred around Guinness!

We arrived in Dublin around lunchtime Saturday. After dropping our bags at our hotel we wandered up and down O'Carroll Street, one of Dublin's main streets and home to the giant spire! We then headed for Temple Bar, a great area full of bars, cafes, shops and buskers/live entertainment. Our first stop was the actual Temple Bar, where we enjoyed the first of many pints of Guinness. The Temple Bar is one of Dublin's most famous, appearing on loads of postcards etc. There is even a Temple Bar Trading Company next door to the pub, which sells all sorts of merchandise! We made at least 4 stops at the Temple Bar during the weekend.

We also found the relatively well hidden John Mulligans pub, tucked away in a little side street amongst nothing in particular. Mulligans has been in business in Dublin since 1782, with the current site being opened in the middle of the 19th century. They have made a special effort not to change the decor since then, and it really did feel like we had gone back in time. We had a walk down Grafton Street, another of the famous streets for shopping and buskers etc. Unsurprisingly, Tim was was sucked in to buying a green Guinness T shirt, ready made for St Paddy's Day next year!!! And we had a relaxing walk through St Stephen's Green, at the end of Grafton Street, which made a nice break from the hundreds of people crowding the shops and bars. On Saturday night we found a great pub called The Vat, again in the Temple Bar region, where we sat for hours, drinking Guinness and eating dinner.

Unfortunately Sunday greeted us with gloomy skies and pouring rain. We decided to visit the Guinness Storehouse (brewery tour) anyway, despite the fact that the views from the top would be a bit foggy. We got a taxi to the Storehouse, which turned out to be value for money as our taxi driver was full of interesting pieces of information and tips of what to see and do in Ireland. She also had the finest Irish accent we encountered. She was telling us that she preferred the Jamiesons whiskey distillery tour to the Guinness tour because they give you several samples of whiskey, which "warm the cockles of your heart". Fantastic. She also gave Megan the tip of the day which is to ask for a bit of raspberry/blackcurrant in your Guinness to make it less bitter.

The Guinness tour was great. It was self guided, and we really enjoyed wandering through at our own pace and reading about the history of Arthur Guinness, his 21 children and how Guinness has come to own almost half of Dublin. After several floors of the Guinness Storehouse, we arrived at the very top, the Gravity Bar, which (usually) has spectacular 360 degree views of Dublin. We cashed in our token for our complimentary pint of Guinness and then went back down to the restaurant on level 5 for lunch. Tim can confirm that there is nothing finer than an Irish beef stew and (another) pint of Guinness for lunch on a rainy day!

In the afternoon, we braved the rain and wandered back to the Temple Bar region and watched a bit of football on the big screen and wandered around some gift shops before making our way to out hotel, where we had another beer of two in the bar! It was a little tricky finding food on Sunday night. There seems to little priority given to food in Dublin pubs...we think the level of importance goes something like drinks, live music, drinks, loads of people, drinks, sport on TV, drinks and more drinks...then maybe food if you're lucky.

On Monday we went on one those hop-on-hop-off bus tours that European cities are so fond of. After cruising the city in this double-decker style, we jumped - or hopped, if you will - off at The Brazen Head, Dublin's oldest pub (since 1167). This proved a sterling move, as the pub is fantastic; it was covered in memorabilia from Irish history and offered up a stellar roast. And just as well as we needed strength for the hijinks to follow, namely leprechaun escape (see below), a parting thunderstorm and the compulsory seat dash that comes with Ryanair not allocating seat numbers.

Final story

We are sure you have all heard that leprechauns are magical little creatures, but this is just ridiculous. Tim bought a little toy leprechaun at a souvenir shop on Saturday and it is one of those things that has a suction cap attached to it, so he stuck it to the mirror of our hotel room, where it proudly sat gibbering away about its lucky charms. When it came time to check out of our hotel on Monday morning, we packed everything up, and did the usual very thorough check of the hotel room to ensure we hadn't forgotten anything. There was nothing left anywhere. But it wasn't until later in the afternoon that Tim suddenly remembered that he didn't have the leprechaun in his bags! We searched through the bags, went back to the hotel and looked through the now vacant room again, asked the cleaners if they had found it...nothing. The little bugger had taken his lucky charms and escaped in the night. To be sure to be sure. No dramas though, as Tim bought a replacement one before we left for the airport which is still with us...for now at least.






Famous Temple
Bar












Inside
Temple Bar











John
Mulligans
Pub: since
1782













Bear and Beer















Molly
Malone's
statue on
Grafton
Street









Grafton
Street















Perfection















St
Stephen's
Green













Guinness
Storehouse

















View from
Gravity
Bar









Pint at
the top














Two hands
required

















Christ
Church















The
Brazen
Head












Brazen
Head