So I arrived in New York safe and sound – a bit later than expected due to the gridlock on the highway but really, like I was in a hurry. Found the hotel I was staying at, the Chelsea Star on 30th & 8th (which I can recommend if you’re looking for somewhere cheap and central in NYC, by the way – around $100 USD or less a night for a room with a shared bathroom. Clean, bug free and walking distance to everywhere. Oh, and free wireless for when your laptop isn’t broken. Hard to argue really, when anywhere else is twice the price or more).

As usual I figured that walking was the best way to see the city, so wandered the 30 blocks or so up to Central Park and then spent the rest of the afternoon and evening there, following a walking tour that was printed in the good ol’ Lonely Planet. I’d seen a little of this 840 acre behemoth last time I was in NYC, but saw a lot more of it this time round. It really is an awesome place to have in the middle of Manhattan, and well worth taking a few hours to check out if you’re there. I think I saw most of the major attractions in the park except for Strawberry Fields – I was on my way there when the apocalypse hit.

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Well the inevitable has happened when it comes to computers … the hard drive in my trusty old laptop seems to have given up the ghost. Bit hard to fix when you’re on the road, so barring some kind of magical ressurection, blog updates will probably be few and far between for at least the next couple of weeks until I get back to Melbourne. Might be able to have a crack at fixing it in Seattle, but I doubt it.

In other news, New York has been fantastic, and I’m off to Boston this morning for a few days. I’ve been doing a good amount of sightseeing, a lot of walking (yeah I know, you’re surprised by that) and a decent amount of drinking to compensate for any calories I might have used up (and I’m sure you’re even more surprised by that…).

Take care out there…

After the madness and exhaustion of the last few weeks, slowing the pace down a bit seemed like a damn fine idea – I suspect that I may have collapsed in a heap on the ground and possibly had a big tantrum otherwise.  So the last few days have been a lot more relaxed, which has been great.

I took a few hours to do some shopping the other day – well, that’s not entirely true.  I took an hour or two to buy a few bits and pieces that I needed (including a US mobile, as my other one has well and truly died now) … and then spent the next couple of hours at the Irish pub that I talked about in the last blog post.  Does it make me a bad person that I get a strange sense of satisfaction from sitting under an an umbrella at a  bar, reading a magazine, drinking beer and watching the rest of the world doing that ‘working’ thing that I’ve heard so much about?  Oh well, so be it I guess…

Not quite so much walking today, but still a good amount in the heat – just to give my stumps (formerly my feet) a bit more of a workout.  In case they needed it.  Dearne again gave us a map with the highlights listed and dropped us into downtown DC, this time outside the Capitol building. We were reasonably early (around 9am) but the queue was already long to get tickets for the canned tour, and given that neither of us had any interest in standing in the sun for ages (it was already bloody hot), we made do with photos of the outside.  Apparently the tour is pretty limited now after 9/11, so although it would have been nice to see inside, I think I’ll survive…

Realising that most of the museums etc didn’t open til 10, we  checked out the Smithsonian castle and gardens, which is pretty attractive from the outside – and really not attractive at all on the inside.

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Up bright and early and even managed a run with Dearne (yeah yeah I know, second run in a month … I’m really doing well with this exercise regime).  It was sight-seeing day today, just for something a bit different, so tour-guide Dearne marked out a route for us to follow on the map and dropped us downtown for several hours of hot sweaty goodness.

First stop was the Jefferson Memorial, which in some ways was the most impressive of the various buildings and memorials that we saw throughout the day.  It’s modelled on the Parthenon in Rome and (compared to some of the other ones) is relatively understated.

We wandered round the Tidal Basin (with loads of cherry blossom trees that are apparently pretty spectacular in the spring), had some lunch which watching people trying to boil themselves in paddle boats on the river, then walked through the FDR memorial which  seemed to be full of some wonderful sentiments about the roles and responsibilities of the people in power, those they govern and the place of the US on the international stage.  It’s not far from the White House at all … I wonder if a certain Mr G. Bush walks through there on occasion.  If not, he should.  And that’s all I have to say about that.

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