A story of two little pigs and their travels

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

After the hustle and bustle of a city that never sleeps (aka New York), we carried on with our travels to a much more relaxed part of the world, however just as expensive - Boston, Massachussets. We arrived in Boston with the shocking fact that our hostel was going to cost the same price as we had paid in NYC!

Boston

Boston is the home to Berklee, Harvard, MIT, etc, some of the most expenisve universities in America, and it is also home to some of the richest people in America. We could barely afford to eat out. Up until this point America had been relatively well-priced.

Even McDonalds was more expensive than the rest of the USA.

Boston is one of the most European looking cities in America. It reminded us of Melbourne, with lots of outdoor dining, old town houses and huge trees, like Collins St.

The streets of Boston

View of the city from the fountain

Quincy Market - not really a market but had great teriyaki chicken

Boston has the oldest underground train network in America. However what was bizzare is that half of the subway consists of trams that are underground and then the other, newer half is a train network. Seeing trams travelling underground was slightly strange.

The subway train and the subway tram. This disabled guy had to drag himself up the tram himself whithout help from a subway worker who just shouted at him.

By the river

This is an ice-skating rink in winter. In summer it is a wading pool.

Jetstar jump on the pier at Boston

Candice couldn't be bothered jumping

A view of the docks

View of the city from the pier

In case you wanted to explore

Springfield

Springfield is home to Peter Pan Bus Lines

After Boston we caught a bus to Springfield, Massechusetts. It was a Sunday and was the end of the 4th of July long weekend. This meant that there was 500 or more people trying desperately to catch a bus from Boston back to NYC. The problem again with Greyhound is similar to that of the American airlines - there is no cap on how many people can book a seat! As they had well and truly overbooked, the "first-come-first-serve" rule of Greyhound was in full force and many people were desperately trying to fight their way onto a bus. We were super thankful that we weren't trying to get back to NYC that day and instead travelling onto Springfield.

A view of the Springfield skyline

It was almost as if we were catching a bus to see the Simpsons

Waiting at the crowded bus station in Boston

We stayed a couple of nights with Nat's friend Laura who lives in Agawam, a town just outside of Sprinfield. Springfield is known for two things -it is where basketball was invented and where Dr Suess is from. Other than that, there is not much to it. The surrounding suburbs and towns are beautiful though - it was our first experience of the US countryside. Springfield is only minutes from the border of the state of Connecticut so we ventured over there for a peek as well.

Nat and Laura enjoy some awesome Springfield icecream

We went to Wal Mart in Enfield, Connecticut

We visited the Basketball Hall of Fame

A farm in Connecticut

Hartford, the Capital of Connecticut

Return to New York

After a few days in Massechusetts, we returned to the Big Apple to catch a flight to Montreal in Canada. That night we met up with Nat's friend Laurice who he had known years ago back in Sabah, Malaysia.

Laurice took us out for an amazing meal at Quality Meats, one of NYC's top steakhouses. Suffice it to say that it was incredible. Nat had a massive steak while Candice had steak with blueberry sauce. We also met one of Laurice's friends, Jene, who is a broadway singer and actress.

Jene, Candice, Laurice and Nat at Quality Meats

This is how good it was

Candice and Jene

Nat hungting for his main course

After dinner, we celebrated our last night in NYC by going to Japas 27, a Japanese karaoke bar. We had a chance to belt out some oldies and even Candice had a go. A great night out to end a great leg of our trip.

The girls at karaoke

The next day we flew our of La Guardia Airport to Montreal, the first stop on the Canadian leg of our trip.

For more photos of this leg of our trip, go to:-

Boston:- http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=44324&l=02573&id=681501850

Springfield:- http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=44327&l=78eb5&id=681501850

New York, New York!

Manhattan as viewed from Brooklyn

Next stop after Philly was New York City. After the not so good experience on Greyhound, we were happy to be catching the Amtrak train from Philly to NYC. It was a much more enjoyable ride!

New York City was everything we had hoped it would be. The hostel we were staying at was located on 103rd and Broadway. This meant that it was further out from the downtown area, yet close to Central Park. It was also very residential and reminded us a lot of Seseme Street! High rise living, with children playing in local playgrounds together becuase they don't have their own backyards. Although this was really novel, we are still both thankful that we have the space in Australia to have backyards!

View of Harlem, which was not too far from our hostel

Two little pigs exploring NYC

The subway was also amazing and we were easily able to get from one place to another, although as expected it was absolutely filthy and very hot!

View of the subway

So our adventures in NYC started with a nice walk through the local neighbourhood our hostel was located in and then a strole through Central Park. Central Park is really the only green looking part of the highly urbanised city. Many New Yorkers escape to Central Park to go jogging, cycling, pram pushing, picknicking and even sun bathing. The movie Enchanted is set in New York City and in one scene they are singing and dancing in Central Park, so we looked out for the famous sights that are found in that movie.

Central Park

This is the bridge that the prince jumps off in Enchanted, only to be hit by cyclists

Us in Central Park. Apparently the building in the background is the Dakota Building, where John Lennon was killed.

After exploring Central Park, we moved on to the rest of the city. We discovered well-known places like Trump Towers, Madison Square Garden, Columbus Circle and waited in a very long line to go up the Empire State Building. The view from the top was amazing and well worth the wait.

Madison Square Garden

Trump Tower

The iconic New York cab

The Empire State Building

Various views of Manhattan from the Empire State Building - Downtown, Uptown and Midtown

The Chrysler Building

Ahhh, to be a pidgeon in New York City

We ventured on to Times Square which was an amazing overload of shinny, lit up, advertisements. Consumerism at its best. But really it was incredible, and kinda smaller that we thought it would be. While we were hanging out in Times Square I (Candice) also stole a snap shot with the NYPD!!

Times Square

A pig and two pigs. But really, they were lovely.

Even McDonalds was lit up

As we were in NYC for the 4th of July, American Independence Day, we decided to crack it out and go on a 4th of July New York City tour. This invloved an amazing 12 hours of walking around the city checking out places like Brooklyn Heights, The Brooklyn Bridge, Ground Zero (where 9/11 happened), Wall Street, The Statue of Liberty and some of the oldest buildings in NYC. Our tour guide was on fire! He was a retired local New Yorker, who had lived there all his life and had more energy than all of us in his tour group! We finished the tour off with mediochre fire works, (the Disneyland fireworks were so much more incredible) and then some famous New York pizza.