Lay in for an hour due to cold. Now it was off to NYC. We stopped at New Haven and visited Yale and now are in Cos Cob for commuting to NYC. We made a list of places to go and things to do and also finished off most of our Christmas cards and correspondence.
Tuesday 9th December
New York City! Got up early and go to the railway station at 7:30am. We reached New York with all the commuters at 8:50am. We were amazed by Grand Central Station and probably even more impressed if it wasn't full to construction. We were turfed out onto 42nd street and didn't have a clue about which way to turn so we went back into the station to get a map. We found which way wanted to go and caught the bus down to Staten Island Ferry. In our guide books it told us this was the cheapest way to see the Statue of Liberty at 50c return. Well in actual fact it was cheaper! It was free! So we went across and came back again. Then we had the quintessential NYC hot-dog which wasn't very nice really and then on to Wall Street. We saw the Stock Exchange and the World Trade Centre and the World Financial Centre. We then caught the bus uptown. We were then at Central Park. But we had seen quite a lot on the bus route - through all the people, i.e. Broadway, Avenue of the Americas etc. We walked through Central Park, chatted with the squirrels and saw Strawberry Fields, we walked through the zoo bit and watched the ice-skating and then onto Fifth Avenue. We went in most of the shops; Macys, Saks, Tiffanys etc. We missed F.A.O. Schwartz where the piano from "Big" is. We went to Times Square amongst the hustle and bustle and into the Warner Brothers store and Disney. We were pretty exhausted by this time and we will had the Empire State Building to do. Once we go there we found we couldn't pay by credit card so we found a bank machine. But, for some reason Claire couldn't get any money out so I used CIRRUS. The view from the top was pretty stunning, in fact, that's an understatement, it was truly magical. We then set about calling people just to say "I'm at the top of the Empire State Building". When I checked my messages I had two! I hadn't had any for a month so maybe the Empire State Building really is magical, especially since we checked them in Macys just an hour before. I wanted to call home but it would have been 1am and I thought they wouldn't appreciate it too much. We reluctantly left the ESB and went back towards Grand Central Station. We just missed the train so we had half an hour way for the next one. We finally reached Calvin at about 10pm, he had an orange sticker on him saying "this vehicle will be towed in 24hours". How dare they say abandoned! It's our home, we love him. Even though we were knackered we drove the can through New York to avoid the traffic in the daytime. We went through the Bronx and parked at the gas station in New Brunswick (!) of all places!
Wednesday 10th December
Rudely awoken by the man in the gas station at 6:30am. He wanted us to move the van as his customers needed the space. So, clad in pjs and sleeping bag, we drove just around the corner and went back to bed. When we got up again the man came and apologised for a second time. Now we set off to Washington D.C. We stopped at a Mall on the way and used McDonalds facilities yet again and then onto Princeton, Philadelphia, Baltimore and finally to Chevy Chase. This is where the nightmare began. I had already been driving for 6 hours to so and was beginning to feel it a bit. We stopped at this kind of conference centre and used the phone. Claire kept getting a rapper on the other end, then Claire was told on TeleKey that they are charging us every time we access the message service, 50c a time! And this was from yesterday.
We decided to drive into Chevy Chase and using the street map we found Park Ave. Sylvena lives at North Park Ave. We couldn't find the place so we drove around some more. Claire called Bernie and then we decided to call it a night. We were both knackered and upset so we went back to the original Park Avenue and camped there.
<these are extracts from my diaries written whilst travelling and working in Canada and the US in '97-'98>
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