Day 16 and 17 - New York

Update 18/10/2015 - Hi everyone, this is very long overdue, thanks in-part to my laziness and Kathryn's laptop which contained the photo's being broken. It's now been almost 12 months since we went away so I've been getting very nostalgic and looking back at this blog. So I've finally got a free Sunday today and I'm finally going to upload all the remaining things I have.

Saturday

This is an entry that I've written in the last few days. Naturally there is not much I can remember. On Saturday we went shopping. I got a map from a website called superfuture which has some good city guides aimed at a young audience (I used to use these a lot about 10 years ago when first dabbing into streetwear). We got the subway to 14th St on the A-C train and visit the West Village first. This was a really nice area and full of classic 3-4 storey terrace that you see in most American TV and films. The streets where a bit leafy and the streets not in the usual grid layout as it is a slightly older part of NYC.

View from the street in West Village

We visited a few shops on the map, spent some money and had some cocktails and dinner in a small tavern type bar in Soho.

Inside of place we had dinner (I can't remember the name!)

Sunday

This was the day we visited the Natural history museum, Central Park and 5th Avenue.

Unfortunately the park was a bit boring as there was a lack of anything interesting going on. The trees had lost their leaves, it was cold and gloomy and there wasn't many people about. Kathryn gave me a run down of the various buildings and who owned them. It was pretty cool to finally see The Plaza hotel featured in Home Alone 2.

Outside Central Park

Front of Natural History Museum (left) and exhibit (right)

Kathryn with festive dinosaur! (left) And walking down 5th Avenue (right)

Later on in the day, Smiti came back from Washington and we went out for dinner and watched an American football game. She expained to us what was going on and we had a really good time.

Day 12 - Boston to New York

Distance travelled: 227 miles by Amtrak, 5 miles by subway, 1 mile by taxi and 1 mile by foot

Our train back to New York was at 11am, so we had a bit of a lay in, before leaving about 10am. We got a taxi from the hotel as we have actually accumulated quite a few gifts and things that meant our baggage was quite heavy, and we didn’t feel like negotiating the transit system during rush hour.The other thing was that the temperature has increased quite a bit, from about freezing to over 10 degree Celsius so now we have to carry our coats as extra.

We got the Back Bay station with plenty of time. Unfortunately again, the train stations aren’t much to look at really so it was just a case of sitting on an uncomfortable slab of concrete an watching the departure board for our train to be announced.

View from back of Boston taxi (left) and Back Bay Station main hall (right)

It wasn’t too busy actually, we were worried initially that travelling before thanksgiving would be difficult, but actually, probably because the train originated from Boston, it was easy to get on and get a seat. As the train was fully booked even when we booked our tickets in advance, we were travelling business class back to NYC. Unbelievably, business class has even more legroom than just regular coach class. There is actually a footrest as the chair is so big that if you reclined, your feet wouldn’t touch the floor!

The journey was quiet uneventful. As the weather was cloudy there wasn’t much to look at. I went to get the free coffee from the buffet car which was intriguing to see the attendant preparing all the food by shoving it in a microwave! I used to time to try and catch up with the blog. Kathryn enjoyed that the train guard was insisting that everyone in the quiet coach maintained a "library-like atmosphere"!

We got back just fine. Penn station was a little more busy but as Smiti’s apparent tis on an express line it only takes about 10 minutes. I never realised this until this trip but there are two types of train in New York; local and express. The local stops at every station, whereas the express only stops at some selected station. This seems to be a logical system and I imagine it does cut the journey time if you’re going across the city. As the subway is tunneled under the streets, there is room for the kind of “overtaking lane:” that allows the express trains to get passed the local ones.

NY Subway

Smiti  and Simon was there to welcome us as we got home. We spent a while catching up on our escapades in Boston. We watched some television, did some laundry and had Chinese take out for dinner. After that, we went for a drink down by a street of pubs and bars next to WallSt. Called Stone Street. The first place we went to was packed, but we found a place tucked by the bar to sit and chat.

After that we went to a Meixcan bar and me and Kathryn had this super large frozen Margarita that for some reason had a bottle of Corona beer inverted in it. It was great.We had a lovely evening with Smiti and I certainly got to know her a lot better.

Cocktail with Smiti