New York Day 2

We're back at our hotel after another busy day in Manhattan, this time at a more reasonable hour.  We'll definitely try to take the train back before 11 tomorrow again, as this saves a lot of time.  This morning, we went on a pizza tour of Lower Manhattan, which was quite interesting.  It started in Little Italy and we learned all about New York Pizza, from how it was introduced to the US, to how the cheese, tomato sauce, dough, and even the ovens are made.  It was pretty cool, not to mention delicious, as we made stops for pizza tasting along the way.  One highlight was trying real, fresh mozzarella, which is very different from the mozzarella you'd buy in the store.  It only takes about half an hour to make, and tastes great.  It's also a lot better for you, as it's basically just milk (no greasy oils), and, we learned, it doesn't burn your mouth on a hot pizza (due to the lack of oils).  If it wouldn't go bad in 2 days, we would have bought a big ball of it. Come to think of it, we should have, and we could have munched on it all day.

After the pizza tour, we made our way uptown to Rockefeller Center, where we went to the 70th floor observation deck, the "Top of the Rock".

After a while up there, we descended and made our way down 5th Ave. (the fashion district) past all the Guccis, Pradas and Versaces, ending up at Central Park.  We started walking through Central Park, but then realized that we had spent some of the money we had reserved for the Wicked lottery.  We had to cut our walk short and head to Times Square to find an ATM and the lottery.  Here's Katie crossing her fingers outside the Gershwin Theater in hopes of scoring cheap front row seats.

Unfortunately, only one of us had ID, so we couldn't both enter the lottery.  They were only pulling 13 names, and there were a lot of people there.  We didn't win.  ...So we headed toward the tkts booth (discount ticket seller for broadway shows) to see if we wanted to go to a show tonight.  We loved Chicago so much, we really wanted to go to another one.  However, the price deterred us too much.  We decided to go to Ellen's Stardust Diner instead.  It's basically a 50's style diner where the waiters and waitresses are all aspiring Broadway performers.  As they serve the tables, they're constantly performing show tunes for everyone.  They're very good multi-taskers.  We had to give our server our order really quickly, as it was almost her part of the song!  As some of you know, this caused great angst for me, as I'm not the fastest orderer in the world.

After the Stardust Diner, we did a bit more exploring: the M&M store (3-storey high tourist trap!  12.99/pound M&M's anyone?), Macy's, Madison Square Garden, Empire State Building, and bought a pretzel. (SOOOOOOO salty!  We rubbed almost all the salt off it by the end.)  After that, we took the train back to the hotel, this time before 11, when most of the trains stop running.  This cut our end-of-day travel time down by about 1.5 hours from last night.

One note about New York is that its pigeon population, while smaller than most European cities, makes itself felt. One of the first things we saw when we got off the train in Manhattan yesterday was a pigeon flapping up in some guy's face. He reacted very calmly. Katie didn't think she would react so calmly. It has been a source of some mild concern for her, as it would be for many!

Tomorrow we're going to have a picnic in Central Park to make up for our lame visit to the park today.  In the afternoon we're going to the Yankees game.  We might stop for a milkshake at the Seinfeld restaurant on the way back from the game if we have time.  In the evening, we might try to catch an early supper, an early train home, and hopefully the Rider game.  Yes, that's right.  It looks like we'll at least be able to listen to it, unless we can find a place that has the TV tuned to the NFL Network at this time of year.  We'll probably try the wicked lottery again too, so if that works out for us, that would change our plans too!

We were going to post some more pictures, but our camera battery just died, so you'll have to wait until tomorrow for that.  We're thinking of everyone back home!

D&K

The City That Never Sleeps

We made it to New York this afternoon and had a very eventful day.  Since we are in the city that never sleeps, we are following the trend.  It is almost 2 AM local time and we got up at 3:45 AM Sask time!

We could really see as we flew out of Regina how wet the fields are and how spradically they're seeded.  It's really something to see from the air.

When we got onto the plane, alarms kept going off and a voice kept saying, "Jet tube overheat."  We wondered why they would let passengers hear that.  Otherwise, our flights went well, with one minor exception at customs in Minneapolis.  We got a friendly customs agent who we could see had been joking around a fair bit with the people in front of us.  Katie really got into the joking mood.  He was really friendly, and asked us what we did for a living.  Katie said she was a nurse and he asked, "A good one?"  Katie responded by saying, "I hope so.  I haven't killed anyone yet!"  At this he turned very serious and was like, "Don't even joke like that, m'am."  Way to go, Katie. :). (Honestly, I might have said the exact same thing!)

On the way to Newark the pilot of the plane sounded just like Toby from The Office, which gave us great entertainment.

When we got to Newark, we checked into our hotel, which is right at the airport.  We headed into Manhattan soon after, which incorporated the most expensive train ride per distance travelled in history.  It cost us $20 for a 3-minute train ride to Newark Penn Station (one way). Fortunately, the rest of the 30 minute trip only costs $1.75.  That first part is still demoralizing!  We then found our way to the World Trade Centre (which will be enormous when fully constructed), Wall St. and the Staten Island Ferry.  We took the free round trip on the ferry, which gave great views of the Statue of Liberty and Lower Manhattan.  It was a good first thing to do in NY.  We chose to sit as high up on the ferry as possible, on the "hurricane deck".  We discovered quite quickly on the return trip why it was called the hurricane deck, as we had to hold tightly on to our shirts to keep them from blowing up to our necks.  That is not an exaggeration.  Katie almost had an incident while she was trying to take a picture of me.

From there, our plan had been to go to the observation deck at Rockefeller Center, but we were short on time.  We took the subway to Times Square, and walked through it on our way to the Ambassador Theater for "Chicago".  We stopped off for a quick supper at Sbarro's, which is basically an Italian cafeteria.  We both had a slice of artery-clogging (but very good) pizza, which we gulped down in about 5 minutes, because we were in a hurry to get to the theatre, which happened to be across the street.

Chicago was amazing.  I realized that you don't fully appreciate the quality of a Broadway show until you've been to one.  It also didn't hurt that we were in the front row, dead center!  (We even counted the seats to make sure we were in the center.)  Granted, the best seats in the house are probably a little further back, but I don't think we would have traded the front row experience.  The music was phenominal.  In a lot of musicals, I find myself during the songs looking forward to the next drama part.  This was easily the opposite.  At the end of the show, the two leading ladies receive roses as part of the show, and they tossed them to people in the front row.  One of them got given to me, which was cool.  Katie was gracious enough to let the girl beside her have the rose that came her way. We're going to try the Wicked lottery tomorrow night to see if we can score cheap front row tickets to Wicked.  If we don't win, we're tempted to see what cheap seats are available for tomorrow night's shows, since Chicago was so amazing.

We then took the train back to the hotel, which took us about an hour and 45 minutes, because we stayed in Manhattan too late, just walking around, and the trains are very infrequent and take really roundabout routes after 11:00.  We're very happy to be back, and we're not sure why we're still sitting here instead of just going to bed.  So... goodnight!

Off we go!

We're at the airport! That was a very early wake up. Katie set my cell phone alarm with a series of progressively more annoying rings 2 minutes apart starting at 3:45. The first one did the trick and the others just made us laugh. Today we fly through Minneapolis to Newark. We'll get in at about 1:30 and the plan is to see the city via the Staten Island Ferry as soon as we get to Manhattan. We'll then try to do the Top of the Rock, catching the view from the top of Rockefeller Center. After supper we'll head straight to Broadway to see Chicago. We're in the second row! Our hotel is attached to the Newark airport so by the time we get back, we will have had a really long day. Hopefully we don't fall asleep on the train! Thanks so much to our wonderful family for taking care of so many things for us while we're gone! (see: dog, house, lawn, mortgage payments... Okay, kidding on that last one.) Also, a quick note to all the grammar cops out there. Since we're on the iPod, these posts will be rife with typos and short on commas. Deal with it. See you in NYC!

Map!

Here's a map of where we'll be going and when we'll be there.  It's a long way from home!!  If we have opportunities throughout our trip, we'll try to update the map with interesting things we've seen and done! Update: This map will now stay at the bottom of the main page.

To view the whole map in Google Maps, click here.


View African Adventure in a larger map

This could go badly.

Welcome to our blog!  We're off to Africa in a few days and we wanted to be able to let everyone know that we're not dead (knock on wood), how we're doing and what we're up to.  This could be a super-fantastic, highly entertaining and informative blog, or it could be the most over-hyped atrocity ever to impose itself on the internet.  Katie's sister Carolyn and her husband Joel's blog on their trip to Europe has been so fantastic, we thought we'd try doing the same thing.  However, the chances of us replicating their success may be slim.  Internet access in Africa is somewhat limited, so you may get an update from us in New York, Johannesburg, Victoria Falls, and then in Johannesburg again.  The wild card is that cell phone coverage in Africa is fantastic.  On my journey to Kenya, we were on Facebook in the middle of the Savannah.  We're toying with getting a cell phone when we get there, but that remains an unknown.

Anyway, that's all to say that we hope to keep you all updated on our adventures, but if we don't,  it's not because we hate you or because we're having too much fun to care (okay, it could possibly be the latter), but it's most likely because the internet has failed us.

We leave on Tuesday at the ridiculous hour of 5:55 AM.  A huge thanks in advance to the lovely Rick Johnson for agreeing to take us to the airport at something like 0 AM (at least that's what it will probably feel like).  We'll be in New York until July 2nd, when we'll embark on our 14.5 hour flight to Johannesburg.  For those of you who prefer, that's about 9.6 movies.

We're looking forward to sharing our adventure with you! (maybe.)