2011 - New York

Up with (before) the lark, at 3:00am in Wellington.  Bowl of cereal and off to the airport.  6:15 we are away.  I watched Mr. Popper's Penguins.  (Later found I'll be shown it again by United on the flight home :-( .)  Plane was very nice (seats, entertainment, etc) for a little A320.

Sydney - off to the Darling Harbour playground.  (Well ... Deb noticed QVB train stop, so looked at some shops on the way.)  Lovely day.

Highlight was the water playground that was only completed a few weeks before we got there.



Arrived in LA very late Friday 14 October.  Shuttle driver and hotel staff are excellent.

Saturday morning - up at what turned out to be our usual time of 8:30ish.  Deb is having a little jet-lag, but we are all keen to get going.  Hotel breakfast is excellent.  Tess gets through most of an adult serving of pancakes - first decent quantity she has eaten since we left home.

Time to hit Manhattan! First subway grate that has wind blowing up, show Tess how to do her Mr President scene standing on top of it.  Shops near the hotel are offering 'real human hair' wigs.  I wonder how much they would pay for an excellent head of long red hair?  Humm .... better behave Tess!
 Avoided the chap trying to sell up 'short queue' trips up the Empire State Building.  Saw the queue for the New York Pass voucher we have - about two hours wait.  Perhaps not now.

After ESB, we walked about.  On recommendation of a shop that had run out of T-Mobile prepaid (they don’t have ‘prepay’ in USA) cards, and said AT&T are a better deal.  I’d have to agree.  We got one from the AT&T shop on 7^th by Macy’s.  All the national calls, and txt to almost anywhere (not Italy, but including New Zealand and Germany) for $2 for each day when you use it.

Very important for future reference – found the public library!  Took a photo, and noted the location for returning to when the weather packed it in (as it turned out).

We headed off on a mission to get the New York Guide book we had paid for before leaving New Zealand.  Plan A had been to get it from the ESB, but that was not worth waiting 2 hours for L.  One likely place to sort it was the information office at Times Square.  Didn’t work – but did take some pictures of a very pretty coloured sphere!  Next stop, further along 5^th, or was it Broadway? The New York state Information Centre.  Sure, they could give us the books.  Could also let us play with their disks.  Very clever things – you find interesting places on an interactive map, drop your disk on top, and the ‘disk remembers’ that location.  You then drop your disk on a scanner next to the printer, and it prints info about the things you have selected.  System breaks down when the printer doesn’t work.

There were hundreds of police on the footpaths around central Manhattan.  We had passed through Times Square before many of the Occupy Wall Street protesters got there.  Police were expecting them to appear at other locations, but they never did while we were there.

One of the discounted activities is a trip up the Rockefeller Centre.  We exchanged a coupon for a ticket, but the ticket was timed a few hours in the future (to regulate numbers).  In the meantime, we head towards Central Park.  That park is famed for many things.  A lot of Hair was shot there.  People ride lots of bikes there (and get driven round in carriage-like bikes). There is a lovely pond where you can row a boat, there a Coffee Shop from Mr Potters Penguins, a castle, numerous sports happening, weddings, etc.  There is also a very big rock.  With such a range of options, guess what Tess ‘needed’ to play on, and nagged us about going back for!

At the duly appointed time (8:15pm) we returned for the ‘Top of the Rock’.  It was an excellent experience.  The organisation was good, including a short video that plays during the ascent or decent of their lift.  View from the top is stunning (as one would expect).  Looking across at the Empire State Building is particularly interesting … which suggests going to the Rockefeller Centre at night, and ESB during the day.  They both offer excellent panoramas of the City.  I think ESB had a better map of landmarks too – also better for viewing during the day.

Walked home (still haven’t got the subway quite sussed).  No problems, except that the little legs got tired, so Deb and I carried Tess on our backs for quite a bit of the walk.  New York is a very interesting place at night.  Found a sidewalk cart selling excellent lamb dishes.  Looked a little different to the usual fare, and tasted nice.  Reassuring to see that lamb prices are high there (with locally produced lamb) just like back in New Zealand.

One of the emails waiting on the computer was Joel – can he get his and Aaron’s tent for Occupy Wellington?  I replied, working out how he could arrange that.  Seemed almost surreal that Joel was responding in Wellington to something that had started, and is continuing, just a few kilometres (sorry – everything happens in miles in NY) from where we were.  Evenings go so fast.  Routine is to get Tess to sleep, then upload photos from the camera, to computer, then to Picassa, and check emails.  Occasional work things crop up, but not a lot.

Sunday

Yes, Sunday morning is an excellent time to go up the ESB.  Only about 20 minutes to get through the queues.  Also helps having the New York discounts book – as that enables you to jump part of the queue.  Deb had acquired a ‘$5 off’ or so coupon for a round map thing that points out landmarks.  Very useful – as are the “North” “South” “East” “West” markers on the building.  A very fast lift, then walk up the last six floors.  Deb and Tess stopped for a photo at level 82.  (There is a lift for these floors, but an exceptionally long queue.)  Not a lot to say about the view – it is all it is cracked up to be.  Bit of a breeze blowing, but that doesn’t put too much of a damper on things.

Another ticket in the book is for a Circle Line cruse around the harbour, including getting as close as you can to ye’ old French statute.  All good fun, though the commentary was hard to hear outside.  Manhattan is a very ‘inward looking’ area.  The river was seen as a means of generating trade, and is lined with industrial wharves and ugly, sometimes abandoned-looking, factories.  Not pretty.  The only place we saw evidence of trying to make the waterfront people-friendly, was around the financial district, which also seems to have the lowest concentration of people visiting.  Ironically, across the river in Brooklyn, they have developed the waterfront a little, but the ambiance was rocked by a very noisy train track under the Manhattan bridge.  Seems Manhattan always has the final say – perhaps that is part of the motivation for Occupy Wall Street.

No problems getting home today.  We are getting this subway sussed!  In the news today – All Blacks beat the Wallabies in a Rugby World Cup semi-final! Yea!  Not so enthusiastic is the on-going news for the oil spill from the Rena.

Monday

“A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be great or a democracy” Theodore Roosevelt

 So it is written on the wall of the National Museum of Natural History.  It seems a fitting quote to support the work of the Occupy Wall Street and related movements worldwide.  The US conservative vote seems to have totally forgotten this fact – obvious to their founding fathers.

Tess was not keen on the words of Roosevelt (though if I had said Joel probably agreed with them …) but was very keen on African animals, a waterfall, insects, turtles, dinosaurs, crystals … the list goes on.  She says “the boys” will like photos of crocodiles, and other wild things.  I found the one interpretation panel (as far as I could see) that mentioned New Zealand.  Even then I had to correct an American who referred to a Tuatara as a type of lizard.  I could enthusiastically point to the tiny writing on a huge world map that listed Tuatara as a separate species, and a couple of little stars in the sea indicating islands where they are found.  (I wonder if we can get a star added for Zealandia?)

After a few hours there, I left Deb and Tess to it, and took off to the Museum of Modern Art.  That is an impressive place.  The home of Van Gough’s Starry Night, some of Monet’s lillies (those paintings are huge), an excellent Picasso collection – showing the growth of his distinctive style – and many more.  Met a French couple who could speak virtually no English.  I said “Today you are my friend, next Sunday, we beat you!”  He replied “ah! al back!” with a big smile.  At another time an Australian woman recognised my accent “I don’t think I’m supposed to like you this week!”.  We agreed to both support the All Blacks against the French though.  Good thing we did – the score was so close with two less people in the cosmos not supporting them, they might have lost!

Went to see the World Trade Centre on the way home … actually that is oversimplifying things … I got thoroughly confused on the subway, and nothing was really on the way to anywhere else.  Financial district is the only quiet part of Manhattan – ever.  They have a nice riverside promenade too, but few people at 7:00pm, in the City that Never Sleeps (elsewhere).  Financial district also seems to be the only part of Manhattan that has real street names.  Interesting.  Eventually found my way back to the hotel, and the noise, with the help of directions from a few strangers, who, overall, were far more helpful than I’d been led to expect.

Tuesday

Back out to the World Trade Centre today.  Have another look at 1 World Trade Centre.  We saw this building from the cruse.  It is a quite attractive building replacing one of the ugly towers that used to be.  It is an unreserved travesty that so many people died in that way … but that does not alter the fact the towers were ugly.

Spent some time at St Pauls Chapel, over the road from Ground Zero.  Very moving.  Full of symbolism and records of heroes.  Called in to the department store in the next block, so Tess could use the ‘Restroom’.  Don’t think we bough anything, but there were plenty of options for what we could have bought.

Zuccotti Park – here we come!  Very interesting place.  More symbolism in Occupy Wall Street being just a few blocks from that place where the US were told, in a very murderous way, that they do not have all the answers.  They were a very happy, diverse, group.  Big Police viewing platform on a scissor-jack arrangement, there to keep an eye on the protesters.

Lots of details needed in this space


Saturday (Friday fell into the Pacific, never to be seen again)

Met this kid at Sydney airport.  I asked where he was going - said Hawaii, to see what it was like, as he thought he should know.  I recognised his name written on each of the two surfboards that appeared to be all of his luggage.  Goodness knows if he had an adult wait around for him somewhere - we were both using a particular table because it had a power plug next to it.