Crosswood

Back in San Francisco

I woke up very early on Friday. I, because I wanted a cheaper flight, had booked the plane to San Francisco a mere day and a half after I arrived in New York, so I had to get round everything before I left.

The Hostel I was in was in the Upper West Side of New York, very close to central park and within walking distance of the upper city shops. New York is interesting in that it isn’t centralised – there are about four different nodes of tall buildings, each of which would qualify as ‘downtown’ in another, lesser city, but which are simply concentrations of businesses. Downtown proper is quite a wee way downtown, and the place is so big that you must take the subway.

I didn’t like the subway the first day, but it got better as I had more experience with it. New Yorkers are inherently selfish – I stood up to give my seat to an elderly lady (I guess my parents didn’t send me to that expensive school for nothing!) but she wouldn’t take it. She thought that if I wanted to give it to her there must be something wrong with it! And before I could overcome my surprise a young blonde women sat down in it nonchalantly instead. It was all a bit strange.

Anyway, the first and only day I got up at 5:15am. It was pouring with rain, and the snores of my ten roommates filled the room. I trotted softly to my locker, not putting on the lights or anything in order to not disturb them, and started to undo my lock. Suddenly there was a dazzling light and an outraged Chinese girl was demanding to know why I was going through her stuff. I was puzzled and not a little angry – not only was it 5am, but I was being accused of being a thief and I had stumbled around in the dark only to have this girl turn on the light and wake everyone up! It took me waving my backpack and my lock in her face to convince her that the stuff was mine, and even then she refused to talk to me again.

So at 5:45am I was out the door and swinging down Broadway to find a bagel store.

Broadway at 5:30am

I needed a bagel store because I had been ordered by a friend of mine to eat one while I was there. Stumbling into the nearest small bagel-shop I could find, I had the generic trouble of trying to order something in my New Zealand English before giving up and resorting to pointing and making hand gestures. The bagel was excellent though – it was so early in the morning the bread had just come out of the oven, so it was crispy and delicious quite apart from it being great anyway.

Bagel

By 6am I had reached the Rockefeller centre, certain that I would be the first person there and would get a great shot from my camera. Unfortunately I picked the day with some sort of high fashion show on, and the queue stretched all down the street. I just took a photo of the building I presumed was the famous one and moved on.

Rockefeller Centre

By 6:15am I had reached Times Square, as I intended, with just enough darkness left to make it impressive but no crowds. It was amazing – I loved it. It was like a fireworks display except more entertaining because the pictures moved and bubbled and shifted. It would have be tough to stick it out with crowds though.

Times Sqaure

At 6:30am I reached the Empire State Building. I didn’t go in, because it would have cost me a lot of money, but I did get this wicked shot of it covered with mist. It is an impressive building.

Empire State Building

By this stage I had already walked about 20 to 25 blocks, and my feet were a little sore. I had walked a very goodly amount the day before, but still would have preferred to walk on the pavement as opposed to the subway. Unfortunately I needed to get about 60 blocks in

New York

less than an hour, so the subway was the only practical option. Today though the subway was better, perhaps because I had fortified my mind against what I knew was coming, or more probably because after one go on it I was as shocked as I was going to get. After a fairly pleasant ride to South Ferry, I jumped on the free Staton Island Ferry to Staton

Staton Island Ferry

Island. This took me straight past the Statue of Liberty for free, which was a darn slight better than paying $40 for the same thing. It was a lovely hour ride, dropping me back off at the bottom of Manhattan Island.

Statue of Liberty

I again braved the subway, but this time my sense of direction failed me. I got off at the right station to look for the WTC (I had carefully mapped out my route prior to the day) but walked the wrong way up the street (to my eternal shame.) This took me through Greenwich Village, and Soho, both of which were amazingly interesting. Another subway

WTC

ride later and I was at Ground Zero, which was not much to look at. Waking

The WTC

under it to get to the subway station was amazing though, because the station is the only thing that survives from the original structures. The people in that

Basement of the WTC

station were totally silent. Not a whisper, not a sound, and all out of respect for the signs telling people that they stood in the WTC. It was strange after the huge noise of the outside.

Subway Station

The WTC brought me to the end of my ‘tourist’ stops, so I jumped bravely onto the subway again for the journey to the Metropolitan museum of Art, travelling though Central Park again.

Myself in Central Park

The Met is amazing.

The Met

It has a real Egyptian shrine in it! It was Washington Crossing the Delaware! It has Salvador Dali, Picasso, David’s ‘The Death of Socrates’, it has a wing the size of an ordinary museum dedicated to arms and armour, another to classical statues, yet another to modern art. I was in there five hours and I

Egyptian Shrine, The Met

didn’t look at anything in detail – I actually just walked through and occasionally read a brief sign when interested. If I was to stay there for a week I wouldn’t get round – a month maybe more realistic. After my feet began to swell in my boots, I wandered down the road looking for the Guggenheim building, which is very famous. I took a photo of the building which is just cool, but the exhibits, no matter how famously amazing, didn’t really interest me at all - so I didn’t bother going through the hassle of turning off the flash every time I wanted a shot (this is why so many of my photos are overexposed. Sorry.)

After wandering around strawberry fields (the part of central park dedicated to john

Stawberry Fields

Lennon) I bought a hot-dog (again by the order of my friend. This friend lived in New York while growing up, and was invaluable in her advice on where to go and

Hot Dog

what not to do. It was so good, so relevant (I stumbled from crisis to crisis in pretty much the order that she wrote down instructions of how to get OUT of the situations) that I was printing it off for other people in the hostel). I then went to the hostel and sorted out my life to get through JFK airport security – throwing away everything that even resembled a bottle or something like that.

By dinner time I was again feeling adventurous, so I moved out onto Broadway to look for pizza (which was apparently amazing.) After having such luck with the ‘hole in the wall’ bagel place, I walked into a really dodgy looking pizza shop and ordered a pepperoni (you only get one topping for some reason.) It was the best pizza of my life. I ha#
I've a shot of it here to remember it forever. And it was HUGE!

Getting up at four this morning was tough – since I was in a dorm on a Friday night, it didn’t matter I got to bed at 9 because I couldn’t exactly turn off the light, or asked them to shut up. Also people were walking in an out every hour until about 3am (it was a Friday after all.) So I got no sleep. And then, after busting a gut to get to JFK by 6am, it turned out my flight was booked for tomorrow instead! I simply couldn’t deal with going back and doing the whole thing again, so I changed my flight while I was at the gate, and left as I thought I was scheduled for San Francisco. If you have to fly an airline in the states, fly JetBlue, because it was nice. Delta and American Airways are pretty average, but JetBlue was actually NICE, which lots of legroom and free eats and everything that used to be nice about plane travel (including good looking male flight attendants). We were a bit delayed, because as we were sitting on the tarmac during boarding a tire punctured, so they had to change that, but nothing to serious.

After that we were in San Francisco airport, and through a remarkable piece of misdirection I ended up in the international baggage terminal. I got out in the end, but not without having to go through customs, who held me up because ‘I didn’t have the proper paperwork to enter the US.’ I managed to convince them to show me to the domestic terminal eventually, and the manager thought it was pretty funny!
So I am back in San Fran, living in my basement, and I am pleased I didn’t give back my keys. I’ll have to give them back eventually, but not yet. The plumbing seems even worse, if that’s possible, from when I was here over the fall, which is impressive, but the place is simply too good a base to refuse. I am going to bed now, because I am so tired. Good night!

written by Crosswood on January 12, 2008 This Freakin' Rocks!!! from San Francisco, United States
from the travel blog: New Zealand Student, American University.

3 comments...

Yesterday was a HUGE day. To start with I woke up at what my body considered to be 3am, but which locally was 7:30am. In fact here I am here looking tired and scruffy. And also sideways. Whatever. I am experimenting with embedding photos – tell me if they take to long to load, or they’re boring, and I’ll stop.

Myself at Gigi's place

Anyway, you agree with me I look terrible. I looked better after Bagels and some tea, before embarking on my great adventure around the United States Capital!

I left on the metro due to the kind help of Gigi and Steve, and headed in to the centre of town (‘the Mall’) for all those things to look at! I didn't realise it would be so hard to AVOID tripping over a famous monument. They made it awfully convenient for visitors, but you do begin to get jaded with fantasmic things after a while.

Anyway, I left with some sort of plan to see the Air and Space Museum, but walked the wrong way from the stop and ended up outside this grim looking building with a huge line outside. That looked promising, so I tacked myself on the end of it.

Holocusat Museam

It turned out it was the Holocaust museum, and is incredibly famous. A funny story about the Holocaust museum, or as close to funny as you can get after actually seeing the stuff in there, was that I rocked up to the building not realising there is always a massive line, not just to get inside through security, but also to get inside the exhibits full stop. So I went up to the reception to get a ticket (there were hundreds of people), and this sign said to present your military or federal ID if you had it. I figured you had to pay to get in (which you don't), and that being a military person gave you some sort of discount, so I pulled out my New Zealand Army ID in the hope that would work. The lady at the front desk looked at it, blinked, looked at it again and gave me a ticket to go up straight away, jumping over the people in the wait-list, the people who had tickets that said they could go in at that time, and even jumping to the head of the line to take the elevator. It turns out that New Zealand liberated a concentration camp and the people at the desk give priority to members of forces that did that. I looked like a student though, so I got some amazingly dirty looks from the people who had been there for ages but hadn't been able to get tickets. It was an interesting museum, in a horrible way. I was pleased and not pleased at the same time to be in that building, which was a strange feeling at the time, but even more so now that I'm trying to remember what it was like. Anyway.

After I got out, I was a little lost, so I strolled down the street and around the corner. The Washington Memorial basically demanded my attention after that.

Washinon Memorial

The thing is MASSIVE and the line outside to go up was just silly. I figured that my magic New Zealand Army ID wasn't going to cut it this time, so I wandered up the left-hand pathway that leads around the area.

Rodent, Washington

It’s just a tall building anyway – when I get to New York there will be plenty of those.

The next thing I saw was the new World War Two memorial. It's cool. What more can you say? It’s a little overdone, any it feels almost self-conscious in its attempts to tie-in to the neo-classical feel of all the other monuments. As I walked past it and the reflecting pool towards the Lincoln Monument, I was beginning to get used to it, but it took me a little while.

Wahington Monument and Pond

The Lincoln memorial was awesome. It is apparently really good at night, but it was pretty nippy there during the day, so I didn't hang round to admire Abe much. If you look at my photos, you'll notice all the water is frozen. Yes. Hmmm.

Next I visited the Vietnam memorial, which is overhyped. I’m not saying it wasn’t a little moving, but it wasn't great like they say it is.

Brothers in Armys Statue

Veitnam

Perhaps what was missing was the people who were genuinely there to grieve, because while I was there all there was were a bunch of war protesters. Felt just like Berkeley, only less appropriate.

The Korea memorial was much, much, MUCH better. It has files and files of statues, each kitted out in a different allied countries’ battle gear, also marching in the same direction and with their names engraved into the granite. It is very cool, and I hung around there longer than I meant too

Korea Memorial

Roosevelt Memorial

Ice on the Roosevelt Memorial

After that was the Roosevelt memorial, which I ran into on the way to the Jefferson memorial. Both were awesome, and the Roosevelt one, which made copious use of flowing water, was totally frozen. It was also totally at odds with reality, portraying the man as honest, caring and kind. He lied about having polio for 10 years, to the entire country!! Moving along.
Jefferson's words, engraved around the edge of the building's dome, seemed to me to be admitting grand theft, but it might be impolitic of me to point that out. I certainly wasn't going to point it out there with all those patriotic Americans around! I did laugh a little though. It all turned out well in the end.

Jefferson

Jefferson Memorial and Pond

Jefferson Memorial

Then I ran into the John Paul Jones memorial. Long story, but a cool monument. Dad might fil you in if you ask nicely.

John Paul Jones

I know it seems like I went everywhere, and yes. Yes I did. Here is the White House from the back

White House

, here is the Sherman monument,

Shermon

and here is me being nice and warm with Washington’s Memorial in the background

Myself in Washington DC

AEROSPACE MUSEUM! Oh yeah baby! They had the American history Smithsonian closed for renovation, so all that stuff was in the Aerospace as well. Gold. Here is Sherman’s Hat.

Shermon's hat, Aerospace

Americans are so funny - they had Edison's light bulb, then the original telegraph, Bell's telephone, and then... Kermit the Frog. I laughed, but no one else did. Eee.

They had the REAL Columbia Command Module from Apollo 11, they had the Enola Gay hanging from the roof, they had everything and ANYTHING they could lay their hands on displayed in its glory. I was thrilled. I spent three hours there. I could go back, but won't, because I'd never leave. Here is a real FE-8 pusher biplane from the First World War, with a Spoilt Camel in the background.

FE-8 Pusher Biplane with Camel in background

I also went to the White House information centre, and then went home to spend productive time on a Wii.

Please think of my friends the West Coast this week - they got wacked by a huge storm. One was without power or communication when a tree toppled over the power-line onto the cell phone tower. They live in an orcharding area and apparently some have lost 50% of their trees. One has had a neighbour lose her house when a tree fell through it. A couple haven't responded to my emails or call, so I'm a little worried about that. I might cut this trip short if they need some help with the clean-up.

Cheers Team
Margie

written by Crosswood on January 06, 2008 This Freakin' Rocks!!! from Fairfax, United States
from the travel blog: New Zealand Student, American University.

2 comments...

Trips:

Shorthand link:

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To New York

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