Day 49 Monday 6th October, New York City to Dallas

Sitting in Dallas/ Fort Worth Airport at Tigin Irish Pub enjoying a Smithwicks Ale, but let’s go back to this morning.

We had organised to get the Dharma Suites (where we were staying) car to take us to La Guardia Airport, prearranged they are booked to pick us up at 9:30 am even though our flight wasn’t until 1pm we wanted to allow plenty of time. At 9:50 am the car hadn’t arrived so Maritta rang to find out what was happening. After a few minutes they rang back to say the car (and driver) was stuck in the tunnel and was 20 minutes away......@xss!//?, very bad form, and they hadn’t bothered to ring us.....   Anyway, after a bit of confusion they organised a local taxi to pick us up and the driver did an excellent job getting us to La Guardia by 10:50am, (an F1 driver in the making) - 10mminutes earlier than we had initially planned.

Boarded the Spirit Air flight to Dallas Fort Worth, plane was a bit old and the seats uncomfortable but it got us there. Old baggage carousel wasn’t really big enough for the crowd but found our bags eventually. Then we had to find the way from terminal E to D to find QANTAS, this place is huge and very spread out.  We eventually found the inter terminal bus, then we had to find check in etc. etc.

Relaxing now with my second beer, flight leaves at about 9.15 pm

(Sorry, no photo's today although Maritta did get a couple of New York at sunrise shots for the album)

Day 48 Sunday 5th October, New York City

Unlike yesterday - it is a beautiful day today in New York. We took the ferry across and after a short walk found a cab to take us to near Times Square. 

Times Square, excellent place for a cup of tea and people watching.

Maritta wanted to visit the Pandora shop to get something New York for her bracelet and also Starbucks for NY Mugs for the collection. Took us a while but we finally found the Pandora store eventually with some help from a friendly local shop keeper.

Sunday street vendors near Times Square

She then convinced me that as we used the GoPro video camera a lot these days we should look at updating it. We found a camera store that looked good and found a very friendly and helpful salesman. We discovered that the GoPro 4 was available and they offered it to us at a very good discount even though it was more than we had intended to spend. Probably a bad idea but we then asked him about those tiny projectors we had seen around and were so impressed we bought that too!  Dale is wrapped - a boy and his electronic toys!

Batman was available for photo opportunities, there is a sign saying you don't have to pay them but most people do.

After the effort at the camera store I couldn’t really complain when Maritta wanted to go clothes shopping at Macey’s and found all sorts of stylish new clothes that suited. We probably would have shopped more but knew that luggage could easily be a problem.

Yes, its an odd photo, Macy's has escalators that are made of timber, even the treads (at least some of them are)

She also took me into “Victoria’s Secret" just so we could say we had been there. After this, and a bit more walking we eventually caught a cab back to the pier.

More people in costume around Times Square.

Time to go home and pack for our trip home starting tomorrow morning.  Leaving New York and flying to Dallas.  Not looking forward to the packing!!!!

Day 47 Saturday 4th October, New York City

Woke up to find it raining so we decided to stay dry and indoors.  We had a quiet time catching up with emails, reading, rearranged packing and a little house keeping etc.

Around lunch time it started to clear up so we decided to give it a go and took the ferry over to WFC World Financial Centre (the only one that runs on the weekend) and then started walking towards “uptown”.

New York skyscrapers disappear into the clouds as we reach the ferry terminal

Interesting way to solve parking problems.  Stack and rack them.

This took us through the areas of Tribeca and then up West Broadway through SOHO, where Maritta couldn’t resist some shopping, actually, to be fair we needed an extra suitcase, which has now been road tested through the streets of New York and appears to have passed.

Pick your own herbs in the community garden in Soho.

From here we went through Washington Square, then Union Square, through the University district and then through the Flat Iron District.

Famous odd shaped building in the "Flat Iron District" in which Cary Grant was a lift operator
before hitting the big time.

Whilst near here we found a huge Halloween and Costume Store and Maritta was inside for so long I thought it had swallowed her, and apparently it nearly did as at one point she couldn’t find the door.

More walking and we found ourselves outside the Empire State building so took the opportunity to visit. We decided to spare no expense and pay for the express ticket which was money well spent as it means you bypass all the queues and get priority treatment up to the 84^th floor Observation Deck. From here it was still crowded but not too bad up to the 102nd floor,

View from the 84th floor of the Empire State Building

Lights of Times Square from floor 102 (1250 feet in the air)

Another view from ESB.

The view is spectacular and we seem to have timed it perfectly because it was still light on the 84^th floor and then dark with all the lights of the city by the time we got to the top on the 102nd floor..

The photo's really don't do the view justice - it is amazing!

After finding our way back out again we caught a cab back to the Pier for the ferry home, the 4 or so miles we had walked today was quite enough..

(Our apologies for some of the photo's today, we only had our phone)

Not sure why you need 2 bathrooms when there is only one bedroom and at $2.52M it makes Melbourne property prices almost fade into insignificance.

Day 46 Friday 3rd October, New York City

Had a bit of a sleep in today as we have figured out the ferries.  We caught the Ferry to the bottom of Wall St (Pier 11) this morning so we could go for a river cruise on the “Hornblower” (which is part of our Bus ticket).

The boat was standing room only which was a annoying, especially with the bus loads of Chinese tourists trying to push you out of the way both in the queue and on the boat railing.  Anyway, we did manage to get some good photo’s of the Statue of Liberty.

Fort Worth on Governors Island

Statue - the famous lady

Manhattan Skyline from Hudson River

After this we walked up Wall St through the Financial District and then along Broadway for a short way till we got back on the bus for a tour through Brooklyn.

Maritta wanted to touch the "Bowling Green Bull" in the Financial District
along with what seemed to be thousands of other tourists (see below).

What it actually looked like before I got lucky with the above picture

Brooklyn is becoming the place to be and be seen these days and in some parts rent is more expensive than in Manhattan.  A 1 Bedroom apartment can cost upwards of $2,000 per month or more to rent.

Archway in Brooklyn

After the Brooklyn tour we walked back through the 9/11 monument and then eventually back to the ferry for home.  Left over Pizza for sinner tonight.

There are many excellent street performers in the City (need to loo closely).  All street performers are interviewed and must pass through considerable hoops before they are permitted to take to the streets.

9/11 Memorial - very sombre and respectful. 
They don't even allow smoking anywhere near the memorial - we saw it being enforced.

View of the sailing ships in the Harbour from our apartment - the sun is shining today.

Day 45 Thursday 2nd October, New York City

OK, New York is definitely seriously mad (no offence to any New Yorkers who happen to stumble across this)

Working mice waiting for the Ferry across in New Jersey

First sight of of the lady - Statue of Liberty

Today we braced ourselves for New York City (NYC) and caught the ferry across the Hudson to New York City and walked down to Battery Point.  We had done some research and found the Big Bus Tours route which had a stop here (the same Hop On/ Hop Off company we had used in Washington - and has a 10% reduction for previous business - yay!

New York skyline - panorama from New Jersey ferry slip.

Discovered that tickets for the big bus tours where only available at stop 1 but the conductor let us on as we had our Washington tickets with us, this meant we covered about half the Downtown route and then bought our tickets (10% off).

Traffic in New York apparently worse than normal and the usual 2 hour downtown trip took over three hours!!  The guide was quite over it when we reached Times Square.

The building on the left in Times Square doesn't have anything in the bottom 30 or so floors as they make enough money from the neon advertising signs fixed to the building!

New York traffic madness.

Went passed Penn Station, New York, at one point and discovered we made the right choice by mistake yesterday by getting off in Newark.

8,000 buses a day leave the central bus terminus in Times Square

We then got on the Uptown route it took us into the “quieter” part of the city around Central Park and then through Harlem.  Returning to Times Square we got back on the Downtown route and completed the circle. We had hoped to be back in time to do the River Cruise but were too late, perhaps tomorrow.

We then caught the ferry back to New Jersey for the night.  Had pizza tonight - it was great but it was HUGE! enough for tomorrows dinner.

p.s. Dale is not enjoying this part of the trip.  The masses of people, traffic everywhere it is all over-whelming for him.  I absolutely love it.  There is a "buzz" here that cannot be articulated - it is amazing.  I am walking the streets with the biggest smile on my face.  I have not problem with coming back - not sure about Dale. 

Famous singing naked Cowboy (zoom may be revealing!)

A few odd signs as well

Sachs window, they take the mannequins to the basement every single night so their clothes can't be stolen - they are values at around $10,000 per mannequins depending on the accessories.

Strawberry Fields section of Central Park, named in honour of John Lennon who was shot just adjacent to here.