NYC & Thanksgiving

The day before Thanksgiving we took the train from New Haven to Grand Central in New York City. The last few times I went to NYC we used the subway exclusively but this visit we were all cold and tired and we didn’t go on the subway (worlds shittest underground) and only used Uber – they turn up instantly and as there was 4 of us it almost wasn’t worth getting the subway anywhere. Bronte’s boyfriend Chris is a farmer from Wiltshire so it was pretty funny watching him stare around at the massive buildings.

We stopped at a Japanese restaurant.

And after that we went to the top of the Empire State Building to see the city lit up at night.

Now somewhere that day Bronte and Kim must have picked something up because they were both super sick that next and the next day and then Chris was sick the day after that (I was fine) which wasn’t timed great as we turned up to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in the city.

We got there early and it was absolutely packed and freezing cold at 17f (that’s -8C for you metric chaps).

We were all feeling the cold, perhaps slightly less than these cheerleaders.

Kim, who wouldn’t stay at the hotel for fear of missing out, kept having to scamper off to vomit in a flower bed.

And Bronte managed to keep down the vomit but had forgotten her gloves and just sort of gave up miserably and sat on her handbag.

I had a lovely time though… after a little while we gave it up as a bad job and missed the rest.

And we had to leave Bronte and Chris in the city for the rest of their vacation and make our way back to Connecticut, poor Kimmy slept almost all of the way home and I had to drive her car back but it was still lovely to have my sister and Chris to visit… even if they were all sick! Back home when recovered Kim made my belated cake construction – the theme this year was The Sims. Hmm…

Toronto & Upstate New York

After Niagara Falls we took a drive further north to Toronto in Canada. We got stuck in traffic (a theme for us) because Toronto had some Santa parade so the road to our hotel was actually closed but I think the hotel felt a bit sorry for us when we got there and upgraded our room to a fancy two bedroom suite. We took a walk through the city back to the dining in the dark restaurant O’Noir where Kim and I had eaten before and Bronte and Chris wanted to try out. It was even more fun this time because I got to stab my sister in the dark with a fork. We made buddies with the people at the next table and all compared notes of what we thought we were eating. I enjoyed my starter which I found out was mushrooms… which I hate… it took me 30 years to discover I don’t hate mushrooms.

After dinner we went to the top floor of our hotel that looked out over the city and got in the hot tub with some random Ukranian guys who offered us swigs of vodka from a water bottle… um… no… thanks. But they left and then we had the place to ourselves.

The next day we went to Ripley’s Aquarium of Canada.

They had a really cool walkway through a massive tank of sharks and turtles etc.

They had some scuba divers cleaning the tank which I thought were pretty funny as we traveled underneath them on a moving walkway.

Then we went through a load of jelly fish, wobbling about.

Then Bronte, Kimmy and I went crazy for the touch tank where we could pet the rays.

Then we mooched around a bit.

Bronte and Chris went to the CN Tower.

Kim and I found a fancy arcade/coffee shop and hung out before the long drive back to an Airbnb that Bronte had booked for us all in upstate New York.

It was pretty adorable.

It was all log cabin-y.

And decorated for Christmas.

The house was on a farm that had barn cats, one of them was especially friendly so we adopted him for the night. We called him Heathcliff and I was very temped to steal him but he seemed to enjoy frolicking about outside with his many brothers and sisters.

The farm also had some deer we visited.

But I was mainly sold on the trillions of kittens we kept spotting everywhere.

The house was in the middle of nowhere and there were some Mennonite neighbours who drove a horse and buggy.

When we got back to Connecticut the next day we were all worn out and had a gingerbread house building contest.

Bronte & Chris Visit

Last month my sister Bronte and her lovely boyfriend Chris came to visit with us over my birthday and Thanksgiving. The November weather up until their visit had been fairly mild until the night we needed to collect them when we had a big snow storm. It didn’t start until we left the house (naturally) and it dumped down, we got delayed 4 and a half hours, stuck in traffic whilst the snow flurried down, passing cars stranded along the highway (including one with a man dressed in shorts digging his car out). I was pretty worried my sister and Chris would have been waiting for us for all that time but luckily (or not…?) they got delayed for just as long stuck on the runway in London and New York, by coincidence we both arrived at the airport at exactly the same time!

We didn’t get back to our house in Connecticut until about 4am and we had to dig a channel through the snow in the driveway to get the car in – needless to say we slept in pretty late! In the morning we introduced our guests to IHOP and some shops and ended up at Dave & Busters a big arcade.

That evening Chris and Bronte got to meet some of Kim’s family and we went to hibachi for Japanese (more sake, more sexy).

The next day was my 30th birthday, I got a ton of lovely gifts from everyone but I couldn’t stop too long because we started our road trip that day and headed through upstate New York on the way to Niagara. I had a not very fancy birthday lunch of pizza by the slice.

When we got through the Canadian border we got to our hotel which Bronte and Chris had upgraded as a treat for my birthday and our room over looked Niagara Falls, we could see all of the mist rising up.

And my Mum paid for us to all have a nice fancy dinner over looking the falls.

Where weirdly enough they had a fireworks contest that night so we got to see a really long fireworks show as we ate which was cool.

The next day it wasn’t too cold out so we were feeling strong about going on the last boat that was still open this time of year on the falls.

We lined up and got our highly fashionable waterproof ponchos on, Bronte and Chris laughed at Kim and I tying ours up tightly around our faces and tucking everything in, when the barriers opened we all decided we’d stand up top at the front of the boat because we could take a little mist.

We sailed past the American Bridal Falls with no issue, a tiny bit of spray and we all got photos. Then we rounded on the Canadian Horseshoe Falls and got hammered with water, we were soaked, the water got so heavy we all raced downstairs with everyone else to shelter, until I realised half way I’d lost Bronte. Before we set off for the day my Mum had made me promise not to let my sister (who is legendarily clumsy) fall over board so I went back up to find her and she was standing alone, shocked with her arms out dripping with water… oh Bronte. They completely understood why Kim and I tied up our ponchos so tight.

NYC Pride 2018

Last weekend we got up at some ungodly hour to drive to New Haven because it was time for Pride. We parked at New Haven and got the very slow train into New York.

We’d both realised the month before that we had no rainbow clothes to wear so had hastily ordered things online and as we got closer to the city we saw more and more people dressed up. We got off at Grand Central, it was quite good that there were so many people dressed in rainbow themed clothes because we weren’t sure which way to go on the subway so we just stalked some other girls who were clearly going to Pride.

 

We weren’t sure how early we needed to get there but we made it in good time and saw all the police officers getting report, actually this wasn’t even all of them, they had a ton of police on bikes too. There was a police officer on every corner, officers in cars, bikes, motorbikes, marching along with the parade… I had never seen so many police officers. It was ironic really because the whole reason the march started 49 years ago was because of police brutality causing the Stonewall Riots.

But it was nice to watch things getting set up.

We lined up by a barrier in the shade, it was meant to be overcast but the sun was fierce. We saw a couple of nutty christian protesters… I’m never sure what these people hope to achieve, do they think someone will read their signs and have a sudden epiphany? I mostly just noticed the poor font choice, they were almost impossible to read, a couple of times they went to cross the road at the designated crossing and everyone booed them.

This guy made sure to loop round extra in front of them but I’m not sure they enjoyed the view.

The parade route was longer this year, we actually only stayed a few hours but it went on for 9 hours… Kim got sunburn after a few hours so I assume I would have been taking home a pile of ash if we’d stayed until 9pm.

We saw Billie Jean King the tennis player who was a grand marshal, we also saw Lea DeLaria from Orange is the New Black, lots of politicians who I didn’t personally recognise as I can’t face following the USA news too closely since that tangerine baboon has come to power.

There were lots of fancy costumes.

And fancy floats.

And a ton of mostly naked people, we saw a lot of… parts (this is the polite way of phrasing that). We made a hilarious buddy at the barrier, Ricky, a tall effeminate gay man who was a make up artist at Sephora but appeared to have applied his foundation with a builder’s trowel and it slowly melted off during the time we spent in the sun. There were a lot of straight tourists that came to watch the march (good!) but they seemed to be the worst ones for trying to push past all the gay people who had waited at the barriers for hours (bad!).

Here’s a couple of moments from the march –

After Kim’s skin started to look like a little ham we decided to go for some lunch and were almost headed back home when we realised Kim’s friend from school Joe was at the march so we stopped to see him quickly which was nice as he doesn’t live in CT anymore so Kim doesn’t get to see him often.

And still the parade went on…

And then we walked back to the subway to go home which was a task in itself because it was like a maze to cross any roads in the area. Next year we might try out Boston…

New York

The other weekend a bunch of us went for a trip to New York. New Haven isn’t too far away so we parked up and got the train into Grand Central.

We saw buskers by the Brooklyn Bridge.

Then we walked round Chinatown.

And stopped for dim sum in an authentically Chinese restaurant where a woman shouted “YOU TRY NOW, YOU TRY NOW”… whilst shoving small plates of miscellaneous at us. Terrifying.

We got fancy ice creams after.

We looked round a Chinese sweet shop, I decided I wasn’t brave enough to try anything because the candy was next to dried fish and I couldn’t tell which was which.

We walked to the 911 Memorial which was kinda depressing actually, a gaping void of depression.

I got some great tasteful earrings.

We took a walk around Central Park.

And we took a ride on the carousel.

Then we strolled down 5th Avenue

Browsed around.

Saw the Empire State Building.

And that was our chilled out day in NYC.

Last day – New York

So I flew back from New York and that meant a long old drive back to JFK to park up, not long because of distance but long because of the insane traffic. It was just gridlock almost the entire way. It was Kim’s birthday too so to say sorry for making her drive to JFK and back and to wish her a happy birthday we went to a spa in New York called Aire Baths. It was all fancyyy. We walked in and got special wristbands that unlocked out lockers where we had a robe and slippers and a towel. There was this attendant there that was hovering over us trying to be helpful (which she was) but it was like having a servant, she even insisted that she squeeze out our swimsuits after and put them in little ziplock bags for us.

I had to steal this photo of the baths cuz I didn’t take my phone in there. There were all different pools, a tepid one, a hot one, two freezing cold ones, a jacuzzi one and a salt water one where you floated. There was also showers and a really big steam room, a warmed marble seating area and curtained areas for massages, candles were absolutely everywhere. We each had a massage, mine was really good and relaxing.

You got two hours in the spa which was just the right time and then we got out and got showered and dressed. All the showers had shampoo and conditioner etc and there were mirrored areas with make up wipes and hair dryers and straighteners. There were even hair brushes you could borrow (um… no.. ) and a swimsuit drainer machine with purple ziplock bags.

So that was really cool, we both left smelling gorgeous and we walked a little way to the Crosby Bar where we had booked afternoon tea. I hadn’t realised other countries never did afternoon tea, the whole bar was English themed.

They had lovely Wedgwood china, Kim got flowering tea and I got Earl Grey.

And we had nice pink tiered plates. It was a lot less formal than afternoon tea at the Goring in London.

But it was still fancy, even the bathrooms looked fancy. Sorry America… rest rooms… they even had a little chair should you wish to rest (ugh… why do they call it this?).

Then we decided to go to ground zero and see the 9/11 monument… which wasn’t really that interesting. If you wanted to read any information or do anything other than look at the fountain you had to pay to go in the museum. There weren’t even many places to sit there so we were only there 5 minutes.

Then I had a lovely long delay on the plane for 4 hours before an overnight flight with a screaming baby… oh joy.

New York State Fair

On the drive back to Connecticut we dropped in on the New York State Fair which was near Syracuse, it started off pretty cloudy but ended up hot. The state fair was a little bit like the Norfolk Fair (for those of you from East Anglia) if it was bigger and run by cowboys.

There were lots of agricultural things like livestock and shows and displays.

Including butter sculptures? For some unknown reason.

Nahhow…. How does I say thais… Summer thaim folks wurr a lidl reyad neyck. And iffin I pleeased I cudda done gots me mai vurra own cunfederrat flayag bearin hayat! Ahem… So yeah… That was a thing. There were lots of cowboy hat wearing people shall we say.

I decided I’d try some of the Fair food, there was SO MUCH FOOD. This is Hawaiian shaved ice which I had never even heard of, it was so tasty! They literally shaved ice off a block and moulded it into a little tower then you could pick syrup flavours which they poured on. It was delicious.

I liked going into the animal barns, they had signs up everywhere saying don’t touch in case they bite but they were so cute you could help but pet the ones that came up to you.

Some of the animals were a little unusual…

They had cloudy lemonade slushies, they also had wine slushies and cider and beer. I really wanted a wine slushy but it was just so hot I already had one of those headaches you can get in the sun so I avoided it.

This is a funnel cake I tried, it was tasty, it’s like a mess of fried dough that you can get coated in icing sugar or cinnamon.

Look how cute!

The funniest thing I thought was the pig races, they all had been given names like Jennifer Lopig and Lindsay Loham. The audience had to call out ‘sooie’ and the pigs dashed out into their starting pens. They were so sweet and I thought it was funny to watch them race to be the first to get to eat an oreo biscuit. But on one race the pigs were so excited to be first back that it was the last pig that got the prize, the others ran straight past it.

Then it was time for some State Fair mac’n’cheese (don’t you just hate how so many Americanisms look like they were written by dyslexic people then not spellchecked? I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with dyslexics, only putting them in charge of writing signs).

New York

So after a crappy flight the day before my travelling chum Kimberly and I took the subway from the ghetto into New York, here’s a photo of a rat we saw.

We had tickets for the Top of the Rock observation deck so that was good, the view was good that day.

Then we walked over to times square and had a mooch round the shops there.

Then it was off to see Cinderella on Broadway.

The costume changes were so good, I was really impressed.

It was baking outside but the air conditioning made it frrrreeeezing. Before we drove back to Connecticut we went to Ninja, a restaurant. It was pretty dark and all the waiters were dressed as ninjas and kept jumping out at everyone, the place was full of screams every now and then.

Everyone had their own private alcove to sit in and we got some drinks, the menus were scrolls (that the waiter jumped to our table with and unfurled them in one move making us jump again!).

All the dishes with a ninja death star next to them came with a performance, we saw our neighbours get dishes that were on fire and all sorts.

As the place was pretty gimmicky I figured the food probably wouldn’t be amazing but it was actually really great (and such huge portions!).

Between our main course and dessert a magician came to our table and started doing different magic tricks (which again were very good), although he did think I was Australian (surely not guys?!).

And then we shared a dessert because the main course was so huge and it came complete with dry ice. Very cool… you know, if you’re immature like me. I thought it was expensive for a meal out but for all the performance and atmosphere you got with it I think it was very reasonable.

Once Upon A Time

Well chums, I’ve been busy on placement lately, so I thought I’d tell you all a story, about my 21st birthday, as long ago as it was now.  I’ll apologise now for the dodgy photography, it was taken in the days of non decent camera phones. So I was all set to go to New York for my birthday and I was taking the train to London to stay with my Great Aunt before leaving the following day from a London airport.

The other passengers and myself boarded the train and were sitting down when we head a commotion in the next carriage, a woman accusing a man of stealing her phone. She went to get the police at the station who came quickly, meanwhile another passenger and myself saw the accused man reach into his pocket and drop her expensive phone into the bin. The other passenger and I looked at each other shocked, then we both got up and swung into action blocking off the rest of the train to the man and very obviously watching him. The police came and confronted him and fished the phone out, then he was arrested on suspicion of theft, we had to give our details to the police as witnesses and the train was then allowed to go. The police had asked if I would be around during the next week to give a statement but I said I’d be leaving the country for a week to go on holiday. I rang my Aunt to let her know my train was now late, she didn’t sound pleased.

I sat back on the train thinking no more of it until I got a phone call. Could I please get off at Stratford, a police officer would be waiting for me if I could quickly give a statement. I rang my Aunt to let her know I’d be a little bit later, she really didn’t sound pleased. And so I got met by a lovely police officer to go and have my statement written down. I was explaining where abouts I was in the carriage and so I drew him a little floor plan map of the train carriage and where everyone was standing which he asked if he could keep and I said sure. So with that all done, it took some time, I said goodbye to the nice policeman (and got a snap in for good measure).

But then my train ticket was invalid, so I was given this –

Obviously I had to keep the card as a souvenir haha. Anyway, off I went, really very late now, and I found out why my Auntie didn’t sound pleased about me being late. My family was all waiting to take me out to dinner as a surprise. Oops! Months and months later when I’d forgotten about it I got a letter asking me to go to court as a witness, how embarrassed was I when the magistrates and whole court was passing around my crap drawing of a train!