We woke on our final day knowing that it was going to be a long one, we had a good breakfast at our favourite spot, my pancakes were good and Julia ate fruit. We returned to the hotel and completed our packing. We then checked out leaving our luggage with the porter for $1 per bag. The airport shuttle was due at 2.45pm and that gave us plenty of time to catch our flight at 18.05 but with the time difference working against us we would arrive in Heath Row at 06.25 the following morning. I checked out without incident and we set off to Madison Square Garden by foot.
We had timed it excellently, there was a tour setting off within ten minutes of us finding the booking desk. We were escorted by an older man who seemed at first to be a bit jaded about his job but he did warm up to us as things progressed. The party was about twenty strong consisting of various ages and nationalities. The whole tour was vastly impressive: we started several floors up in a sizable concert hall only to be told that this one sat directly above the main arena. We then were taken to a corporate box, which was very high up and commanded an excellent but distant view of whatever event was taking place. The terms on which these boxes were sold seemed to me to be exploitative of anyone rich enough to consider them: they could only be rented for one or three years but you had to pay a price which reflected that the box would then be yours for all events at the Garden. There are more performances at the garden than days of the year so unless you see it as a quirky and expensive place to live, it must be near impossible to get full value from the rental.
A fortunate friend of mine was touring the Garden some years ago when there was an NBA match on and they were allowed into an empty box briefly and he had the, to me, priceless experience of watching Michael Jordan’s last appearance in New York.
The seats that would be courtside in terms of basketball seemed more suited to real sports fans albeit rich ones as you buy your season ticket for particular sports. The garden hosts the New York Knicks (Men’s Basketball), the New York Rangers (Men’s Ice Hockey) and the Liberty Ladies Basketball teams. It also hosts many college and high school basketball championships and finals. There are also an array of boxing and wrestling events, and our guide noted that there is a statue of Joe Gans an old time boxer. The tradition has grown up that the fighters rub his outstretched glove for luck on their way to the ring, which works 50% of the time. The bronze of the glove is worn pale with this process. There are also many concerts and shows featuring the most famous in the entertainment business. Notable fact; the Garden is the only venue in the world where all four Beatles have performed solo, incidentally they never performed there together. It was at an Elton John concert at the Garden where John Lennon made his final public appearance, when he was invited up from the audience and he sang several numbers with Elton John, this was days before his murder.
We were in a members bar noting the famous faces in various sports and entertainment photographs, when we saw an old friend, Billy Singleton, who had played for St Johns University in New York was, with another guy, lifting his college coach shoulder high after a notable win. I’m sure someone reading this will be thinking “Small world” but to balance that there were hundreds of other photos and the people in them were either very famous or completely unknown to me, and nobody says “big world”. When we pointed out our connection to the picture, that Billy played for several British basketball teams, to our guide he clearly knew his history and the fact that he is now back at St Johns on their coaching staff.
As we were touring in August the Garden is given over to concerts as basketball and ice hockey are out of season, the main arena was bare except for a very basic stage.
We were shown both home locker rooms, basketball has a very tall door while ice hockey has a very broad door. They are otherwise pretty much identical, very well appointed and suited to people who earn in an evening more than normal people do in a year. In the Knicks’s locker room we were shown a pair of size 23 basketball boots which were left there as a visual aid to help people imagine the size of these guys. Apparently the basketball players only use their shoes for two or three games before they are broken down and no longer give the required support. In some ways the most impressive thing was a notice stating that the locker room had to be open to the press 10 minutes after the game, I doubt that will be introduced into soccer over here anytime soon.
We were told how long it took for the court crews to put the basketball floor over the ice; it was hours rather than days so it was possible for basketball to be played the day after ice hockey. The only event that disrupted the ice hockey was the annual dog show which takes place in February, apparently the dogs can sense the ice through a floor and they wouldn’t go on it so the ice was removed for the duration of the show and the Rangers had an extended road trip at that point of their season.
Strangely our guide showed no interest in a tip at the end of our tour and we found ourselves heading out into the merchandising area, the reductions on the various team wear was impressive, about $10 for most things but you can’t make yourself a fan just on the basis of price.
We were nearing our appointment with our shuttle bus so we picked up two flat bread sandwiches from the guy who had baked them at the deli and went to the hotel where we waited in the lounge. We were congratulating ourselves on a better choice in terms of travelling hotel to airport than we had from airport to hotel but we had not met our driver.
We boarded the mini-bus and picked up a few more passengers from other local hotels. There were a couple in the bus before us but they neither spoke to us nor moved closer together to allow a third person to sit with them on a bench seat. Sometimes the small examples of selfishness are most annoying, then again they had been driven to our hotel from theirs and they may have been catatonic with fear. There are rules about New York driving that we had not learnt since our only car travel had been a late night taxi and the tour double-deckers. I’m gathering these rules from our trip to the airport. Firstly you must change lanes every 30 seconds regardless of other road-users, if signs direct you to your destination, ignore them it could be a trap, any sign with a number on it is the minimum not a maximum speed, if you vehicle does not require disinfecting after the passengers are removed you are some kind of sissy, the only controls to be used are the accelerator, steering wheel and horn. There may be other rules that my terror mercifully has not allowed me to remember, suffice it to say we arrived at the airport grateful to be still breathing, the sign in the vehicle said, “If you are impressed with the driver please tip him”, the man must be of independent means or he has another career as a stock car racer.
This time our check in was automated, we swiped a passport, the computer recognised us and asked if we were still travelling together, we swiped the other passport to confirm that we were and strangely, against all precedents, it allocated us two seats together. We took the printouts to the baggage desks and we were relieved of our luggage and allowed to set off air-side. We stopped to eat our flat-bread sandwiches before tackling the security procedure.
On this occasion I was the dolt who set off the metal detector having failed to remove my loose change and keys from my trouser pocket, this did not earn me the cavity search that I wish on anyone slowing up the process when I am behind them. The guy accepted it was an honest mistake, held my offending metal, and allowed me to nip through the device again, no problem this time!
We settled ourselves in the lounge at the stated gate but we were delayed. They replaced the flight with a rerouted plane and gave us a new flight time of only one hour late. Julia and I were sitting in a bar making our final beer in the USA last when the cabaret arrived, the Three Blondes, they were lady passengers travelling to London, delayed as we were. I can only assume the metal detector has no silicon setting or they would have never got through. Anyway if there is any intimate detail of their lives which they consider private it must be very personal, judging by all I overheard from twenty feet away. It did pass the time and, in due course, we were embarked on the new flight.
The flight was uneventful, Julia watched, “What Happens in Vegas” (2008) in the hope of seeing some of Las Vegas where we had stayed, good news – there were a lot of sights in New York which she recognised, bad news – nothing much of Vegas and it turned out to be one of the world’s worst movies.
Several hours and two airline meals later we landed in London Heath Row, we wasted some considerable time watching the same bags circulate on the baggage reclaim carousel, while those with foreign passports were still in the immigration lines, before someone had the original thought to throw some more luggage on, thankfully this included ours. We escaped the airport got a shuttle to the hotel where the car was still parked and we headed north and home.
Monday, 15 September 2008
Sunday, 7 September 2008
New York, New York. (19th Aug)
This was our day without bus transport but we had pretty much exhausted that anyway. After breakfast later than usual we took the subway uptown towards the Central Park area. We purchased a new metro card at the ticket window, wanting four $2 journeys we were surprised to get $3 change from a $10, but the lady nodded when we pointed it out.
We travelled on a new and well–appointed train with the helpful station indicator telling us we had arrived at our expected destination. We left the subway and shortly after realised our mistake. We had travelled parallel to our intended route and were, because of that, on the wrong side of Central Park. Once we knew what we had done there was little real problem we reversed our itinerary, and did Central Park before the Natural History Museum.
Central park is huge but we navigated ourselves across it successfully. We passed the boating lake and refused a balloon ride to view the park from above and also a student driven rickshaw ride. Surrounded by the city we found the park busy with people but quiet. The exercise culture meant that the most frequent traffic was racing cycles followed by people on roller blades. There was some dog walking and fathers and sons playing catch but we never came upon any organized sporting areas.
We followed signs to Strawberry Fields where there is a monument on the floor to John Lennon in the shape of the peace symbol; it is tended every day by someone who outlines it in fresh flowers. There was a sizable crow round it in a respectful silence. We paid our respects and came out of the park close by.
We were where we had intended to be earlier and we entered the Natural History Museum. It was very impressive, and huge. The displays were mainly in the form of tableaux of stuffed animals behind strong plate glass. Most of these were at least the size of a medium room and were built in to the sides of large, sometimes two storey, galleries.
Most of the exhibits were credited as gifts from named benefactors, some of whom had endowed whole galleries. It was quickly apparent that their gifts were the products of their big game hunting holidays, and when they had massacred a game parks worth of wildlife they perhaps thought along the lines: “Not enough room left on the library wall, we’ll give them to the museum so that poor people can look at them.”
There were themes to each gallery, African Wildlife, American Wildlife, Maritime Wildlife, including a full sized whale, and so on. There were also modern galleries devoted to the formation of the Earth and the like, Julia found these fascinating as it fitted her interest in Geology, these galleries were much more “hands on” and indeed there were parties of school kids going round supervised by teachers and what seemed to be museum staff.
It was with a little concern that we set out to find the Plains Indian Exhibit as, having seen the stuffed animals and knowing the number of Indians that had been murdered over the years; we were half expecting tableaux of stuffed Native Americans. It was more politically correct than that, the full size Indians were models and their way of life was well displayed with artifacts and captions. My remembrance of Western Films was confounded by there being little or no mention of the tribal names that I remembered the likes of John Wayne taking on.
We decided to take lunch in the museum with the intention of continuing our forage through the exhibits after eating. Lunch was pleasant but after we felt that we needed a break from sightseeing so we left the museum and set off to take the subway back to the hotel.
We figured out a route back which involved one change of line, but when we got off at the intersecting station we could only catch a train in the wrong direction on the new line. We were just discovering this and therefore deciding to leave the station to rejoin the underground nearby at the cost of another $2 each when a guy working there intervened. He confirmed our problem but then offered the obvious solution; get on the train in the wrong direction, get off after one stop and change platforms there. Just as we were feeling stupid enough he asked where we were trying to get to and then gave us a better route to end up nearer the hotel. We thanked him for his help and he replied, “It’s my city and I want you to enjoy it.”
Back at the hotel we booked our airport transfer for the following day and found that we could leave our luggage with the porter for $1 a bag after we checked out; thus preparing us for our final day.
In the evening we went out to eat, again referring to the list provided by the hotel. The decision was Italian and the first recommended place we came to was busy, a good sign, so we went in. The head waiter told us they were full but they could sit us in the wine bar and we could order from the same menu. This seemed good of them and we ate well but at the top end of the prices we had paid in the city.
We travelled on a new and well–appointed train with the helpful station indicator telling us we had arrived at our expected destination. We left the subway and shortly after realised our mistake. We had travelled parallel to our intended route and were, because of that, on the wrong side of Central Park. Once we knew what we had done there was little real problem we reversed our itinerary, and did Central Park before the Natural History Museum.
Central park is huge but we navigated ourselves across it successfully. We passed the boating lake and refused a balloon ride to view the park from above and also a student driven rickshaw ride. Surrounded by the city we found the park busy with people but quiet. The exercise culture meant that the most frequent traffic was racing cycles followed by people on roller blades. There was some dog walking and fathers and sons playing catch but we never came upon any organized sporting areas.
We followed signs to Strawberry Fields where there is a monument on the floor to John Lennon in the shape of the peace symbol; it is tended every day by someone who outlines it in fresh flowers. There was a sizable crow round it in a respectful silence. We paid our respects and came out of the park close by.
We were where we had intended to be earlier and we entered the Natural History Museum. It was very impressive, and huge. The displays were mainly in the form of tableaux of stuffed animals behind strong plate glass. Most of these were at least the size of a medium room and were built in to the sides of large, sometimes two storey, galleries.
Most of the exhibits were credited as gifts from named benefactors, some of whom had endowed whole galleries. It was quickly apparent that their gifts were the products of their big game hunting holidays, and when they had massacred a game parks worth of wildlife they perhaps thought along the lines: “Not enough room left on the library wall, we’ll give them to the museum so that poor people can look at them.”
There were themes to each gallery, African Wildlife, American Wildlife, Maritime Wildlife, including a full sized whale, and so on. There were also modern galleries devoted to the formation of the Earth and the like, Julia found these fascinating as it fitted her interest in Geology, these galleries were much more “hands on” and indeed there were parties of school kids going round supervised by teachers and what seemed to be museum staff.
It was with a little concern that we set out to find the Plains Indian Exhibit as, having seen the stuffed animals and knowing the number of Indians that had been murdered over the years; we were half expecting tableaux of stuffed Native Americans. It was more politically correct than that, the full size Indians were models and their way of life was well displayed with artifacts and captions. My remembrance of Western Films was confounded by there being little or no mention of the tribal names that I remembered the likes of John Wayne taking on.
We decided to take lunch in the museum with the intention of continuing our forage through the exhibits after eating. Lunch was pleasant but after we felt that we needed a break from sightseeing so we left the museum and set off to take the subway back to the hotel.
We figured out a route back which involved one change of line, but when we got off at the intersecting station we could only catch a train in the wrong direction on the new line. We were just discovering this and therefore deciding to leave the station to rejoin the underground nearby at the cost of another $2 each when a guy working there intervened. He confirmed our problem but then offered the obvious solution; get on the train in the wrong direction, get off after one stop and change platforms there. Just as we were feeling stupid enough he asked where we were trying to get to and then gave us a better route to end up nearer the hotel. We thanked him for his help and he replied, “It’s my city and I want you to enjoy it.”
Back at the hotel we booked our airport transfer for the following day and found that we could leave our luggage with the porter for $1 a bag after we checked out; thus preparing us for our final day.
In the evening we went out to eat, again referring to the list provided by the hotel. The decision was Italian and the first recommended place we came to was busy, a good sign, so we went in. The head waiter told us they were full but they could sit us in the wine bar and we could order from the same menu. This seemed good of them and we ate well but at the top end of the prices we had paid in the city.
Saturday, 6 September 2008
New York, New York. (17th Aug)
We got up and went round to the 28th Street Diner/Deli for breakfast; the one recommended by the hotel, it was truly amazing. There was every type of hot or cold food to eat in or go, there was a grocery section and upstairs there were PC’s available to log onto the internet. Everything was efficiently organized and in the centre of the establishment there was a large brick oven where between cooking breakfast orders there was a guy baking flat bread loaves about a yard long. These were split down the middle and used to make hot sandwiches at lunch time; we noted that for future information. This morning I had pancakes while Julia had a selection of fruit, everything was reasonably priced and the bonus was that the hot water on tap was in fact boiling so we were able to make good tea using it!
We stayed in contact with the rest of the world via email before setting off towards Times Square, where we planned to take the Uptown Loop using our 48 hour bus pass.
We queued with a family from Texas who wanted to embrace me as one of their own because I was habitually wearing my Texas Longhorns cap, which my daughter had brought me back from one of her trips. We admitted our origins but we still found it a pleasant experience talking to them, they had two kids who obviously found sight-seeing less enthralling than their parents but the behaved well throughout. Once on the bus we set off to see Harlem, Central Park, Dakota Building, Lincoln Centre and the Museum Mile. This time our tour guide was much more understated and became Julia’s favourite. He explained the way that tenement buildings had slowly changed to apartment blocks as the more affluent families decided to live in the city rather than outside of it. He was so interesting that I find I have far too many similar pictures of buildings where he must have explained differences that I can neither see nor remember now.
Before arriving at Central park we passed the Dakota Buildings where John Lennon had lived and indeed where he was murdered, his widow Yoko Ono still lives in the building. After we passed central park we were soon in Harlem, Julia and I wanted to see the public parks which have the reputation of being home to the best street basketball in the world but it was during the day and we didn’t even see baskets on street corners. The strange thing about Harlem was that its reputation for poverty seemed at odds with some of the wide avenues and large town-houses. There were many interesting points on the journey and we saw the site of several movie moments on the trip.
We returned from Harlem down the over side of Central park and we decided that the following day we would tackle the Museum of Natural History, having been told that one of the early curators had been the inspiration for Indiana Jones, and Central Park.
It was this guide who told us that the flat aspect of Manhattan was man-made, the hills had been flattened and the material removed had been used to fill in the valleys, he also remarked that the sky-scrapers were in Manhattan rather than other boroughs of New York because in Manhattan the soil layer was very thin before you encountered bedrock, which could be used to provide firm foundations.
At the end of the tour we were dropped off back in central Manhattan and bought ourselves a beer at Planet Hollywood, where we could not come up with a definitive list of the film stars who had created the chain of restaurants and bars. Ironically the beers were cheaper than many of the other places we had visited for that purpose. We were once again photographed on entry to the establishment, not as a security measure as you might think, but in the hope we would buy a picture of us in front of a choice of film backdrops.
We went from there to the Rockefeller Building. We had been advised to go up the Rockefeller rather than the Empire State because 1) the queues would be shorter and 2) our pictures would have the Empire State Building on them.
It was almost instant from getting our ticket to be going up 67 storeys in a lift. It was the fastest vertical journey you can get short of standing on a land mine. Before the lift we had been photographed as if sitting on a beam high above the New York buildings in the same style as the high-steel men eating their lunch. It was then that I mentioned to Julia that many of the early high-steel men were Native Americans; we were from then on looking out for any confirmation of this “fact”. It never came so I began to think it was an urban myth or something I had remembered from the episodes of Auf Wiedersehen Pet which had taken the cast to North America to transplant the Transporter Bridge from Middlesbrough to Arizona, which in turn they had made up. Research has since vindicated me but cannot explain the absence of any mention of the Mohawks of Manhattan.
The final two levels for viewing were achieved by stairs but they had the advantage of not looking through plate glass. From the highest viewing platform it was possible to see great distances and to pick out several of the previous Tallest Buildings in the World. It provided an amazing contrast to the Grand Canyon where anything man-made paled into insignificance against here where man had completely dominated nature. I looked in vein to spot the tennis courts and swimming pools that one of the guides had told us were on roofs but we did see lots of cultivated roof gardens.
We returned to ground level about 5.30pm and turned down the photo of us and the beam, by now I was convinced that when we caught our trans Atlantic flight home there would be copies of the pictures taken of us by immigration on our arrival with a background of our choice – it didn’t happen but I may have just inspired some enterprising official.
Breakfast had been satisfying but we had not eaten anything since so we decided on getting some tea before riding the bus again this time for the night tour. We stopped off in a restaurant/bar and ordered from their menu a ham sandwich for me while Julia chose tuna. When it arrived there were two very basic slices of bread held apart by easily three inches of filling, they were stabbed through with a cocktail stick which was barely long enough. We separated our sandwiches and made them manageable by removing over half of the filling, even then we were unable to consume the sandwich formed in full. When we asked for the bill our waiter returned with it and a box, which he used to pack up our wounded sandwiches. We paid and left with the box unsure if we would ever face eating the remainder of our meal.
Walking towards where the Night Tour had set off from the previous night we were accosted by touts selling Comedy Club tickets for later that night. We bought two tickets for $10 each and were given directions to the club for use later that night. While I took a walk Julia placed herself where the crowds were gathering for the night buses. In my absence a large black man set up camp at the pavement with a card table and a large collecting jar. He was collecting for the homeless and his voice boomed round the area to little affect, he did however get approached by several homeless people who asked for a hand out from him, he produced food from a bag below the table and gave it to the people, he also gave them a card directing them to his shelter. Having observed this and been impressed, Julia remembered the remains of our tea. She approached him and asked if he gave out food, he looked at her, decided that she clearly did not qualify for his help, and told her that he had none left! She corrected his misunderstanding and successfully got rid of our sandwiches; needless to say she also gave a cash donation.
The Night Loop left at 7.00pm and the light was just going so it made for some interesting photos. The tour guide was an out of work actor and we enjoyed his patter, we saw the Empire State building again, but the best bit was when we crossed the Manhattan Bridge into Brooklyn where we had not gone before. Julia and I saw a park where, using the street lights for illumination, there was a series of pick-up basketball games going strong. We also checked out the DUMBO district, it stands for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, which is where people could move to when they couldn’t afford Manhattan but as its popularity increased so did the prices. We missed a major photo opportunity when as we crossed the Manhattan Bridge, I was slow on the draw and didn’t manage to photograph the graffiti which covers the roofs and chimneys of the houses overlooked by the bridge, the mind-bending aspect was how it had been done; much of it had demanded serious climbing skills.
Anyway for us as well as you all these tours are becoming a bit similar so I’ll move on. We disembarked at Times Square again and found the Ha Comedy Club. Overall this was not one of our better ideas, but it was not as bad as it first appeared! We entered and found ourselves heading down, reception was dark and dingy, as was the guy working there, and it would be hard to imagine someone less impressed with the VIP passes we presented to him. Our passes were swapped for tickets and we sat in an even dirtier corridor, for mood there was the distinct, while faint, smell of urine. I felt less that we were waiting for a comedy show than for the next mugger to become available to deal with us.
Having thought we were waiting for the 9.00pm show we rechecked the ticket and found it was not until 9.30. Eventually we were joined by several other people, mainly, if not all, tourists. There were two other English parties, one a couple and the other a couple with their son. In due course we were ushered into a shabby area with a small, 6’ by 6’, platform and tables round it. We were front and centre, nearer to the mike than the acts at times.
We were now able to buy a drink, or perhaps we bought the building and got a free drink. The ticket bore the warning that there was a minimum of two drinks per person to be purchased.
The compare appeared and was by far the most polished performer we were going to see that night. He quickly picked out the young boy in the audience, and checked out his age. He was 14 but the right-on parents had no objection to being ridiculed for bringing him. I wondered about the sanity of their decision but…
The first act up was a young man who claimed to be a graduate of an Ivy League University, if true; he has the means to earn a living without comedy. He was nervous and lacked any impact; he had a slightly unconvincing beer bottle in his hand but never took a drink from it, so it came as little surprise to me when he offered to make it disappear. We watched him place it in a paper bag, turn the bag upside down, and announce unconvincingly that it had gone. We played our part by being skeptical, so he showed us again still without uproarious applause so petulantly he crumpled up the empty bag and indeed the bottle had disappeared. It was his high spot. He attempted to pick on the child and his English accent, “Oh that’s alright.” replied the right-on mother. Then he attempted another magic trick to finish. He took out a large envelope, and asked a random member of the audience, to name a celebrity, by chance it was the same random member of the audience that he had spoken to before the performance, I had noticed this while I was still expecting to be mugged. She, the RMOTA, named Cameron Diaz; she missed the greater comic potential of saying Mike Tyson and seeing him sort that out, which I hope I would have done in her position. He triumphantly revealed a baby picture and claimed it to be of Cameron Diaz. He was ready for the lack of enthusiasm in the audience but made us wait before he revealed the name of Cameron Diaz written on the back of the picture! He resented my lack of enthusiasm, and told me so but I deflected it by saying that I was stunned by his prodigious talent. I hope he doesn’t believe me because if he chases this particular dream the world is being robbed of an accountant or similar.
The next up was a woman who was worse than the starter but had more aggression about it; clearly it was entirely our fault that she was not funny. She tried some English accent comedy but right-on mother did it better and, I think, got more laughs. By the way dad was a lawyer and mum a house-wife, 14 year old was a school boy, and I still don’t know what they were doing there except giving permission to be mocked.
In the half-time break the waitress came round and demanded that we bought another drink as per contract, so we purchased the building again.
The next guy was older and more established, he still claimed to have a real job as a car salesman, but he did get laughs. The whole evening finished with the best comedian but he again seemed to bear a grudge towards the audience and he wasted too much energy trying to make us feel bad for not being in casualty having our sides sewn back together.
The whole experience was much inferior to Las Vegas but we survived. We caught a cab back to the hotel and never really noticed that we had missed an evening meal.
We stayed in contact with the rest of the world via email before setting off towards Times Square, where we planned to take the Uptown Loop using our 48 hour bus pass.
We queued with a family from Texas who wanted to embrace me as one of their own because I was habitually wearing my Texas Longhorns cap, which my daughter had brought me back from one of her trips. We admitted our origins but we still found it a pleasant experience talking to them, they had two kids who obviously found sight-seeing less enthralling than their parents but the behaved well throughout. Once on the bus we set off to see Harlem, Central Park, Dakota Building, Lincoln Centre and the Museum Mile. This time our tour guide was much more understated and became Julia’s favourite. He explained the way that tenement buildings had slowly changed to apartment blocks as the more affluent families decided to live in the city rather than outside of it. He was so interesting that I find I have far too many similar pictures of buildings where he must have explained differences that I can neither see nor remember now.
Before arriving at Central park we passed the Dakota Buildings where John Lennon had lived and indeed where he was murdered, his widow Yoko Ono still lives in the building. After we passed central park we were soon in Harlem, Julia and I wanted to see the public parks which have the reputation of being home to the best street basketball in the world but it was during the day and we didn’t even see baskets on street corners. The strange thing about Harlem was that its reputation for poverty seemed at odds with some of the wide avenues and large town-houses. There were many interesting points on the journey and we saw the site of several movie moments on the trip.
We returned from Harlem down the over side of Central park and we decided that the following day we would tackle the Museum of Natural History, having been told that one of the early curators had been the inspiration for Indiana Jones, and Central Park.
It was this guide who told us that the flat aspect of Manhattan was man-made, the hills had been flattened and the material removed had been used to fill in the valleys, he also remarked that the sky-scrapers were in Manhattan rather than other boroughs of New York because in Manhattan the soil layer was very thin before you encountered bedrock, which could be used to provide firm foundations.
At the end of the tour we were dropped off back in central Manhattan and bought ourselves a beer at Planet Hollywood, where we could not come up with a definitive list of the film stars who had created the chain of restaurants and bars. Ironically the beers were cheaper than many of the other places we had visited for that purpose. We were once again photographed on entry to the establishment, not as a security measure as you might think, but in the hope we would buy a picture of us in front of a choice of film backdrops.
We went from there to the Rockefeller Building. We had been advised to go up the Rockefeller rather than the Empire State because 1) the queues would be shorter and 2) our pictures would have the Empire State Building on them.
It was almost instant from getting our ticket to be going up 67 storeys in a lift. It was the fastest vertical journey you can get short of standing on a land mine. Before the lift we had been photographed as if sitting on a beam high above the New York buildings in the same style as the high-steel men eating their lunch. It was then that I mentioned to Julia that many of the early high-steel men were Native Americans; we were from then on looking out for any confirmation of this “fact”. It never came so I began to think it was an urban myth or something I had remembered from the episodes of Auf Wiedersehen Pet which had taken the cast to North America to transplant the Transporter Bridge from Middlesbrough to Arizona, which in turn they had made up. Research has since vindicated me but cannot explain the absence of any mention of the Mohawks of Manhattan.
The final two levels for viewing were achieved by stairs but they had the advantage of not looking through plate glass. From the highest viewing platform it was possible to see great distances and to pick out several of the previous Tallest Buildings in the World. It provided an amazing contrast to the Grand Canyon where anything man-made paled into insignificance against here where man had completely dominated nature. I looked in vein to spot the tennis courts and swimming pools that one of the guides had told us were on roofs but we did see lots of cultivated roof gardens.
We returned to ground level about 5.30pm and turned down the photo of us and the beam, by now I was convinced that when we caught our trans Atlantic flight home there would be copies of the pictures taken of us by immigration on our arrival with a background of our choice – it didn’t happen but I may have just inspired some enterprising official.
Breakfast had been satisfying but we had not eaten anything since so we decided on getting some tea before riding the bus again this time for the night tour. We stopped off in a restaurant/bar and ordered from their menu a ham sandwich for me while Julia chose tuna. When it arrived there were two very basic slices of bread held apart by easily three inches of filling, they were stabbed through with a cocktail stick which was barely long enough. We separated our sandwiches and made them manageable by removing over half of the filling, even then we were unable to consume the sandwich formed in full. When we asked for the bill our waiter returned with it and a box, which he used to pack up our wounded sandwiches. We paid and left with the box unsure if we would ever face eating the remainder of our meal.
Walking towards where the Night Tour had set off from the previous night we were accosted by touts selling Comedy Club tickets for later that night. We bought two tickets for $10 each and were given directions to the club for use later that night. While I took a walk Julia placed herself where the crowds were gathering for the night buses. In my absence a large black man set up camp at the pavement with a card table and a large collecting jar. He was collecting for the homeless and his voice boomed round the area to little affect, he did however get approached by several homeless people who asked for a hand out from him, he produced food from a bag below the table and gave it to the people, he also gave them a card directing them to his shelter. Having observed this and been impressed, Julia remembered the remains of our tea. She approached him and asked if he gave out food, he looked at her, decided that she clearly did not qualify for his help, and told her that he had none left! She corrected his misunderstanding and successfully got rid of our sandwiches; needless to say she also gave a cash donation.
The Night Loop left at 7.00pm and the light was just going so it made for some interesting photos. The tour guide was an out of work actor and we enjoyed his patter, we saw the Empire State building again, but the best bit was when we crossed the Manhattan Bridge into Brooklyn where we had not gone before. Julia and I saw a park where, using the street lights for illumination, there was a series of pick-up basketball games going strong. We also checked out the DUMBO district, it stands for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, which is where people could move to when they couldn’t afford Manhattan but as its popularity increased so did the prices. We missed a major photo opportunity when as we crossed the Manhattan Bridge, I was slow on the draw and didn’t manage to photograph the graffiti which covers the roofs and chimneys of the houses overlooked by the bridge, the mind-bending aspect was how it had been done; much of it had demanded serious climbing skills.
Anyway for us as well as you all these tours are becoming a bit similar so I’ll move on. We disembarked at Times Square again and found the Ha Comedy Club. Overall this was not one of our better ideas, but it was not as bad as it first appeared! We entered and found ourselves heading down, reception was dark and dingy, as was the guy working there, and it would be hard to imagine someone less impressed with the VIP passes we presented to him. Our passes were swapped for tickets and we sat in an even dirtier corridor, for mood there was the distinct, while faint, smell of urine. I felt less that we were waiting for a comedy show than for the next mugger to become available to deal with us.
Having thought we were waiting for the 9.00pm show we rechecked the ticket and found it was not until 9.30. Eventually we were joined by several other people, mainly, if not all, tourists. There were two other English parties, one a couple and the other a couple with their son. In due course we were ushered into a shabby area with a small, 6’ by 6’, platform and tables round it. We were front and centre, nearer to the mike than the acts at times.
We were now able to buy a drink, or perhaps we bought the building and got a free drink. The ticket bore the warning that there was a minimum of two drinks per person to be purchased.
The compare appeared and was by far the most polished performer we were going to see that night. He quickly picked out the young boy in the audience, and checked out his age. He was 14 but the right-on parents had no objection to being ridiculed for bringing him. I wondered about the sanity of their decision but…
The first act up was a young man who claimed to be a graduate of an Ivy League University, if true; he has the means to earn a living without comedy. He was nervous and lacked any impact; he had a slightly unconvincing beer bottle in his hand but never took a drink from it, so it came as little surprise to me when he offered to make it disappear. We watched him place it in a paper bag, turn the bag upside down, and announce unconvincingly that it had gone. We played our part by being skeptical, so he showed us again still without uproarious applause so petulantly he crumpled up the empty bag and indeed the bottle had disappeared. It was his high spot. He attempted to pick on the child and his English accent, “Oh that’s alright.” replied the right-on mother. Then he attempted another magic trick to finish. He took out a large envelope, and asked a random member of the audience, to name a celebrity, by chance it was the same random member of the audience that he had spoken to before the performance, I had noticed this while I was still expecting to be mugged. She, the RMOTA, named Cameron Diaz; she missed the greater comic potential of saying Mike Tyson and seeing him sort that out, which I hope I would have done in her position. He triumphantly revealed a baby picture and claimed it to be of Cameron Diaz. He was ready for the lack of enthusiasm in the audience but made us wait before he revealed the name of Cameron Diaz written on the back of the picture! He resented my lack of enthusiasm, and told me so but I deflected it by saying that I was stunned by his prodigious talent. I hope he doesn’t believe me because if he chases this particular dream the world is being robbed of an accountant or similar.
The next up was a woman who was worse than the starter but had more aggression about it; clearly it was entirely our fault that she was not funny. She tried some English accent comedy but right-on mother did it better and, I think, got more laughs. By the way dad was a lawyer and mum a house-wife, 14 year old was a school boy, and I still don’t know what they were doing there except giving permission to be mocked.
In the half-time break the waitress came round and demanded that we bought another drink as per contract, so we purchased the building again.
The next guy was older and more established, he still claimed to have a real job as a car salesman, but he did get laughs. The whole evening finished with the best comedian but he again seemed to bear a grudge towards the audience and he wasted too much energy trying to make us feel bad for not being in casualty having our sides sewn back together.
The whole experience was much inferior to Las Vegas but we survived. We caught a cab back to the hotel and never really noticed that we had missed an evening meal.
Wednesday, 3 September 2008
New York, New York. (17th Aug)
The following morning we got up, asked for somebody to sort out the TV in our room and set off to walk to Grand Central Station. In common with most of our hotels the Gershwin offered no breakfast but they had recommended a nearby deli and diner which we found and enjoyed later.
We were making our way on foot to Grand Central Station, which had been recommended highly by several people, when we encountered on Broadway a major police incident. There were uniformed officers on all four corners of the intersection at least five police vehicles and barriers closing the side roads. We were wondering what had happened right there to have such a large police presence when we noted similar numbers of blue uniforms and vehicles all the way down Broadway. The street was being closed for a parade. By the time we reached the floats in a side street, all participants decked out in Indian costumes and sets, not Native American but from the Indian sub-continent, we must have seen 200 policemen. New York claims rightly to have managed its crime problem clearly they are prepared to employ enough police to make the streets safe.
When we reached Grand Central station it was hugely impressive; we were blown away by the scale of everything and the architecture. The food court was excellent and all varieties of food were there, being less adventurous than some, Julia and I had breakfast type food since it was our first meal of the day. Julia had a croissant while I think I had a big peanut cookie both were washed down with hot chocolate. When we emerged from the station having purchased a good guidebook, following another recommendation, we saw a double decker bus. It was of the same company, Grays, which we had used in San Francisco, so we decided to sign up for it. There were many touts in the area selling the “hop on hop off” tickets for the bus and we signed up for the 48 hour ticket. This entitled us to four separate tours over two days with as many on and offs as we wished.
Having paid and signed up we boarded a bus which was on the Down Town Loop. This time the driver and guide were two separate people, the driver was a black woman, Miss Lucas, and the guide was an oriental man, who styled himself Mr. Yahoo Google, because he knew everything about New York and, by chance, he happened to be the most handsome tour guide in the city. How lucky could we get? It was a continuation of California in that everyone was after a tip, it was notable that the guide never checked the tickets of people getting on the bus because I surmise the more people on the bus the more possible tips?
The Downtown Tour took in Times Square, the Empire State Building, The Rockefeller Centre, Little Italy and the World Trade Centre site; it was basically a tour of all the various buildings that had claimed to be world’s tallest.
We departed the bus after several of the above in order to visit the site of the twin towers, Mr. Google briefed us on the best way to see the area and, to be fair, it was excellent advice.
We followed his directions past the side of the building site where the towers had been and entered the Winter Gardens building which had been badly damaged in the attack but has since been rebuilt. We went up to the second floor, which incidentally we would call the first floor, and looked over at the enormous area of building work. The small church, St Paul’s, stands in the corner of the area, relatively untouched by the destruction or rebuilding. There was something unreal about the situation; the normality of it all belied the devastation that had taken place. We walked out of the other side of the building which opened out onto the river and there were people eating and drinking seemingly without concern.
As we reentered the building there was a guy taking a tour round the Winter Gardens, it emerged that he was one of the rescue workers who now gives up his time to show parties round to help people understand the events of that fateful day. We tagged onto his party. He was nearing the end of the tour with only three stops left, only about two hundred yards in all but I hope I never forget what he told us about. He stopped the party in a broad lobby where the lifts to higher up the building opened their doors, here was a field mortuary, he explained, where recovered bodies and body-parts were laid in the hope of matching them to each other and a name. He, the most ordinary of men, had been part of dealing with that carnage and now could talk about it calmly. The next stop was another open area when he told us there had been temporary beds for the rescue workers to nap in when they reached the point of exhaustion. He said the greatest compliment to the rescuers was that the beds were never used. His final stop was at the American Express Memorial. The firm lost eleven of their workers on 9/11 and to commemorate them they had commissioned this memorial, it consists of an eleven sided pool at ground level with a 600lb crystal suspended above the centre, randomly from the roof, water drops into the pool like falling tears, and the names of the victims are engraved on each side of the pool with a few words given by their families. It was immensely moving to us. I thanked our guide for his tour and asked if doing it helped him, he said that it did very much and he thanked me for asking.
Leaving the Winter Gardens, which incidentally houses Deloitte where conceivably Sarah could have ended up, we walked up to St. Paul’s chapel. It is entirely open to the public and it is where many of the rescue workers found rest. The pews are still scarred by the worker’s equipment that they sometimes did not remove before falling asleep. It was also where people came to volunteer in the days after the destruction. The parishioners came and made hot meals and drinks, there were beds set up because some of the rescue workers were there for week after week. It was the spiritual home of the volunteer relief effort for eight months and became the focus for many of the messages of support from all over the world. It was the little things that struck home, as is so often the case, an exhibit noted that massage-therapists and chiropractors started appearing at the church to help the rescue workers get their equipment off and then to loosen them up so that they could sleep. Each day, volunteers changed the sheets and blankets and placed a stuffed animal on the pillows. They worked diligently to make sure the cots were always ready for tired workers.
I was reading these captions when a young girl standing next to me said to her companion, “My friend’s Dad is on a memorial at his fire-station in Brooklyn.” It brought the reality of the situation into sharp focus.
Standing so close to the Twin Towers and being left undamaged by the attack it is especially ironic to note that St. Paul's Chapel is Manhattan's oldest public building in continuous use.
We left the Ground Zero area very affected by it all, we debated going round the tribute centre but decided that we didn’t need it.
On our way to the next point of interest, Battery Park, and where we could reconnect with the down town loop, we stopped for lunch at a TGI Friday. For the first time on the holiday the service was poor, we had a big burger and an ice-cream between us, we eventually got served, but people were walking out before and after ordering. We waited another eon before the bill was presented; we paid as close to the amount as we could and moved on.
Battery Park is the site of a gun battery commanding the river; it is also the place where you can take a ferry to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. We had decided to give both of those a miss, Statue of Liberty because you cannot get very far up it these days and Ellis Island because it takes about four hours to do it justice.
On entering the park you encounter a strange sculpture, which when explained becomes very poignant, it was a large metal sphere which had pride of place in the fountain of the World Trade Plaza. It was found under the rumble; it has sustained a gash through its centre, but remains structurally intact and it was inaugurated at Battery Park in a ceremony marking six months since the attack. The irony is stark; it was created in 1971 by artist Fritz Koenig, The Sphere was described as "a monument fostering world peace." Its resting place in the park is temporary as they intend to return it to the Twin Towers site when the work is finished.
While Julia sat down I went off to seek the Staten Island Ferry Terminal, I saw that it was coming and going from a dock further along the river, returning with this intelligence I found Julia gone. We met up quickly at another seat on the front and she was clearly a bit shaken. She explained that she had been sitting, not particularly aware of anything when a guy approached, Julia has a phobia regarding snakes, and to her horror this chap had a large snake round his neck. He was posing with the snake and punters for photos but he did no business with Julia who confessed to running away from him and it!
Near where she had retreated to there was a jetty from whence the Water Taxi plied its trade. Our Grays tour ticket gave us a free harbour cruise with the Water Taxi so we set about claiming our prize. We exchanged the tokens we had for tickets and settled to wait for the next vessel in, claimed by the 13 year-old in charge, to be arriving at 4.30pm. Another Water Taxi came and went but that one was operating as a ferry to the statue, so we waited stoically. At about the right time another ferry poled up and unloaded, our line was about 50 yards away so we started to shuffle towards the boat, 13 year old in the lead, to his surprise and discomfort, the crew slipped their lines and set off empty. The New York lynch mob had very clear ideas who was at fault, so while 13 year old was phoning someone, ropes were being produced and suitable trees checked out. The guy at the front of the queue was from New Jersey, he was with his wife and three children, he had already fallen out with his wife and now there was something else she could blame him for. While she sat on a nearby wall with a face like a smacked arse, I quote my year 11 students, refusing to speak to him; he was venting considerable spleen on the boy in charge. When questioned the boy admitted that the Taxi had never just sailed off before in his experience but he had only been working there two months and nobody would answer his phone calls. The boy, who may perhaps have really been 17, but you will have detected my tendency to exaggerate for effect, was saved by the intervention of a woman who calmed the mob. We were promised another boat at 5.30 and it duly showed up on time, as did other members of staff more senior than boy, you might almost think they knew of the problem in advance and left the kid to sort it out. We loaded onto the new craft with mumblings of mutiny if it failed to produce a pleasing tour. The wife of the New Jersey man, (FLASA) still refused to converse with him and sat broodingly hostile on the opposite side of the boat. We took up station at the bow end of the upper deck, right next to the wheel-house so we could pretend to drive. Unfortunately the air-con from the lower deck vented hot air onto us but it was better to stand by the rail to see the sights and take photos.
The commentary was excellent but I would struggle to remember much of it, however, one fact which I found stunning was that if Americans can trace their roots back to great-grandparents, 75% of them have in that cohort at least one relative who came to America through Ellis Island. We were on the taxi for about an hour touring the harbour. We visited the Four Waterfalls which are not natural; they are a publically sponsored art work which recycles water from the harbour into waterfalls. We also got close enough to photograph the Statue of Liberty but the sun was low and the picture suffered from it. We were photographed together by the saviour of the 13YOB. It amused me that another sour-faced lady wanted to remain in a seat but keep the rail clear of people so that she could see the sights without rising from her position – her husband had a slightly hunted look about him and offered little support to her unreasonable request.
When we returned to the dock we found ourselves close to a tour bus stop with an enormous line, however buses were coming regularly and we were prepared to travel down stairs and many of those waiting were not so we caught the second bus to come along.
While we waited we saw the police confiscating the designer handbags being sold by two street traders, they must have had about forty bags each and I bet they had paid at least $20 for their stock!
We were dropped off in Times Square and saw where the Night Loop buses were gathering but we resolved to leave that for the following day along with the Uptown Loop. It was a longish walk back to the hotel to discover no improvement to the TV situation. I returned to the front desk and they promised to send up the handyman. He arrived just as we were prepared to go our seeking dinner, he switched on the TV at the set but the remote control had no affect on it as we had been telling them, he went off for new batteries, replaced them in the handset, still no communication between remote and set. He left again returning with several universal remotes but no business resulted with any of them. Hunger was dominating our thinking by now but he insisted on one last attempt, he was gone for longer but returned having found the matching remote to the set; this innovative approach yielded results – we had a choice of programmes at the touch of a button. Finally we had found someone who had worked for his tip.
Our plan for eating was a cross between experience and information, on our first attempt to find the hotel we had seen, and smelt, a tempting Indian Restaurant, we also had a couple of recommended Indian restaurants on the list of eateries given to us by the hotel, all the options seemed to be in the same area so we set off with some confidence. The first place we found was from the hotel list, looked Ok but we progressed, the next was the source of the delicious smell we remembered from the heavily laden first night but as we were preparing to commit ourselves we noticed it was vegetarian; OK for Julia but a complete No-No for me. We retreated to the first place and enjoyed the best Indian meal we have had in a long time, the beers helped of course but it really was good. Julia’s choice was a deep green colour when it arrived due to the mint but it tasted delightful. We complimented the head waiter and at that point he detected that we are English, he was puzzled then that we had not ordered hotter food so that’s his view of Brits eating in New York.
We returned to the hotel very satisfied. It had been a big slice of New York to deal with in a day but we had enjoyed it, now that the TV was cured we were actually too tired to watch it.
We were making our way on foot to Grand Central Station, which had been recommended highly by several people, when we encountered on Broadway a major police incident. There were uniformed officers on all four corners of the intersection at least five police vehicles and barriers closing the side roads. We were wondering what had happened right there to have such a large police presence when we noted similar numbers of blue uniforms and vehicles all the way down Broadway. The street was being closed for a parade. By the time we reached the floats in a side street, all participants decked out in Indian costumes and sets, not Native American but from the Indian sub-continent, we must have seen 200 policemen. New York claims rightly to have managed its crime problem clearly they are prepared to employ enough police to make the streets safe.
When we reached Grand Central station it was hugely impressive; we were blown away by the scale of everything and the architecture. The food court was excellent and all varieties of food were there, being less adventurous than some, Julia and I had breakfast type food since it was our first meal of the day. Julia had a croissant while I think I had a big peanut cookie both were washed down with hot chocolate. When we emerged from the station having purchased a good guidebook, following another recommendation, we saw a double decker bus. It was of the same company, Grays, which we had used in San Francisco, so we decided to sign up for it. There were many touts in the area selling the “hop on hop off” tickets for the bus and we signed up for the 48 hour ticket. This entitled us to four separate tours over two days with as many on and offs as we wished.
Having paid and signed up we boarded a bus which was on the Down Town Loop. This time the driver and guide were two separate people, the driver was a black woman, Miss Lucas, and the guide was an oriental man, who styled himself Mr. Yahoo Google, because he knew everything about New York and, by chance, he happened to be the most handsome tour guide in the city. How lucky could we get? It was a continuation of California in that everyone was after a tip, it was notable that the guide never checked the tickets of people getting on the bus because I surmise the more people on the bus the more possible tips?
The Downtown Tour took in Times Square, the Empire State Building, The Rockefeller Centre, Little Italy and the World Trade Centre site; it was basically a tour of all the various buildings that had claimed to be world’s tallest.
We departed the bus after several of the above in order to visit the site of the twin towers, Mr. Google briefed us on the best way to see the area and, to be fair, it was excellent advice.
We followed his directions past the side of the building site where the towers had been and entered the Winter Gardens building which had been badly damaged in the attack but has since been rebuilt. We went up to the second floor, which incidentally we would call the first floor, and looked over at the enormous area of building work. The small church, St Paul’s, stands in the corner of the area, relatively untouched by the destruction or rebuilding. There was something unreal about the situation; the normality of it all belied the devastation that had taken place. We walked out of the other side of the building which opened out onto the river and there were people eating and drinking seemingly without concern.
As we reentered the building there was a guy taking a tour round the Winter Gardens, it emerged that he was one of the rescue workers who now gives up his time to show parties round to help people understand the events of that fateful day. We tagged onto his party. He was nearing the end of the tour with only three stops left, only about two hundred yards in all but I hope I never forget what he told us about. He stopped the party in a broad lobby where the lifts to higher up the building opened their doors, here was a field mortuary, he explained, where recovered bodies and body-parts were laid in the hope of matching them to each other and a name. He, the most ordinary of men, had been part of dealing with that carnage and now could talk about it calmly. The next stop was another open area when he told us there had been temporary beds for the rescue workers to nap in when they reached the point of exhaustion. He said the greatest compliment to the rescuers was that the beds were never used. His final stop was at the American Express Memorial. The firm lost eleven of their workers on 9/11 and to commemorate them they had commissioned this memorial, it consists of an eleven sided pool at ground level with a 600lb crystal suspended above the centre, randomly from the roof, water drops into the pool like falling tears, and the names of the victims are engraved on each side of the pool with a few words given by their families. It was immensely moving to us. I thanked our guide for his tour and asked if doing it helped him, he said that it did very much and he thanked me for asking.
Leaving the Winter Gardens, which incidentally houses Deloitte where conceivably Sarah could have ended up, we walked up to St. Paul’s chapel. It is entirely open to the public and it is where many of the rescue workers found rest. The pews are still scarred by the worker’s equipment that they sometimes did not remove before falling asleep. It was also where people came to volunteer in the days after the destruction. The parishioners came and made hot meals and drinks, there were beds set up because some of the rescue workers were there for week after week. It was the spiritual home of the volunteer relief effort for eight months and became the focus for many of the messages of support from all over the world. It was the little things that struck home, as is so often the case, an exhibit noted that massage-therapists and chiropractors started appearing at the church to help the rescue workers get their equipment off and then to loosen them up so that they could sleep. Each day, volunteers changed the sheets and blankets and placed a stuffed animal on the pillows. They worked diligently to make sure the cots were always ready for tired workers.
I was reading these captions when a young girl standing next to me said to her companion, “My friend’s Dad is on a memorial at his fire-station in Brooklyn.” It brought the reality of the situation into sharp focus.
Standing so close to the Twin Towers and being left undamaged by the attack it is especially ironic to note that St. Paul's Chapel is Manhattan's oldest public building in continuous use.
We left the Ground Zero area very affected by it all, we debated going round the tribute centre but decided that we didn’t need it.
On our way to the next point of interest, Battery Park, and where we could reconnect with the down town loop, we stopped for lunch at a TGI Friday. For the first time on the holiday the service was poor, we had a big burger and an ice-cream between us, we eventually got served, but people were walking out before and after ordering. We waited another eon before the bill was presented; we paid as close to the amount as we could and moved on.
Battery Park is the site of a gun battery commanding the river; it is also the place where you can take a ferry to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. We had decided to give both of those a miss, Statue of Liberty because you cannot get very far up it these days and Ellis Island because it takes about four hours to do it justice.
On entering the park you encounter a strange sculpture, which when explained becomes very poignant, it was a large metal sphere which had pride of place in the fountain of the World Trade Plaza. It was found under the rumble; it has sustained a gash through its centre, but remains structurally intact and it was inaugurated at Battery Park in a ceremony marking six months since the attack. The irony is stark; it was created in 1971 by artist Fritz Koenig, The Sphere was described as "a monument fostering world peace." Its resting place in the park is temporary as they intend to return it to the Twin Towers site when the work is finished.
While Julia sat down I went off to seek the Staten Island Ferry Terminal, I saw that it was coming and going from a dock further along the river, returning with this intelligence I found Julia gone. We met up quickly at another seat on the front and she was clearly a bit shaken. She explained that she had been sitting, not particularly aware of anything when a guy approached, Julia has a phobia regarding snakes, and to her horror this chap had a large snake round his neck. He was posing with the snake and punters for photos but he did no business with Julia who confessed to running away from him and it!
Near where she had retreated to there was a jetty from whence the Water Taxi plied its trade. Our Grays tour ticket gave us a free harbour cruise with the Water Taxi so we set about claiming our prize. We exchanged the tokens we had for tickets and settled to wait for the next vessel in, claimed by the 13 year-old in charge, to be arriving at 4.30pm. Another Water Taxi came and went but that one was operating as a ferry to the statue, so we waited stoically. At about the right time another ferry poled up and unloaded, our line was about 50 yards away so we started to shuffle towards the boat, 13 year old in the lead, to his surprise and discomfort, the crew slipped their lines and set off empty. The New York lynch mob had very clear ideas who was at fault, so while 13 year old was phoning someone, ropes were being produced and suitable trees checked out. The guy at the front of the queue was from New Jersey, he was with his wife and three children, he had already fallen out with his wife and now there was something else she could blame him for. While she sat on a nearby wall with a face like a smacked arse, I quote my year 11 students, refusing to speak to him; he was venting considerable spleen on the boy in charge. When questioned the boy admitted that the Taxi had never just sailed off before in his experience but he had only been working there two months and nobody would answer his phone calls. The boy, who may perhaps have really been 17, but you will have detected my tendency to exaggerate for effect, was saved by the intervention of a woman who calmed the mob. We were promised another boat at 5.30 and it duly showed up on time, as did other members of staff more senior than boy, you might almost think they knew of the problem in advance and left the kid to sort it out. We loaded onto the new craft with mumblings of mutiny if it failed to produce a pleasing tour. The wife of the New Jersey man, (FLASA) still refused to converse with him and sat broodingly hostile on the opposite side of the boat. We took up station at the bow end of the upper deck, right next to the wheel-house so we could pretend to drive. Unfortunately the air-con from the lower deck vented hot air onto us but it was better to stand by the rail to see the sights and take photos.
The commentary was excellent but I would struggle to remember much of it, however, one fact which I found stunning was that if Americans can trace their roots back to great-grandparents, 75% of them have in that cohort at least one relative who came to America through Ellis Island. We were on the taxi for about an hour touring the harbour. We visited the Four Waterfalls which are not natural; they are a publically sponsored art work which recycles water from the harbour into waterfalls. We also got close enough to photograph the Statue of Liberty but the sun was low and the picture suffered from it. We were photographed together by the saviour of the 13YOB. It amused me that another sour-faced lady wanted to remain in a seat but keep the rail clear of people so that she could see the sights without rising from her position – her husband had a slightly hunted look about him and offered little support to her unreasonable request.
When we returned to the dock we found ourselves close to a tour bus stop with an enormous line, however buses were coming regularly and we were prepared to travel down stairs and many of those waiting were not so we caught the second bus to come along.
While we waited we saw the police confiscating the designer handbags being sold by two street traders, they must have had about forty bags each and I bet they had paid at least $20 for their stock!
We were dropped off in Times Square and saw where the Night Loop buses were gathering but we resolved to leave that for the following day along with the Uptown Loop. It was a longish walk back to the hotel to discover no improvement to the TV situation. I returned to the front desk and they promised to send up the handyman. He arrived just as we were prepared to go our seeking dinner, he switched on the TV at the set but the remote control had no affect on it as we had been telling them, he went off for new batteries, replaced them in the handset, still no communication between remote and set. He left again returning with several universal remotes but no business resulted with any of them. Hunger was dominating our thinking by now but he insisted on one last attempt, he was gone for longer but returned having found the matching remote to the set; this innovative approach yielded results – we had a choice of programmes at the touch of a button. Finally we had found someone who had worked for his tip.
Our plan for eating was a cross between experience and information, on our first attempt to find the hotel we had seen, and smelt, a tempting Indian Restaurant, we also had a couple of recommended Indian restaurants on the list of eateries given to us by the hotel, all the options seemed to be in the same area so we set off with some confidence. The first place we found was from the hotel list, looked Ok but we progressed, the next was the source of the delicious smell we remembered from the heavily laden first night but as we were preparing to commit ourselves we noticed it was vegetarian; OK for Julia but a complete No-No for me. We retreated to the first place and enjoyed the best Indian meal we have had in a long time, the beers helped of course but it really was good. Julia’s choice was a deep green colour when it arrived due to the mint but it tasted delightful. We complimented the head waiter and at that point he detected that we are English, he was puzzled then that we had not ordered hotter food so that’s his view of Brits eating in New York.
We returned to the hotel very satisfied. It had been a big slice of New York to deal with in a day but we had enjoyed it, now that the TV was cured we were actually too tired to watch it.
Tuesday, 2 September 2008
Los Angeles to New York (10.45 to 19.29)
We finished off our doughnuts, bought at the breakfast shop, as we queued up the stairs to get air-side. The security process was as grueling as usual but with a twist, there was a party of teenage boys who were returning to Europe after some kind of group experience. The staff members with them were highly ineffectual and the boys were finding it impossible to pass through the scanners without setting them off. To make matters much worse these were boys who had given up washing or changing their clothes for the duration of their experience. The body odour was overpowering and the fact that they had to remove their shoes made matters worse. The immigration officials, who needed closer contact with the party, were worse off than we, the general public. There was much breath-holding and one lady walked through the mêlée spraying air-freshener to the great appreciation of the queue. One youth was particularly annoying, his hand luggage when x-rayed revealed a gun-shaped object, his belt set off the personal scanner so he had to remove it and place it on another tray. At one point he had his belongings going through all three scanners. We, with characteristic British pessimism, now knew that we would be sitting with this party all the way to New York We made it through security and established ourselves in the departure lounge by our assigned gate – the group did not join us there.
We were again separated by our boarding cards but it was easily rectified by a swap. We had no in-flight entertainment as we were too tight to buy headsets and we were not fed so we arrived in JFK Airport ready to eat.
On this leg of the journey we were flying against the clock, we lost time due to the time-zones as well as the actual duration of the flight so we reached New York in the early evening. While I awaited our baggage on the baggage reclaim belt Julia set off and made enquiries how we could reach our hotel in Manhattan. By the time we had the luggage we also had three alternatives to get us to the Gershwin Hotel, taxi at a flat rate of $50, bus transfer costing $20 each and public transport at $7 each. We opted for the cheapest alternative, a bit of a recurring theme. We found the Skytrain which connects the terminals and has one line out of the airport into the city arriving in Jamaica Center. The Skytrain is a fast modern monorail and it was a quite comfortable ride even standing as we were due to it being full of airport employees. When we reached the Jamaica terminal we were already wondering about our decision. We each had a heavy bag, from the hold, and a hand-luggage bag to cope with as we followed the stream of pedestrians up to a set of barriers where they inserted a card to be allowed through.
We found out that we needed two $5 cards to pay for the journey that we had just taken and two $2 cards to travel anywhere on the subway. When I attempted to use the ticket machine a station employee came over to help and put the whole $14 on one card, we passed the card through the barrier to get Julia out and passed it back to release me. We repeated the process to get us into the subway system and we followed signs a good distance to the required platform. The first subway train was the old style, heavily graffitied and quite a rough complement of travelers, a bit like the set from Death Wish, (1974). The baggage although heavy for us now became a concern in case it got stolen, so I remained standing with it heaped at my feet. We changed platforms and trains at Penn Station and we seemed to have changed eras at the same time, the train was crisply clean and there was an indicator of each station we were approaching. We emerged from the system at 28th Street but our elderly eyes had misread the hotels address as being where 27th East crossed 3rd instead of correctly where it crossed 5th. We set off loaded like polar explorers but without the sled in entirely the wrong direction. We were saved by two bystanders who knew the area and made us retrace out steps to the hotel.
As I wrote earlier we had read internet reviews of the hotels and we should have been warned off the Renoir in San Francisco, we had also read that the Gershwin was basic and preferred by back-packers. We had thought of asking to have it changed but were placated when we saw that the booking was for a superior room. When we came to book in I was relieved to hear the receptionist confirm the superior status of our room and we headed upstairs to dump our luggage and get something to eat.
Superior is a comparative word, all I can say is that it worries me that there were any rooms inferior to ours, gone were the massive bed(s) of Californian hotels, this was a bed for close friends, the en-suite bathroom featured no plug in the sink and a bath suited for small children and the TV refused to cooperate with us in any way. Hunger persuaded us to put all of that to one side and we set off into Manhattan to feed ourselves.
The redeeming feature of the hotel was immediately apparent we were only a short walk to the Empire State Building and restaurants were plentiful within a few blocks. We ate in a nothing special establishment but there was no chance of it closing on us, it was open 24 hours. We were right there when Michael Phelps won his eighth gold in the Olympic pool in Beijing to be the spontaneous applause of the entire restaurant. Once again the meal was big and meaty and capable of feeding several people, but it served its purpose and we returned to the hotel. We were tired from all the walking and carrying but ready to take on the New York experience.
We were again separated by our boarding cards but it was easily rectified by a swap. We had no in-flight entertainment as we were too tight to buy headsets and we were not fed so we arrived in JFK Airport ready to eat.
On this leg of the journey we were flying against the clock, we lost time due to the time-zones as well as the actual duration of the flight so we reached New York in the early evening. While I awaited our baggage on the baggage reclaim belt Julia set off and made enquiries how we could reach our hotel in Manhattan. By the time we had the luggage we also had three alternatives to get us to the Gershwin Hotel, taxi at a flat rate of $50, bus transfer costing $20 each and public transport at $7 each. We opted for the cheapest alternative, a bit of a recurring theme. We found the Skytrain which connects the terminals and has one line out of the airport into the city arriving in Jamaica Center. The Skytrain is a fast modern monorail and it was a quite comfortable ride even standing as we were due to it being full of airport employees. When we reached the Jamaica terminal we were already wondering about our decision. We each had a heavy bag, from the hold, and a hand-luggage bag to cope with as we followed the stream of pedestrians up to a set of barriers where they inserted a card to be allowed through.
We found out that we needed two $5 cards to pay for the journey that we had just taken and two $2 cards to travel anywhere on the subway. When I attempted to use the ticket machine a station employee came over to help and put the whole $14 on one card, we passed the card through the barrier to get Julia out and passed it back to release me. We repeated the process to get us into the subway system and we followed signs a good distance to the required platform. The first subway train was the old style, heavily graffitied and quite a rough complement of travelers, a bit like the set from Death Wish, (1974). The baggage although heavy for us now became a concern in case it got stolen, so I remained standing with it heaped at my feet. We changed platforms and trains at Penn Station and we seemed to have changed eras at the same time, the train was crisply clean and there was an indicator of each station we were approaching. We emerged from the system at 28th Street but our elderly eyes had misread the hotels address as being where 27th East crossed 3rd instead of correctly where it crossed 5th. We set off loaded like polar explorers but without the sled in entirely the wrong direction. We were saved by two bystanders who knew the area and made us retrace out steps to the hotel.
As I wrote earlier we had read internet reviews of the hotels and we should have been warned off the Renoir in San Francisco, we had also read that the Gershwin was basic and preferred by back-packers. We had thought of asking to have it changed but were placated when we saw that the booking was for a superior room. When we came to book in I was relieved to hear the receptionist confirm the superior status of our room and we headed upstairs to dump our luggage and get something to eat.
Superior is a comparative word, all I can say is that it worries me that there were any rooms inferior to ours, gone were the massive bed(s) of Californian hotels, this was a bed for close friends, the en-suite bathroom featured no plug in the sink and a bath suited for small children and the TV refused to cooperate with us in any way. Hunger persuaded us to put all of that to one side and we set off into Manhattan to feed ourselves.
The redeeming feature of the hotel was immediately apparent we were only a short walk to the Empire State Building and restaurants were plentiful within a few blocks. We ate in a nothing special establishment but there was no chance of it closing on us, it was open 24 hours. We were right there when Michael Phelps won his eighth gold in the Olympic pool in Beijing to be the spontaneous applause of the entire restaurant. Once again the meal was big and meaty and capable of feeding several people, but it served its purpose and we returned to the hotel. We were tired from all the walking and carrying but ready to take on the New York experience.
Anaheim to Los Angeles (36 miles, about 43mins)
We got up smoothly and checked out of the hotel. We found that, despite warnings about residents parking being expensive; the bill was free of any such charge. We breakfasted on the way at the same Mexican doughnut shop and relied on sat-nav to return us to the Howard Johnson hotel where we had spent our first night of the odyssey, actually only ten days before but many miles and experiences in the past. We were confident that the hotel was close to the Dollar car depot and we would find our way between them easily. As it happened the run across LA was painless and we picked up signs for rental car return before we reached the hotel so I disassembled the sat-nav confident that the £42 spent on eBay for the USA card had been money very well spent but from now on the driving and navigation could be left to professionals. The return process at Dollar was as efficient as it could be, a quick visual inspection of the car, think counting the wheels as a guide to time taken, a scan of our documents and we were queuing for the courtesy bus to the airport.
Anyone who has been adding up the time and mileage which labels the chapters, or am I the only one sad enough to do that, will find that we had travelled 1357miles in about 31hours. All of the driving was done by Julia, I never got behind the wheel but I translated the sat-nav and navigated diligently throughout the journey. We reckon with our detours, added trips and sat-nav foibles we may have approached 2000miles in total but perhaps that’s on the large side. We had enjoyed the vast majority of it and will repeat this type of thing in the future, there are after all another 40+ states to tackle. Perhaps next time we will be more independent and only book flights and car-hire in advance allowing overnight stops as and when we fancy them.
The courtesy bus dropped us outside the American Airlines terminal and we checked in on the pavement, encountering a potential problem of baggage allowance. The international allowance to the states is generous, as much as a pack mule could carry, and that had applied to us from London to LA but now we were LA to New York which came under internal regulations. The check in staff kept saying “fifty or fifty!” as they threw bags onto the scales. Bags over 50lbs were to be reduced or charged $50 – we escaped either fate as we were, for us, travelling quite light. By the time we entered the terminal we had been relieved of our bags and were in possession of our boarding cards. We set off purposefully towards the security gates.
Anyone who has been adding up the time and mileage which labels the chapters, or am I the only one sad enough to do that, will find that we had travelled 1357miles in about 31hours. All of the driving was done by Julia, I never got behind the wheel but I translated the sat-nav and navigated diligently throughout the journey. We reckon with our detours, added trips and sat-nav foibles we may have approached 2000miles in total but perhaps that’s on the large side. We had enjoyed the vast majority of it and will repeat this type of thing in the future, there are after all another 40+ states to tackle. Perhaps next time we will be more independent and only book flights and car-hire in advance allowing overnight stops as and when we fancy them.
The courtesy bus dropped us outside the American Airlines terminal and we checked in on the pavement, encountering a potential problem of baggage allowance. The international allowance to the states is generous, as much as a pack mule could carry, and that had applied to us from London to LA but now we were LA to New York which came under internal regulations. The check in staff kept saying “fifty or fifty!” as they threw bags onto the scales. Bags over 50lbs were to be reduced or charged $50 – we escaped either fate as we were, for us, travelling quite light. By the time we entered the terminal we had been relieved of our bags and were in possession of our boarding cards. We set off purposefully towards the security gates.
Sunday, 31 August 2008
Las Vegas to Anaheim (260 miles about 4 hours 30 minutes)
It was a later start than we had planned to travel from Las Vegas to Anaheim due to the Grand Canyon trip but we had no detours planned.
We were about videoed out and we took no photos on the journey. We travelled uneventfully and reached Anaheim without problem. The sat-nav got us to our hotel, The Clarion, and we found it to be one of the more luxurious that we had been in. We arrived at about 7.00pm and were resolved to take things pretty easy. We ate in the hotel, an American/Mexican restaurant, and it was adequate rather than better. We retired quite early and decided to tackle a trip out to the coast the following day.
Anaheim has little to recommend it to us, it is just the inland Disney resort, consequently it is packed with families and that is not our scene. We set off from the hotel with breakfast in mind – I was thinking pancakes and we remembered an Ihop restaurant on the way in the previous day. We found it without problem but the queue was right out of the door and across the pavement. It was a ho-brainer that we gave it a miss and walked on. There was a small parade of shops where we found a doughnut shop and bought a couple which we washed down with hot chocolate, it was getting to be our basic breakfast.
When we returned to the hotel we called a basketball friend, Jeff Bonds, who lives in LA. We knew that he was flying out the following day, to take up a job with a Spanish team so we couldn’t expect him to have time to visit with us but we wanted to touch base with him. Having left a message on his phone we were pleased that he phoned back and we had a pleasant chat. We had been thinking of going to Long Beach but he suggested the nearer Huntington Beach.
We spoke to the concierge and he echoed Jeff’s view so we navigated ourselves to Huntington Beach where we parked in the town before walking out to sea along the pier. From the pier we were able to watch first the beach volleyball, which was impressive, and then later people were surfing, which was equally excellent to watch. At the end of the pier there was a Chinese restaurant named Ruby’s, it was clearly popular, and while we watched people fishing off the end of the structure there were regular calls for the waiting diners as tables became available.
We noticed a regular flow of bicycle taxis up and down the pier; each one was pedaled by a student with a notice stating; “Driver works for tips only” I will write about the tipping culture later but it was everywhere.
We finally caught up with the pancakes by eating lunch in the Ihop on Huntington Beach high street. To be honest it was another time when for lunch we could have shared one portion but they were tasty.
We tried to travel down the coast to the Newport Beach area which we had been told was really worth the ride. Unfortunately it was Friday afternoon and everywhere was busy to the point that there was nowhere to park and we were in lines of traffic all the way. We turned off the coast road and made our way back to the hotel.
By the time we parked at the hotel we were not keen to go out in the car again so while Julia went up to the room I scouted the area. All the local restaurants seemed to be steak houses and throughout our trip we seemed to have eaten more than our share of cattle. Ironically we ended up at a cattle drive themed restaurant but we ate well and thoroughly enjoyed the service.
We were about videoed out and we took no photos on the journey. We travelled uneventfully and reached Anaheim without problem. The sat-nav got us to our hotel, The Clarion, and we found it to be one of the more luxurious that we had been in. We arrived at about 7.00pm and were resolved to take things pretty easy. We ate in the hotel, an American/Mexican restaurant, and it was adequate rather than better. We retired quite early and decided to tackle a trip out to the coast the following day.
Anaheim has little to recommend it to us, it is just the inland Disney resort, consequently it is packed with families and that is not our scene. We set off from the hotel with breakfast in mind – I was thinking pancakes and we remembered an Ihop restaurant on the way in the previous day. We found it without problem but the queue was right out of the door and across the pavement. It was a ho-brainer that we gave it a miss and walked on. There was a small parade of shops where we found a doughnut shop and bought a couple which we washed down with hot chocolate, it was getting to be our basic breakfast.
When we returned to the hotel we called a basketball friend, Jeff Bonds, who lives in LA. We knew that he was flying out the following day, to take up a job with a Spanish team so we couldn’t expect him to have time to visit with us but we wanted to touch base with him. Having left a message on his phone we were pleased that he phoned back and we had a pleasant chat. We had been thinking of going to Long Beach but he suggested the nearer Huntington Beach.
We spoke to the concierge and he echoed Jeff’s view so we navigated ourselves to Huntington Beach where we parked in the town before walking out to sea along the pier. From the pier we were able to watch first the beach volleyball, which was impressive, and then later people were surfing, which was equally excellent to watch. At the end of the pier there was a Chinese restaurant named Ruby’s, it was clearly popular, and while we watched people fishing off the end of the structure there were regular calls for the waiting diners as tables became available.
We noticed a regular flow of bicycle taxis up and down the pier; each one was pedaled by a student with a notice stating; “Driver works for tips only” I will write about the tipping culture later but it was everywhere.
We finally caught up with the pancakes by eating lunch in the Ihop on Huntington Beach high street. To be honest it was another time when for lunch we could have shared one portion but they were tasty.
We tried to travel down the coast to the Newport Beach area which we had been told was really worth the ride. Unfortunately it was Friday afternoon and everywhere was busy to the point that there was nowhere to park and we were in lines of traffic all the way. We turned off the coast road and made our way back to the hotel.
By the time we parked at the hotel we were not keen to go out in the car again so while Julia went up to the room I scouted the area. All the local restaurants seemed to be steak houses and throughout our trip we seemed to have eaten more than our share of cattle. Ironically we ended up at a cattle drive themed restaurant but we ate well and thoroughly enjoyed the service.
Tuesday, 26 August 2008
Grand Canyon
We were successfully picked up by minibus early in the morning, we had eaten biscuits with our tea to serve as breakfast but truthfully we were too excited to be concerned about hunger. We collected a pair of American ladies from another hotel and to our surprise we headed out of Las Vegas to an airstrip at nearby Boulder City.
Their business premises were full, I would estimate 35 to 40 people due to go out on various trips some in helicopters some in fixed wing aircraft. When we checked in and paid, I decided against bringing up the disappointment of the previous day and was issued with a coloured piece of card. By trying to spot that colour in other people’s hands we were able to identify our party. It consisted of two men together, us and a Mexican couple but no pilot as yet. The groups were taken out and flew away as their assigned pilots arrived. One of the later pilots was ours; he led us out to the only black helicopter in a fleet of red, white and blue ones and introduced himself to us. As the early part of the flight was over and around the Hoover Dam recent legislation meant that we had to wear a life-jacket, which made the cabin space even more cramped for the seven of us. We were also wearing earphones and microphones to hear each other and the carefully picked CD tracks. We rose from the tarmac to a James Bond theme and later as we breasted a rise to see the Grand Canyon for the first time it was the theme from Apocalypse Now. The pilot was named Rick and he was very entertaining in his commentary. He told us that the Grand Canyon is a good three and a half hour drive from Las Vegas so it would have taken all day to go there and back also it is impossible to reach the canyon floor by car.
After the Hoover Dam we headed for the canyon at about 120mph, which only felt fast as he was lower to the ground, at altitude nothing seemed to be moving which I suppose illustrated the scale of everything. After a first look at the canyon from above we dropped into it and landed just above the river banks. Rick reclaimed our life-jackets from us just before we went on the boat remarking that the boat would probably issue us with parachutes if it followed the same logic as he had to. He pointed us in the right direction to clamber across the rocks and down through the scrub to the riverside. The New Zealanders were the intrepid sort; the Mexicans weren’t, so we fitted comfortably in the middle, as we had to find our way down to the small jetty where our river cruiser was moored. I think it was a flat bottomed boat which would have held 10-12 people and there were no currents to negotiate so it felt pretty solid on the water. The driver was a grizzled old white man, Jim, who was very well informed about the canyon and the river, the most striking fact that remains with me was that the river uses up almost 100% of its water by the time it should outlet into the ocean. It was also him that told us there were no real trails down to the river and he used a helicopter two or three times a week to come and go from the canyon floor. We had about 15-20 minutes on the river before returning up the same trail to the helicopter, which had waited for us. It flew us up to the canyon rim and we unloaded for two hours at the small airfield run by the Hualapai, Native Americans. We were given vouchers for the various parts of the tour and joined the queue for the shuttle bus to the sky walk.
It may be some failing in myself but I had never anticipated any problem walking on the glass area, although Julia was by now expressing some doubts about it. The first time we had seen the sky walk from the air I had struggled to see it because it looked so small against the scenery, now it looked and is a major construction. We took some photographs and video from the rim then joined the sky walk line. Inside the reception building we had to surrender our bags, cameras and other loose items before going forward to the platform. Just before we got there we had to slip duster bootees over our shoes, I guess this was to protect the glass surface from scratches. The fact that they kept our cameras from us meant that their crew of photographers on the walkway had a monopoly and there were many people lying on the glass panels to be photographed as if falling down the entire depth of the canyon. It was hugely impressive and we both found ourselves quite able to walk on the transparent bit and look down to see the huge drop below us. The photos taken by the staff photographers were again extortionately expensive but worse than that once again we appeared stouter than we see ourselves, we refused them again.
We cashed in our food voucher for chicken nuggets and fries for each of us, it was the worst meal we endured on our trip, and even a lack of breakfast combined with the breathtaking scenery couldn’t redeem it. We getting close to the end of our two hours so were close to just returning to the terminal but someone told us we should get off the shuttle bus at guano point as the views were even better. On the short bus trip we learned that the guano in question was bat droppings, an ingredient in fertilizer, other chemical products and often cosmetics. The driver remarked that this was why all girls can remember their mother telling them to “Get that crap off your face!” A basic joke but the next bit really stuck with me, Guano Point is actually on the opposite side of the Grand Canyon to where the bats were, so they built a cable system across the gap to get the mined droppings back to be processed. It boggles the mind to think how the whole enterprise was built.
The other attraction about Guano Point was that you could see further down the canyon as there are no safety barriers to stop you leaning out as far as you want. We managed to fit in Guano Point before catching the next bus back to the terminal. From there we watched Rick return from the floor of the canyon with a set of passengers before loading us and we were now on the way back to Las Vegas.
As we flew over the Arizona desert it was so inhospitable that a line from a movie came back to me, a grizzled old Indian scout remarked, “If the Devil owned Hell and Arizona he’d live in Hell and rent out Arizona!” To contest the theory as we approached the Hoover Dam again the land below was clearly marked out in rectangles and Rick told us that parcels of land were being sold to be commuter districts for Las Vegas when the major road over the dam was completed.
Before we crossed the highest point on our return we spotted a helicopter on the ground, again Rick had the answer, apparently one of the rival firms squeezed seven passengers into the same size of helicopter, but the increased payload meant that they had to land, disembark the passengers, pump fuel from a tank and fly on from there.
There is some concern about the number of helicopters and planes damaging the environment around the canyon and I can see some truth in it. Helicopters were coming and going all the time we were on the trip. However it seems ironic that the white men gave the Indians areas that basically could barely support them and because tourism has made the land profitable suddenly there may be an ecological issue.
Julia missed out on all the information on the return trip because her head-set wasn't working but the whole venture had blown her mind already and she was glowing as we were driven back to our motel. We had a last drink in Coco's before setting off for Anaheim at about 2.00pm
Their business premises were full, I would estimate 35 to 40 people due to go out on various trips some in helicopters some in fixed wing aircraft. When we checked in and paid, I decided against bringing up the disappointment of the previous day and was issued with a coloured piece of card. By trying to spot that colour in other people’s hands we were able to identify our party. It consisted of two men together, us and a Mexican couple but no pilot as yet. The groups were taken out and flew away as their assigned pilots arrived. One of the later pilots was ours; he led us out to the only black helicopter in a fleet of red, white and blue ones and introduced himself to us. As the early part of the flight was over and around the Hoover Dam recent legislation meant that we had to wear a life-jacket, which made the cabin space even more cramped for the seven of us. We were also wearing earphones and microphones to hear each other and the carefully picked CD tracks. We rose from the tarmac to a James Bond theme and later as we breasted a rise to see the Grand Canyon for the first time it was the theme from Apocalypse Now. The pilot was named Rick and he was very entertaining in his commentary. He told us that the Grand Canyon is a good three and a half hour drive from Las Vegas so it would have taken all day to go there and back also it is impossible to reach the canyon floor by car.
After the Hoover Dam we headed for the canyon at about 120mph, which only felt fast as he was lower to the ground, at altitude nothing seemed to be moving which I suppose illustrated the scale of everything. After a first look at the canyon from above we dropped into it and landed just above the river banks. Rick reclaimed our life-jackets from us just before we went on the boat remarking that the boat would probably issue us with parachutes if it followed the same logic as he had to. He pointed us in the right direction to clamber across the rocks and down through the scrub to the riverside. The New Zealanders were the intrepid sort; the Mexicans weren’t, so we fitted comfortably in the middle, as we had to find our way down to the small jetty where our river cruiser was moored. I think it was a flat bottomed boat which would have held 10-12 people and there were no currents to negotiate so it felt pretty solid on the water. The driver was a grizzled old white man, Jim, who was very well informed about the canyon and the river, the most striking fact that remains with me was that the river uses up almost 100% of its water by the time it should outlet into the ocean. It was also him that told us there were no real trails down to the river and he used a helicopter two or three times a week to come and go from the canyon floor. We had about 15-20 minutes on the river before returning up the same trail to the helicopter, which had waited for us. It flew us up to the canyon rim and we unloaded for two hours at the small airfield run by the Hualapai, Native Americans. We were given vouchers for the various parts of the tour and joined the queue for the shuttle bus to the sky walk.
It may be some failing in myself but I had never anticipated any problem walking on the glass area, although Julia was by now expressing some doubts about it. The first time we had seen the sky walk from the air I had struggled to see it because it looked so small against the scenery, now it looked and is a major construction. We took some photographs and video from the rim then joined the sky walk line. Inside the reception building we had to surrender our bags, cameras and other loose items before going forward to the platform. Just before we got there we had to slip duster bootees over our shoes, I guess this was to protect the glass surface from scratches. The fact that they kept our cameras from us meant that their crew of photographers on the walkway had a monopoly and there were many people lying on the glass panels to be photographed as if falling down the entire depth of the canyon. It was hugely impressive and we both found ourselves quite able to walk on the transparent bit and look down to see the huge drop below us. The photos taken by the staff photographers were again extortionately expensive but worse than that once again we appeared stouter than we see ourselves, we refused them again.
We cashed in our food voucher for chicken nuggets and fries for each of us, it was the worst meal we endured on our trip, and even a lack of breakfast combined with the breathtaking scenery couldn’t redeem it. We getting close to the end of our two hours so were close to just returning to the terminal but someone told us we should get off the shuttle bus at guano point as the views were even better. On the short bus trip we learned that the guano in question was bat droppings, an ingredient in fertilizer, other chemical products and often cosmetics. The driver remarked that this was why all girls can remember their mother telling them to “Get that crap off your face!” A basic joke but the next bit really stuck with me, Guano Point is actually on the opposite side of the Grand Canyon to where the bats were, so they built a cable system across the gap to get the mined droppings back to be processed. It boggles the mind to think how the whole enterprise was built.
The other attraction about Guano Point was that you could see further down the canyon as there are no safety barriers to stop you leaning out as far as you want. We managed to fit in Guano Point before catching the next bus back to the terminal. From there we watched Rick return from the floor of the canyon with a set of passengers before loading us and we were now on the way back to Las Vegas.
As we flew over the Arizona desert it was so inhospitable that a line from a movie came back to me, a grizzled old Indian scout remarked, “If the Devil owned Hell and Arizona he’d live in Hell and rent out Arizona!” To contest the theory as we approached the Hoover Dam again the land below was clearly marked out in rectangles and Rick told us that parcels of land were being sold to be commuter districts for Las Vegas when the major road over the dam was completed.
Before we crossed the highest point on our return we spotted a helicopter on the ground, again Rick had the answer, apparently one of the rival firms squeezed seven passengers into the same size of helicopter, but the increased payload meant that they had to land, disembark the passengers, pump fuel from a tank and fly on from there.
There is some concern about the number of helicopters and planes damaging the environment around the canyon and I can see some truth in it. Helicopters were coming and going all the time we were on the trip. However it seems ironic that the white men gave the Indians areas that basically could barely support them and because tourism has made the land profitable suddenly there may be an ecological issue.
Julia missed out on all the information on the return trip because her head-set wasn't working but the whole venture had blown her mind already and she was glowing as we were driven back to our motel. We had a last drink in Coco's before setting off for Anaheim at about 2.00pm
Monday, 25 August 2008
Las Vegas (Tuesday & Wednesday)
Our first full day in Las Vegas started with a breakfast at the local restaurant and bakery, Coco’s, it was most hospitable and we ate cheaply but well. Later I was disappointed to discover that Coco’s was a chain as up to then we were under the illusion that it was run by a Mr. & Mrs. Coco, possible their first venture after Mr. Coco left the circus.
Our appointment with the time-share was at 11.00am, so after breakfast, with some misgivings, we set off for the office block where we were to be sold something in exchange for free show tickets. When we got there it transpired that we had failed to bring our passports, it specifically demanded that we had photo-id on the contract Julia had signed the previous night. I guess they want everybody there to be able to commit themselves to the deal fully and irrevocably. Anyway we had the option of running back to the motel to get our passports and being rescheduled for later in the day or getting our $20 deposit back. With some relief we went for option B and were now free to plan our own day in the resort hotels. We booked the 8.30 comedy show at the Tropicana, which was the non-smoking show and we felt was quite reasonable at $21 each including a free drink.
The Tropicana is one of the oldest and most established of the casinos, and while we were there we decided to have a look at the Titanic Expedition that they had going. We made several discoveries about casino geography in this time. Firstly there are signs to everywhere you might want to go but the rule is that they all must send you through the gambling part of the establishment. Secondly if the thing you want is even vaguely educational it must be placed in a basement or attic to avoid it detracting in any way from the temptation to give them their money. So based on these rules, we found the Titanic Exhibition in the basement but they wanted to charge $28 each for us to check it out. We decided against and retraced our steps through the maze.
In the casinos we enjoyed watching Blackjack, which is the grown-up name for pontoon, so we understood it but we had to marvel at the speed of playing. We never gambled and are therefore not drawn to casinos but you have to admire the quality of the planning, everything has been considered. Any circumstance was met by a system, which was clearly time tested and fool-proof. To illustrate this as we walked through the casino in the MGM resort, we saw a senior member of the casino staff refusing to allow someone play on the basis they were drunk. There were at least three other staff members on the scene and the pit boss was patiently explaining that it would be unfair to let the guy play with less than full concentration so he could stay in the casino area, they gave him a card to get as much free non-alcoholic drink as he needed to sober up and when they thought he was ready he could play again.
We returned to the motel mid-afternoon and had a swim in the provided pool and, even better, sat in the hot tub. We were surrounded by student aged travelers from Europe; I guess they spent the morning in bed, the afternoon in the pool and the night in the bars. Along with many others from Europe they seemed completely unable to survive without a cigarette.
The timing of the comedy show combined with us having raided Subway mid-afternoon meant that we couldn’t eat dinner before getting back to the Tropicana; we had also resolved to video the fountains after the show, so we were anticipating eating late in the town that never sleeps. We enjoyed the comedy in quite a full bar, we were sitting with a newly wed couple, who helped us out with our latest installment of baseball questions. I’m convinced that live comedy venues spray a chemical on the audience which produces amnesia because I cannot remember a single joke told to us all night. Despite that I remember that there were three comedians, who each did a 30 minute spot while the compere kept things moving in between the acts.
By 10.30pm we were back on the strip and I tried to video the fountain show – we have not downloaded any video yet so we don’t know the results. Seemingly, unless you are in one of the casinos, the restaurants close at about 11.00 and this was happening all the way back down the strip as we headed back. Quite hungry by now we settled for a 24hour food court with all the usual suspects. We chose the Panda Chinese, and it was good enough in that level of emergency.
The next day we got up slowly, breakfasted on provisions from the shop, we then went round to the Motel 6 next door as they had internet access and checked our emails. We were to be picked up by the Grand Canyon trip at 11.15 for the 11.30 flight so we were surprised to see the LV Helicopters minibus there at 10.55. We were just getting aboard the bus when the driver received a call on his mobile. He put me on to speak to the controller and she simply said that we had to rearrange to the following day due to technical problems with several helicopters. The customer service aspect of the call was non-existent but in due course I agreed to take a replacement tour at 7.00am the following morning to allow us time to drive on to Anaheim as we had planned.
We were both very upset by the change and we went back to where we had booked it hoping that they could find and an alternative for the same day. Basically they were unable to help and again not very helpful. We now had to find things to do during the 6hours we had allocated to the tour and worry that the trip might not happen the following day.
We needed to cross the major junction diagonally to go from the MGM corner to Excalibur in order to go on the monorail to check out the Shark Reef Aquarium at Mandalay Beach resort. Out of four possible routes we chose to cross at pavement level past the New York New York Casino, their tribute to the 9/11 rescuers was on the way round and it made us see things with a better perspective and our self pity evaporated in the face of it. We had a good day from then on, we caught the monorail (free) to Mandalay Beach Resort, we stopped off at a bar on the way through the casino and had a cooling drink served by Scott, the (I made some bad choices in my life) bartender who did the full Cocktail routine, juggling bottles, pouring several drinks at the same time and generally just being good company.
When we got to it the aquarium was excellent and reasonably priced. We had an audio tour which took us through a flooded temple teaming with South American water life; the piranhas were there in all their glory in an open pool but with a permanent guard to avoid anyone trying them out. We progressed through other sets finishing on a sunken pirate ship surrounded by sharks and, supposedly, turtles but neither of us sighted one of these. It took us over an hour to go round the exhibits and when we came out we refused the photo they had taken on the way in, they are OK but they seem to show two heavier people than us, is it the lens they use? Anyway they are always overpriced.
Having mastered the monorail on our way out, we stopped at the Luxor Casino on the way back and did the usual people watching. We ate a bizarre combination lunch in their food court, I had pizza while Julia had ice cream but the food police missed us. We had already decided to have a Grand Buffet in the evening so we were leaving space for it.
With an early start due in the morning we were back at the casino eating by about 7.30. The buffet was excellent and we tried to do it justice but I suspect there were people there who got much better value out of it, conversely some people came and went unbelievably quickly, more money than sense as my mum would say. It was also an ultimate people-watching venue.
Our appointment with the time-share was at 11.00am, so after breakfast, with some misgivings, we set off for the office block where we were to be sold something in exchange for free show tickets. When we got there it transpired that we had failed to bring our passports, it specifically demanded that we had photo-id on the contract Julia had signed the previous night. I guess they want everybody there to be able to commit themselves to the deal fully and irrevocably. Anyway we had the option of running back to the motel to get our passports and being rescheduled for later in the day or getting our $20 deposit back. With some relief we went for option B and were now free to plan our own day in the resort hotels. We booked the 8.30 comedy show at the Tropicana, which was the non-smoking show and we felt was quite reasonable at $21 each including a free drink.
The Tropicana is one of the oldest and most established of the casinos, and while we were there we decided to have a look at the Titanic Expedition that they had going. We made several discoveries about casino geography in this time. Firstly there are signs to everywhere you might want to go but the rule is that they all must send you through the gambling part of the establishment. Secondly if the thing you want is even vaguely educational it must be placed in a basement or attic to avoid it detracting in any way from the temptation to give them their money. So based on these rules, we found the Titanic Exhibition in the basement but they wanted to charge $28 each for us to check it out. We decided against and retraced our steps through the maze.
In the casinos we enjoyed watching Blackjack, which is the grown-up name for pontoon, so we understood it but we had to marvel at the speed of playing. We never gambled and are therefore not drawn to casinos but you have to admire the quality of the planning, everything has been considered. Any circumstance was met by a system, which was clearly time tested and fool-proof. To illustrate this as we walked through the casino in the MGM resort, we saw a senior member of the casino staff refusing to allow someone play on the basis they were drunk. There were at least three other staff members on the scene and the pit boss was patiently explaining that it would be unfair to let the guy play with less than full concentration so he could stay in the casino area, they gave him a card to get as much free non-alcoholic drink as he needed to sober up and when they thought he was ready he could play again.
We returned to the motel mid-afternoon and had a swim in the provided pool and, even better, sat in the hot tub. We were surrounded by student aged travelers from Europe; I guess they spent the morning in bed, the afternoon in the pool and the night in the bars. Along with many others from Europe they seemed completely unable to survive without a cigarette.
The timing of the comedy show combined with us having raided Subway mid-afternoon meant that we couldn’t eat dinner before getting back to the Tropicana; we had also resolved to video the fountains after the show, so we were anticipating eating late in the town that never sleeps. We enjoyed the comedy in quite a full bar, we were sitting with a newly wed couple, who helped us out with our latest installment of baseball questions. I’m convinced that live comedy venues spray a chemical on the audience which produces amnesia because I cannot remember a single joke told to us all night. Despite that I remember that there were three comedians, who each did a 30 minute spot while the compere kept things moving in between the acts.
By 10.30pm we were back on the strip and I tried to video the fountain show – we have not downloaded any video yet so we don’t know the results. Seemingly, unless you are in one of the casinos, the restaurants close at about 11.00 and this was happening all the way back down the strip as we headed back. Quite hungry by now we settled for a 24hour food court with all the usual suspects. We chose the Panda Chinese, and it was good enough in that level of emergency.
The next day we got up slowly, breakfasted on provisions from the shop, we then went round to the Motel 6 next door as they had internet access and checked our emails. We were to be picked up by the Grand Canyon trip at 11.15 for the 11.30 flight so we were surprised to see the LV Helicopters minibus there at 10.55. We were just getting aboard the bus when the driver received a call on his mobile. He put me on to speak to the controller and she simply said that we had to rearrange to the following day due to technical problems with several helicopters. The customer service aspect of the call was non-existent but in due course I agreed to take a replacement tour at 7.00am the following morning to allow us time to drive on to Anaheim as we had planned.
We were both very upset by the change and we went back to where we had booked it hoping that they could find and an alternative for the same day. Basically they were unable to help and again not very helpful. We now had to find things to do during the 6hours we had allocated to the tour and worry that the trip might not happen the following day.
We needed to cross the major junction diagonally to go from the MGM corner to Excalibur in order to go on the monorail to check out the Shark Reef Aquarium at Mandalay Beach resort. Out of four possible routes we chose to cross at pavement level past the New York New York Casino, their tribute to the 9/11 rescuers was on the way round and it made us see things with a better perspective and our self pity evaporated in the face of it. We had a good day from then on, we caught the monorail (free) to Mandalay Beach Resort, we stopped off at a bar on the way through the casino and had a cooling drink served by Scott, the (I made some bad choices in my life) bartender who did the full Cocktail routine, juggling bottles, pouring several drinks at the same time and generally just being good company.
When we got to it the aquarium was excellent and reasonably priced. We had an audio tour which took us through a flooded temple teaming with South American water life; the piranhas were there in all their glory in an open pool but with a permanent guard to avoid anyone trying them out. We progressed through other sets finishing on a sunken pirate ship surrounded by sharks and, supposedly, turtles but neither of us sighted one of these. It took us over an hour to go round the exhibits and when we came out we refused the photo they had taken on the way in, they are OK but they seem to show two heavier people than us, is it the lens they use? Anyway they are always overpriced.
Having mastered the monorail on our way out, we stopped at the Luxor Casino on the way back and did the usual people watching. We ate a bizarre combination lunch in their food court, I had pizza while Julia had ice cream but the food police missed us. We had already decided to have a Grand Buffet in the evening so we were leaving space for it.
With an early start due in the morning we were back at the casino eating by about 7.30. The buffet was excellent and we tried to do it justice but I suspect there were people there who got much better value out of it, conversely some people came and went unbelievably quickly, more money than sense as my mum would say. It was also an ultimate people-watching venue.
Mammoth lakes to Las Vegas (405 miles about 10 hours)
Once again there was a free buffet breakfast of the same basics but the bonus was a PC with free internet connection in the lobby, mainly we had been paying for connection at about $5 for 30 minutes to keep in touch with our emails. We ate and checked emails and still were able to get on the road by 8.30am. The above approximation was disputed by the guys working in the hotel but we had decided to travel via Death Valley so we were expecting a long day driving. Up to this point Julia had done all the driving but this looked like the time for me to contribute. We knew that we were at altitude (10000ft ish) at Mammoth Lake and Death Valley is below sea level in some places so we reckoned that there would be some ups and downs in front of us which might have accounted for the low average speed. We were also warned by the same guys that we needed to stick to the speed limits in the small towns we passed through as they were very sharp on speeding as the fines were a good steady income for the town.
We set off and established ourselves on US-395, we passed through several towns where the speed limit dropped as low as 25mph but we had been warned – we contributed nothing to their finances. Using our own map we had decided to leave the appointed route and head for Lone Pine. We went through Big Pine on the US 390 but we were not distracted. We reached Independence one of many towns sharing this name across the USA and there I spotted the required sign and we switched off the sat-nav rather than upset our female voiced friend. We were now on the US-136 and passed through Lone Pine with nothing notable to report. There might be towns named Two Pines, Short Pine or even Many Pines nearby but they didn’t figure in our plans. Our next target was the town of Keeler. It was strangely missing from the signs but we stayed on line and in due course passed Keeler. The mystery was solved, the sign by the road proclaimed “KEELER, Elevation 3600ft Population 50”, having since looked it up we should have stopped to check it out. It had been a major industrial centre for local ore smelting and shipping by rail and “gave out shortly after the mines”. It is now registered as a ghost town. Notice I have refrained from any jokey mention of a twin town named Rice-Davies, well I would wouldn’t I.
We continued through the well-named Furnace Creek (elevation 175ft) and we were truly into Death Valley. We pushed on to Stove Pipe Wells, I don’t know if there is a modern Stove Pipe Wells, but where we stopped there was a general store, a saloon (closed), a motel and some old ruined wagons. We took a break there where we had a sandwich and a drink. There was a thermometer over the door of the general store and the temperature in the shade was 115oF, the maximum it had reached was 120 so we were lucky to have a more temperate day. Having driven down some of Death Valley we were in awe of any wagon train which had survived it, of course, not all did, we also decided that we had seen enough. We turned the sat-nav back on ready to follow her instructions to get us to Las Vegas. Perhaps it was affected by the heat but twice it tried to get us to turn off an admittedly very basic road onto pure desert. Having no “Mark Thatcher spirit” in us, we refused, and grudgingly it agreed to plot us an alternative route. It seemed quite quickly that we came upon a town; I have no memory of its identity, and through it ran a freeway signed for Las Vegas. The next hour on this freeway was uneventful, then we started to hit the city and its outskirts, we, and the sat-nav, found our way brilliantly to the Americas Best Value motel which was on Tropicana Avenue, an easy walk into the casinos and onto the Vegas strip.
We checked in smoothly and found the motel to be Americas Most Basic but it served us well. Julia, as yet our only driver needed to take a nap, and in her absence I walked to the MGM casino/resort. It was about 4.40pm and the heat was intense, but as everyone will tell you, the casinos are air-conditioned to chilly and there is no time to tell day from night once you are inside.
I returned to the motel less than impressed but things improved when we got dressed and went out for the evening. We managed to book a Grand Canyon experience, which was our main reason for coming to Las Vegas, for the Wednesday, it was now Monday but nothing was available for Tuesday and we travelled onwards to Anaheim on Thursday. My father always said if something was a one off you shouldn’t worry about the expense so we booked the deluxe version of the trip, Helicopter to the canyon floor, boat ride on the Colorado River, helicopter to the Skywalk, included meal and helicopter back.
Having sorted this out I discovered that Julia had signed us up for a time-share tour to get us a free magic show and comedy club; we used to do this sort of thing on the Costa del Sol but haven’t done it for some time.
We continued down the strip and watched the impressive free fountain show in front of the Bellagio hotel, we finished our outing eating very reasonable Mexican food and drinking Corona beer before walking back to the motel. There was an excellent 24 hour store right next to it, which provided us with milk so we were set up for the following day.
We set off and established ourselves on US-395, we passed through several towns where the speed limit dropped as low as 25mph but we had been warned – we contributed nothing to their finances. Using our own map we had decided to leave the appointed route and head for Lone Pine. We went through Big Pine on the US 390 but we were not distracted. We reached Independence one of many towns sharing this name across the USA and there I spotted the required sign and we switched off the sat-nav rather than upset our female voiced friend. We were now on the US-136 and passed through Lone Pine with nothing notable to report. There might be towns named Two Pines, Short Pine or even Many Pines nearby but they didn’t figure in our plans. Our next target was the town of Keeler. It was strangely missing from the signs but we stayed on line and in due course passed Keeler. The mystery was solved, the sign by the road proclaimed “KEELER, Elevation 3600ft Population 50”, having since looked it up we should have stopped to check it out. It had been a major industrial centre for local ore smelting and shipping by rail and “gave out shortly after the mines”. It is now registered as a ghost town. Notice I have refrained from any jokey mention of a twin town named Rice-Davies, well I would wouldn’t I.
We continued through the well-named Furnace Creek (elevation 175ft) and we were truly into Death Valley. We pushed on to Stove Pipe Wells, I don’t know if there is a modern Stove Pipe Wells, but where we stopped there was a general store, a saloon (closed), a motel and some old ruined wagons. We took a break there where we had a sandwich and a drink. There was a thermometer over the door of the general store and the temperature in the shade was 115oF, the maximum it had reached was 120 so we were lucky to have a more temperate day. Having driven down some of Death Valley we were in awe of any wagon train which had survived it, of course, not all did, we also decided that we had seen enough. We turned the sat-nav back on ready to follow her instructions to get us to Las Vegas. Perhaps it was affected by the heat but twice it tried to get us to turn off an admittedly very basic road onto pure desert. Having no “Mark Thatcher spirit” in us, we refused, and grudgingly it agreed to plot us an alternative route. It seemed quite quickly that we came upon a town; I have no memory of its identity, and through it ran a freeway signed for Las Vegas. The next hour on this freeway was uneventful, then we started to hit the city and its outskirts, we, and the sat-nav, found our way brilliantly to the Americas Best Value motel which was on Tropicana Avenue, an easy walk into the casinos and onto the Vegas strip.
We checked in smoothly and found the motel to be Americas Most Basic but it served us well. Julia, as yet our only driver needed to take a nap, and in her absence I walked to the MGM casino/resort. It was about 4.40pm and the heat was intense, but as everyone will tell you, the casinos are air-conditioned to chilly and there is no time to tell day from night once you are inside.
I returned to the motel less than impressed but things improved when we got dressed and went out for the evening. We managed to book a Grand Canyon experience, which was our main reason for coming to Las Vegas, for the Wednesday, it was now Monday but nothing was available for Tuesday and we travelled onwards to Anaheim on Thursday. My father always said if something was a one off you shouldn’t worry about the expense so we booked the deluxe version of the trip, Helicopter to the canyon floor, boat ride on the Colorado River, helicopter to the Skywalk, included meal and helicopter back.
Having sorted this out I discovered that Julia had signed us up for a time-share tour to get us a free magic show and comedy club; we used to do this sort of thing on the Costa del Sol but haven’t done it for some time.
We continued down the strip and watched the impressive free fountain show in front of the Bellagio hotel, we finished our outing eating very reasonable Mexican food and drinking Corona beer before walking back to the motel. There was an excellent 24 hour store right next to it, which provided us with milk so we were set up for the following day.
Saturday, 23 August 2008
San Francisco to Mammoth Lakes (260 miles about 8 hours)
After another doughnut and tea breakfast we set off early from San Francisco heading for Mammoth Lakes, a ski resort where the USA Olympic team had just done their altitude training. Our journey was to be extended by a detour into Yosemite national park where we would take a couple of hours absorbing the natural beauty. As we left San Francisco the sat-nav asked if we wanted to avoid toll roads and by habit I clicked on yes, in the next five miles we were climbing roads which defied belief. The car survived the ordeal although we were advised by at least one sign by the roadside to switch off our air-conditioning, I have no idea why but we noticed other cars had their windows down so I guess they were doing the same. Anyone who can explain this please let us know. We had our first attempt to fuel the car in a high altitude village, apparently all fuel is non-leaded and you pay the cashier before you pump the gas, not the British system where you pump your gas before paying. Strangely while I was doing all this the guy from the garage was wiping our windscreen. We reached Yosemite in the heat of the day and having asked at a Ranger station previously we knew pretty much what to expect. We parked in the first parking area and took the shuttle bus to the information centre. We were in the base of the valley and from everywhere there was an amazing view up the mountain sides. We went round the visitors centre and learnt how the national park had developed from an upper class holiday resort into the nature reserve which it is today. When we sat down to eat a late lunch we were quickly surrounded by begging bird and squirrels but there was a strict no feeding rule. The refuse bins were equipped with robust lids to defend them from squirrel raids. The water situation meant that the falls were not falling at all but the scenery was awesome and well worth the detour. Several times on our approach to the park we had seen signs which read “Speed kills bears” “Well show me a bear and I‘ll show you speed” I’d quipped but it emerges that these signs are placed on the spots where a bear has been killed by a vehicle and there were about 15 of these signs in all. I think it may be seasonal or even more often at night when it happens but we, of course, saw no sign of any bears. It was a long climb out of Yosemite Park and we took a considerable time to get to Mammoth Lake.
At the end of a long journey things may get tense if problems occur and they did. The sat-nav confidently took us to the wrong address for the hotel. We checked the address on our documents and I had entered it correctly so we were at the wrong place but the sat-nav didn’t agree. After a couple of false starts we decided that since the street name agreed with the documents we should drive the full length of the road in the hope of seeing the hotel. It didn’t seem much of a plan but it worked. We found the hotel, the Alpenhof Lodge, possibly our favourite on the tour, and by the time I had checked in Julia had found the bar and had a $3 pint of beer in front of her!
We ate in the attached restaurant and it was the only meal where we were able to finish the main course and tackle a dessert. It was also one of the best but most expensive meals and the service charge was 18% added to the bill. We had fully intended to meet up with some more of the cheap beer but having eaten both of us were ready to retire.
At the end of a long journey things may get tense if problems occur and they did. The sat-nav confidently took us to the wrong address for the hotel. We checked the address on our documents and I had entered it correctly so we were at the wrong place but the sat-nav didn’t agree. After a couple of false starts we decided that since the street name agreed with the documents we should drive the full length of the road in the hope of seeing the hotel. It didn’t seem much of a plan but it worked. We found the hotel, the Alpenhof Lodge, possibly our favourite on the tour, and by the time I had checked in Julia had found the bar and had a $3 pint of beer in front of her!
We ate in the attached restaurant and it was the only meal where we were able to finish the main course and tackle a dessert. It was also one of the best but most expensive meals and the service charge was 18% added to the bill. We had fully intended to meet up with some more of the cheap beer but having eaten both of us were ready to retire.
Friday, 22 August 2008
Santa Barbara to San Francisco (336miles about 6hrs 20min)
We left Santa Barbara after the token free breakfast which some US hotels provide, juice, fruit muffins and doughnuts. We also left the town thinking that it was nice enough but a bit sedate for our tastes. On clearing the built up area of Santa Barbara we joined the US -101 again and our first sat-nav instruction was after 123 miles keep left, this like little else illustrates the distances we were travelling and the lack of variation in the driving. Julia up to this point had undertaken all the driving which is our normal decision home or abroad but I was a listed driver and fully intended to share the driving as she became tired. We had decided to visit Carmel on the way to San Francisco not so much to see Clint Eastwood who is/was the mayor of the town rather to see the town itself as it had favourable reviews in our California guide book. Getting there proved a bit tricky as we had to do the old-fashioned thing of reading road signs as we had no zip code to aim the sat-nav at. We found Carmel By The Sea and assumed this to be our destination. There was no sign of Clint, but we had expected that, we found the sea and were amused to see two brides paddling in it, not together they were from two separate weddings. Apparently this is common and we then watched one bride and groom drive off in her truck, not the fairy carriage of legend. We had lunch in the town which was very neat and tidy; the risk of being gunned down by the mayor probably deters littering. Whether our sat-nav adjusted the route because of our new position when we switched it back on, the rational explanation, or because we had upset it by switching it off, our choice of explanation, we do not know. It decided for whatever reason to approach San Francisco via Oakland – it did not help that Oakland Raiders were playing San Francisco Giants in a pre-season game that very evening and the roads were very busy. We made slow progress and eventually entered San Francisco via the Bay Bridge, we still believe the good old US -101 would have avoided the bridge and the problems but worse was to follow. Typically of our journeys, we left the freeway with less than 3 miles to our destination, at once we were depressed by the area we found ourselves in, the shops were a mixture of the two types of pawn/porn and there were sex clubs and cinemas to drive the point home. As the distance to the hotel Renoir decreased there was no miracle improvement and we found the sat-nav all too accurate. While Julia parked outside and I went in to find out where to park she locked herself in the car, this is the same woman who rarely locks her car when she parks it and leaves it. Parking was by valet service and cost $38 per day – not what I wanted to hear. We found the hotel passable but it had been surrounded by the cast and set of Hill Street Blues since it had been built. We had little inclination to venture out but we needed to eat. We decided that we would take the recommendation of one of the reception staff and eat at an Italian restaurant in Little Italy, so we asked them to call a taxi for us. They called three but whether it was because it was Friday night, their theory, or because taxis didn’t like stopping near the Renoir, our theory, none arrived for 45 minutes. By this time hunger got the better of fear, and we ventured out on foot. We walked towards the signs of civilization and found a bar/restaurant packed to the doors. We queued up for less than ten minutes and got a table, while we ordered and ate there was a live Jazz combo performing, I’d rather have my food unaccompanied by this brand of trilling and wailing but Julia enjoyed it and it lightened her mood. Our return was of course even darker and later and for once I was closer to understanding why youths might carry knives for their own protection but I resisted the temptation to steal the steak knife. We set off unarmed but determined. We arrived unmolested but still not happy with our location and further upset that this was the first multiple night stopover; two nights.
We decided to spend as much of the next day as possible as far from the hotel as we could. We, with the help of the reception staff, who incidentally claimed one taxi appeared only minutes after we set off earlier, booked a double decker bus tour of the city for most of the day and a baseball match for the evening, San Francisco v LA Dodgers.
It was part of the tour that we were picked up by the firm’s minibus and taken to the San Francisco Waterfront where we joined our bus. The driver was also the tour guide and he knew an incredible amount about the city and delivered it while driving the bus through all manner of traffic. He claimed that it was his sixth tour of the week when he usually limited himself to three because his opinions tended to take over the information as he did more trips. We saw evidence of this as we toured the city. The mist refused to lift and when we reached the highest point of the city it was possible to see the layer of fog sitting on the city but nothing below it, the Golden Gate Bridge remains unseen by us for the same reason. We hugely enjoyed his commentary which fitted our sense of humour and were entertained for over two hours. He knew all the different districts that we went through and was quite clear which ones were taken over by “scum” at night at this time our hotel did not get mentioned. It was only when he returned to the waterfront and let off many off the passengers before planning a route back to hotels for the others. When we told him our hotel he said, “Nice Hotel, Terrible Area! Surrounded by scum-bags” and he dropped us off last to minimize causalities if there was unrest in the area.
We thought of using a taxi to get to the game in the evening but we were persuaded to take the underground train. We went down into the system less than a block away from the hotel and everything changed, it was clean, the staff was helpful and it only cost $1.50 each. As soon as we got on the right train we found nearly everyone was heading for the game. The match was exciting and we stayed to the end to see the Giants win 3-2 in an extra innings having been 1-1 after nine innings. Apparently most people drop into a baseball game either arriving late or leaving early, some do both but we didn’t know that rule so we watched and enjoyed it all. We returned to the hotel equally uneventfully and perhaps had mellowed somewhat towards the area but Julia was kept awake most of the night by fighting and the police response to it outside the sex cinema directly opposite our window.
On both mornings I brought doughnuts from a small shop several doors from the hotel, venturing out early I saw considerable numbers of people of both sexes sleeping on the street.
I feel I should make the following points, despite my attempts at humour we were both genuinely scared at times on the street and the situation was all our fault. I had looked the hotel Renoir up on the internet and despite reading where it was situated we together decided to go ahead with the booking rather than asking the tour organizer to get it changed. We will be happy to return to San Francisco in the future and we will probably book a hotel on the Waterfront where there was character and comfort.
We decided to spend as much of the next day as possible as far from the hotel as we could. We, with the help of the reception staff, who incidentally claimed one taxi appeared only minutes after we set off earlier, booked a double decker bus tour of the city for most of the day and a baseball match for the evening, San Francisco v LA Dodgers.
It was part of the tour that we were picked up by the firm’s minibus and taken to the San Francisco Waterfront where we joined our bus. The driver was also the tour guide and he knew an incredible amount about the city and delivered it while driving the bus through all manner of traffic. He claimed that it was his sixth tour of the week when he usually limited himself to three because his opinions tended to take over the information as he did more trips. We saw evidence of this as we toured the city. The mist refused to lift and when we reached the highest point of the city it was possible to see the layer of fog sitting on the city but nothing below it, the Golden Gate Bridge remains unseen by us for the same reason. We hugely enjoyed his commentary which fitted our sense of humour and were entertained for over two hours. He knew all the different districts that we went through and was quite clear which ones were taken over by “scum” at night at this time our hotel did not get mentioned. It was only when he returned to the waterfront and let off many off the passengers before planning a route back to hotels for the others. When we told him our hotel he said, “Nice Hotel, Terrible Area! Surrounded by scum-bags” and he dropped us off last to minimize causalities if there was unrest in the area.
We thought of using a taxi to get to the game in the evening but we were persuaded to take the underground train. We went down into the system less than a block away from the hotel and everything changed, it was clean, the staff was helpful and it only cost $1.50 each. As soon as we got on the right train we found nearly everyone was heading for the game. The match was exciting and we stayed to the end to see the Giants win 3-2 in an extra innings having been 1-1 after nine innings. Apparently most people drop into a baseball game either arriving late or leaving early, some do both but we didn’t know that rule so we watched and enjoyed it all. We returned to the hotel equally uneventfully and perhaps had mellowed somewhat towards the area but Julia was kept awake most of the night by fighting and the police response to it outside the sex cinema directly opposite our window.
On both mornings I brought doughnuts from a small shop several doors from the hotel, venturing out early I saw considerable numbers of people of both sexes sleeping on the street.
I feel I should make the following points, despite my attempts at humour we were both genuinely scared at times on the street and the situation was all our fault. I had looked the hotel Renoir up on the internet and despite reading where it was situated we together decided to go ahead with the booking rather than asking the tour organizer to get it changed. We will be happy to return to San Francisco in the future and we will probably book a hotel on the Waterfront where there was character and comfort.
Los Angeles to Santa Barbara (97miles about 1hr 45min)
We had provided ourselves with a kettle and several UKà USA adapters in order to produce cups of tea to nearer the required English standard; we had borrowed some milk from the Chinese restaurant the previous evening so we were able to start the day with a “cuppa” before checking out of the hotel. There was nothing to pay and I should perhaps mention here that our arrangements were faultless, every time we reached a hotel they were aware of the booking and took our voucher without any concern. We usually had to show picture ID and give in a credit card number for incidentals but often there were none of these added to the bill. In addition to the kettle we had purchased a card for the sat-nav so that we could use it in the USA, you can make your mind up which was the more essential item. We found it very useful to programme the device with the next hotel’s address and follow directions door to door, with the device set for the El Prado Inn in Santa Barbara we set off, we navigated flawlessly out of Los Angeles and basically followed one freeway, US-101 for 80miles, to Santa Barbara. We found the hotel easily and parked beneath it. We were able to check in earlier than allowed and took possession of a good sized room with a bed which could easily sleep four adults, we never tested this premise despite having beds of this size all over California, sometimes with two of them in the same room.
The hotel was a series of three storey blocks wrapped round an outside swimming pool. We walked down to the beach, bought lunch at Quisnos, a poor substitute for Subway, but you learn to make do. We walked out to the end of the pier and watched fishermen competing against pelicans for the available fish, not as I’ve tried to make you think, the rod and line v the graceful dive of the bird, the pelicans were quite content to let the humans do the work and then rob them of their catch either as they landed it or from their buckets. To be fair the humans seemed to retain most of their fish but it made an entertaining spectacle for the neutrals. From the end of the pier we were persuaded to take the water taxi round the harbour and paid $4 to do it. On our journey we passed less idle pelicans actually fishing for themselves and a yacht owned by David Crosby of Crosby, Stills and Nash, look up your Rock music history if no bell rings! We figured out that we had walked 11 blocks from the hotel to the beach and each block had up to 100 numbers in it, so if it’s the second block it starts at 200 and won’t go past 299. Anyway it was quite a long way back to the hotel in the heat of the day so we used the electric tram which took us just short of the hotel. Notice on this occasion we got things right, we walked down to the beach and rode back up! We had a laze in and around the pool before eating out close to the hotel, we ate at an Argentinean Restaurant and the meals were good, well-presented and huge. The first two aspects of our meals varied but the last one was almost constant every meal we bought at any, but one, restaurant would have fed both of us.
The hotel was a series of three storey blocks wrapped round an outside swimming pool. We walked down to the beach, bought lunch at Quisnos, a poor substitute for Subway, but you learn to make do. We walked out to the end of the pier and watched fishermen competing against pelicans for the available fish, not as I’ve tried to make you think, the rod and line v the graceful dive of the bird, the pelicans were quite content to let the humans do the work and then rob them of their catch either as they landed it or from their buckets. To be fair the humans seemed to retain most of their fish but it made an entertaining spectacle for the neutrals. From the end of the pier we were persuaded to take the water taxi round the harbour and paid $4 to do it. On our journey we passed less idle pelicans actually fishing for themselves and a yacht owned by David Crosby of Crosby, Stills and Nash, look up your Rock music history if no bell rings! We figured out that we had walked 11 blocks from the hotel to the beach and each block had up to 100 numbers in it, so if it’s the second block it starts at 200 and won’t go past 299. Anyway it was quite a long way back to the hotel in the heat of the day so we used the electric tram which took us just short of the hotel. Notice on this occasion we got things right, we walked down to the beach and rode back up! We had a laze in and around the pool before eating out close to the hotel, we ate at an Argentinean Restaurant and the meals were good, well-presented and huge. The first two aspects of our meals varied but the last one was almost constant every meal we bought at any, but one, restaurant would have fed both of us.
New York to Los Angeles (14.45 to 17.30)
Once again the check-in placed us on separate rows but we found an agreeable swap again without difficulty. This time the airline wanted to charge us for food and even the earphones used to access the in-flight entertainment. Having not had the fore-sight to steal those provided free on the previous flight and being too tight to invest in either we watched silent movies and the cabin crew feeding the business and first class sections. Of course on all of these travels the clock was giving us extra time so arriving in Los Angeles at 5.30pm actually meant that it was about 3.30am at home, some 22hours since we got up. Understandably we were tired but internal flights have no delay on your escaping the airport so, after just missing our hire-car bus transfer and thus seeing every other possible transfer at least once, we were on the way to the Dollar Hire car centre. To illustrate that there is always an exception to any rule, Julia’s people skills were completely ineffective on the guy behind this particular counter, he was at best monosyllabic, and any question we asked was treated to a one word response, eg; where do we bring the car back to? Answer; Here. We might have guessed that but perhaps a little more detail would have set our minds at ease but, since we were tired, we let matters progress. He tried to sell us roadside assistance the only extra not already paid for in our package, I think it was our joint response to his gruff manner that made us decline his suggestion, he made us aware that we would be responsible for having the car towed back to the depot if it broke down but we still held our ground. Bearing in mind that we intended to drive 2000ish miles through three states of the union I even now wonder about this decision but it illustrates the power of negative customer service. Having got through the paperwork, we were told to go into their garage, pick any car parked in the “1” section, check it for damage, and drive it off. Self service carried to an absurd level, I can remember when we first hired cars you almost had to pass a short written exam to be trusted with one. We chose a Suzuki and thus turned down all the older and more upright styled cars. It took one of the garage hands to explain how to get it into drive for the first time and Julia set off, the hotel for the night was the Howard Johnson International LAX and it was only ten minutes from the hire centre. We checked in and ate in the attached Chinese Restaurant, which was fine at that stage, and retired to bed. Considering the California section of the holiday was to start and finish in LA we were to see very little of the city at either end of our stay. The hotel was fine for our purposes and we slept well.
England to New York (08.30 to 11.00)
We set off for London Heath Row on Tuesday the 5th because we had booked a room at the Park Inn, for an overnight stay, on the edge of the airport for almost the same price as basic offsite parking for two weeks and there was 15 days parking thrown in for free. So it felt a quite leisurely preparation for the first journey of the holiday proper. Since the flight was reasonably early, 8.30am, we caught the airport shuttle bus at about 5.45 and were quickly in the American Airlines check in system, using the word system very loosely. Their method is that everybody queues in the same set of bullpens and the first people to the desks check in for their flights regardless of which flights are imminent. As soon as it gets tight for time for any particular flight, the people needing that flight are escorted out of the queue, past the other passengers, and on to the desks. Thus at about 7.00 we were checked in as a pair but with non-adjoining seats, a recurring theme of the whole holiday. Security remains tight and the process of going air-side consumed most of the period we had penciled in for breakfast and we only managed a final cup of English tea before being embarked on our flight. The lady placed between us by the American Airlines lottery cheerfully swapped places to reunite us and we were soon eating breakfast. We enjoyed the in-flight entertainment, we both, at different times, watched Margaret Thatcher’s early years as a prospective candidate for the Tory party, if the film is to be believed it explains some of her vindictive nature when she finally achieved real power, there were also some nice lighter moments when her son, Mark, managed to get lost as a child, and Carol was cooking with the aid of the nanny.
Arrival in New York was painless, some people had more trouble than us getting past immigration but it seemed they had missed the 37 time we were told that we had to fill in an immigration form and they polled up to the desks professing no knowledge of the system. Our particular official, a huge older black man, had already had one sortie into the assembled hoard waiting to be admitted to the US of A, when he detected the use of a camera, one of the offences we had been warned about by the million signs which welcomed us, he settled for the deletion of the picture taken when we were betting on summary execution. Julia met him first and he was, of course, cheerful and welcoming to us, she has the gift of getting the best out of people.
We had lugged our baggage through customs but shortly after that we were relieved of it, so casually that we scarcely expected to see it again, but it turned up correctly in LA. With a three hour connection time we had time for a beer in the airport sports bar where we discovered that my phone would, despite having £30 credit on it, be purely ornamental for the duration, it’s too basic to seek out foreign networks. Julia’s phone, a much higher tech device being one of Sarah’s cast-offs, fared no better in New York so we couldn’t let anyone know of our progress.
Arrival in New York was painless, some people had more trouble than us getting past immigration but it seemed they had missed the 37 time we were told that we had to fill in an immigration form and they polled up to the desks professing no knowledge of the system. Our particular official, a huge older black man, had already had one sortie into the assembled hoard waiting to be admitted to the US of A, when he detected the use of a camera, one of the offences we had been warned about by the million signs which welcomed us, he settled for the deletion of the picture taken when we were betting on summary execution. Julia met him first and he was, of course, cheerful and welcoming to us, she has the gift of getting the best out of people.
We had lugged our baggage through customs but shortly after that we were relieved of it, so casually that we scarcely expected to see it again, but it turned up correctly in LA. With a three hour connection time we had time for a beer in the airport sports bar where we discovered that my phone would, despite having £30 credit on it, be purely ornamental for the duration, it’s too basic to seek out foreign networks. Julia’s phone, a much higher tech device being one of Sarah’s cast-offs, fared no better in New York so we couldn’t let anyone know of our progress.
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