I rolled up at La Guardia airport on Monday morning, 9am, bleary eyed and a bit unsure of myself. In typical fashion, I hadn’t really made any arrangements with my family for how, when and where they would pick me up from, all the information they had was my flight times. Somehow though, we managed to come together, and we embarked upon a full day’s sight-seeing. At this point, I had already been up for something like 36 hours, so I wasn’t really on top of things!
We visited Central Park which was a really nice place to be, beautiful surroundings, amazing scenery, and we decided to take one of the ‘famous’ horse and carriage tours around the park. What promised to be a remember-forever experience turned out not to be, and I won’t remember it for two main reasons.
1) It was pretty lame! We mostly drove up and down roads, and our guide was on the phone to someone, only turning round every once in a while to tell us “Thees ees where you can play chess” in a romanian/czech accent.
2) I fell asleep.
Obviously, by this point, I was approaching 40 hours without sleep and it was beginning to take it’s toll on me! We ate dinner at the slightly more impressive ‘Planet Hollywood’ restaurant in Times Square, and it was good. We continued to do all the tourist-y stuff in NYC for the next few days...the Empire states building was great, Rockerfeller centre, Statueof Liberty boat cruise, Grand Central Station etc...All of it well worth doing if you find yourself in New York.
We spent a day at a shopping outlet about an hour out of New York City and it was just painful. Anyone who’s been shopping with me can attest to the fact that it jsut doesn’t work well with me, so when I found myself in a massive retail outlet, I did a quick calculation: Matt + 200 plus shops + a whole day = a nightmare. Anyway, I survived the experience with nothing more than a few cuts and bruises, and even bought a nice pair of earphones for my ipod to make the whole experience go quicker!
A day spent in Washington probably wasn’t enough, but we saw plenty of things, including btoh Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials, the monolith, the white house, the capitol building, the aerospace museum amongst others. However my favourite place of the day to visit strangely enough was the union train station, simply because it had the most amazing food court below it!!! As well as the amazing architecture and so on and so forth.
All in all, plenty to do in New York and Washington, probably needs more time than we can give it though...plus it helps if you stay awake!
Oh, and yes, the tattoo was a spray-on, lasted for 7 glorious days and then faded away! I have no intentions of getting a permanent one!!!
4 comments:
I must educate you in the art of shopping. It's so easy to pick up. Trust me, it's the only thing I've got a qualification in!!! Pleased you're having a good time. Love to everyone. x
now you've started me singing "start spreading the news...." Is union station the one with a cinema underneathit too? I think alan and i have been there!
Shopping remains an undiscovered frontier for me I'm afraid. And I think it should stay that way, especially as a soon-to-be student!
That is indeed the one Alison, it's an awesome place isn't it!! x
While your carriage driver most certainly should NOT have been on the phone while driving, please know that the carriages are only allowed to use the roadways that go through Central Park, as opposed to the sidewalks or grass areas. You WERE inside the park! Every road in Central Park was designed specifically for carriages to use in the 19th century.
Many passengers prefer to sit back, relax, talk amongst themselves (or get romantic)and take in the ride with no "guided tour." But your driver should have offered one, and it would have perfectly fine if you had requested one. Many drivers wait for the passengers to indicate that they want to be "talked to".
From the sweeping vista across the Sheep's Meadow to the stunning skyline of 5th & 59th to the statuary and the Pond, I'm sure you saw the beauty of Central Park! Try and make those sights the good memory.
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