Central Park from the Top of The Rock

Originally uploaded by charlietyack

Here's a photo from The Top Of The Rock taken on our recent trip to the States. For more info about thetrip, click the link below-

Follow up:

We flew to New York, then immediately drove to Boston in the worst driving conditions I have ever experienced. This is no exaggeration: I was keeping the car to 40mph, which seemed excessive to me. Meanwhile the locals were zooming past us at 70mph or more, despite the fact that the event horizon was reduced to less than a second at times. Every fifty miles or so, there was a serious accident. The drive was nerve-wracking, so on arrival we were pretty relieved. We went out in Boston, and it was great fun. The people were so friendly and everyone seemed to find our accents supremely entertaining.

After spending a full day in Boston, and exploring the freedom trail in miserable grey conditions, we headed up north to Burlington, and were very pleasesd to discover that the Interstates in Vermont have free coffee wherever you stop - enough to encourage me to live anywhere.

Burlington was a total change of pace from bustling Boston. People seemed relaxed, happy to amble around and enjoy their beautiful lakeside setting. When we were wandering round looking slightly bewildered, people came and offered help several times. Not only did they offer help but the advice they gave was genuine, which was also a welcome change from in the UK. The town is full of pubs with their own microbreweries attached, so we decided to sample one, called the Three Needs. The beer was great, and we even witnessed an All American Bar-Room Brawl, which added some spice to the proceedings. It seemed to be over a game of pool, which further added to the authenticity of the experience.

The following morning, we ate at a rather singular Jewish diner, which seemed like a regular diner, except that everything came with Laatke, which seems to be a cross between a hash brown and an omelette. Suitably replenished, we got in the car, and got on the Interstate 2, which leaps across the islands in the middle of Lake Champlain. Half way up, we found a beach, which was utterly deserted, and decided to have an impromptu swim. The lake was beautifully warm, and we were baffled as to why there were no other tourists about. It was good to have the lake to ourselves though.

We arrived in Montreal, and found it to be quite a bewildering place to be. The size of the cars and the buildings makes it feel like North America, but the people speak French, and you are in Canada. This fusion of cultural influences is quite bewildering at first. Also, the Gallic nature of the people was a stark contrast to the friendliness of the people we had met so far. The city itself was beautiful, with the Mont Real sitting in the middle, overlooking everything. Their choices of eatery names were a little odd though:

Montreal has a lot of eccentric architecture, the prime example of which has to be the Biosphère. This is a dome that was built as a showcase for a world Expo event, in a similar vein to the Atomium in Brussels. Whilst the Atomium was based on the chemical structure of Iron, the Biosphère is a representation of a Buckyball, or a fullerene molecule. Originally, the sphere had a complex system of louvres to control its internal temperature. Someone then decided to renovate the sphere, and in the process set fire to it. This resulted in all of the skin coming off, leaving the structure. People realised this made it look great, and the building has remained nude since.

After Montreal, we drove the 500km to Toronto, along the 401, The Most Boring Road in the World, Ever. It's essentially a straight route along the side of Lake Ontario. Any corners are about 5 miles in length, and driving it is pretty dangerous, precisely because there is no challenge or stimulation. Luckily, the stretch near the end is some sort of Patriot's Highway, and there were lots of soldiers' families, police and FD members on the bridges, so we couldraise the tone by hooting to them, and getting waved back at. At least I think they were waving...

Toronto was my favourite destination on the trip. This was mainly because of the peope - they were so friendly. I don't know if this impression was accentuated by the contrast with the residents of Montreal, but people were very friendly and polite, and of course they loved our accents. We ascended the CN tower, but could not go to one of the decks because someone extremely rich was having her 21st birthday party in it. Still, we got money off, and could go all the way to the higher observation ball, where it was so high that all sensation of vertigo disappears as the gorund below just looks like a picture.

The top comedic moment of the trip came when we were walking west along the lakeside, and I wondered aloud where Fort York was. A Torontonian walking past us turned round and said "Have a great time in Toronto guys." I asked him if he knew where fort York was, and instead of telling us, he said, "Actually guys, strictly speaking it's not really particularly awesome." His understatement said it all. He then proceeded to tell us what we should do, which was a pretty accurate description of what we had done the previous night, but tacked a place called the "Buffalo Sex Club" to the end. He said we shouldn't take cameras, but that we would like it because it has bicycles attached to the ceiling, and Jaegermeister on tap. Since we had a massive drive the following day, with an early start, we gave that one a miss, but certainly sounded pretty awesome.

Our early start was necessary because we were driving to Washington DC via Niagara Falls, a 500 mile trip that included a border crossing. We got off to a good start, and reached the Falls by 10am. They really were epic.

After going behind the falls (you can see some water falling but there's not really any sense of scale) and looking around, we got back to the car and headed forthe border crossing,expecting a long wait. We were waved through after about ten seconds, and and not asked nearly the same amount of tedious, patronising questions we had been asked by a border guard who thought he was a master comedian in Calais a few months before when we returned from France. Now we had about 400 miles to cover before nightfall. We stopped for lunch at a diner that looked like something out of Twin Peaks, and got a few funny looks for our obviously "not from round here" accents, but managed to leave with full bellies.

The second half of the journey seemed to drag a bit, but we arrived in time to meet with Mehan and Tasha, old friends from Japan. It was great to catch up, and Mehan very kindly put us up for a couple of nights. The most entertaining place we went to in DC was "Ben's", the longest lasting black-owned business in Washington DC. There was a sign up in the serving area that read, "People who can eat free at Ben's, Bill Cosby and Barack Obama. (But he paid)."

The National Mall in DC is absolutely humungous, and very impressive. I think the reason why it looks smaller than it is in real life because the actual monuments are also huge.

We walked around the mall, and dropped into a couple of the Smithsonian Museums, which were very impressive. Unfortunately, we hardly had any time in the Aerospace museum, which has lots of real pieces of aviation history, like Skylab and the X-15. Skylab was also impressive, becuase there was a fair amount of space in there, as opposed to the Apollo capsules, which were awfully cramped. As Karl Pilkington once said, Michael Collins was "the most alone human being ever" when he left Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong on the surface of the moon. We finished up at the Capitol, which I couldn't help but compare (visually) to a Monte Carlo casino.

After a great couple of days in DC, we headed up to Philadelphia to see my brother. We intended to stop in Baltimore, as we are all massive fans of The Wire. Unfortunately we did not have time. We drove through Baltimore though, and could the Patapsco Docks and the downtown areas from the show on our drive. Philadelphia was only a couple of hours from DC, so we arrived refreshed, and my brother showed us round in the evening. This meant that, by virtue of his local knowledge, we had pretty much seen all of the tourist sites by the time we went to sleep on the first night.

The following day we did the must-do Philly experiences - we ate a Philly Cheese Steak sandwich, and ran up the Rocky steps. We also saw the Liberty Bell, Isaiah Zagar's street mosaics and the building from the end of Ghostbusters. Whilst it is a New York skyscraper in the movie, the actual building is only a few storeys high.

Next stop was New York, where we stayed with another old friend from Japan, Megan, and her boyfriend James. the very kindly allowed us to take over their lounge for a few days, and showed us around Brooklyn. New York was everything we hoped it would be, and we certainly underestimated the size of Manhattan - on the first day, we walked 12 miles! Brooklyn Bridge is beautiful, and well worth the walk to enter Manhattan the proper way.

Since I have not completed uploading all the photos, I'll leave it here for now, and finish this post when I have all the photos online!

The rest of the photos are in this slideshow.


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.