Damn flight is delayed 40 mins so far. Curse you Ronald Reagan Airport.
Additional: all the liquid hand soap in D.C.smells like cherry.
Washington D.C.
Washington DC Day 1 21st December
A super early start of 5am today to ensure that we
made our 7am train from Penn Station. We arrived at our beautiful
hotel, the Washington Plaza at around 10am and checked in. We were
given a suite with two bathrooms, a bed as big as our bedroom at home
and a lounge. They also gave us champagne and chocolate dipped
strawberries as I had said it was our honeymoon when booking. It was
a bit nuts, but at least it meant that we could look forward to three
nights of proper sleep.
We decided to go exploring and after some
directions we began walking towards the 'mall' – a very long
stretch of parkland, monuments and museums. We first came upon the
White House from the rear of the building where the giant lantern
hangs above the entrance. It's a beautiful place and we were lucky to
get perfect weather. There were a couple of small protests and a
local Fox news person asked us for our assessment of Obama's year. We
said he'd done as well as he could and he seemed mildly surprised. We
walked the whole way around to the front of the house and took some
photos. You're actually really quite far away from the front of the
building in comparison to the rear, but it's still very surreal
seeing the actual White House in the flesh. Both of us were almost
waiting to see it explode really, as that's how it's often pictured
on screen. We continued our walk and spied the Washington monument
(it's hard to miss) and continued to the left towards the reflecting
pool and the Lincoln memorial. It's a bit of a hike but we did make
it to the Lincoln memorial and wow, it's spectacular. The statue is
huge and every bit as imposing as you imagine, and to either side
carved into the walls are two of his famous speeches, which lend a
bitter irony to the city as he was a champion of peace and diplomacy.
We stopped at a little refreshment stand where we met some of the
very bold bird life and then we decided to hire bikes to get around
during our time in the city.
From the memorial we went back towards the
Washington monument and over to the strip of Smithsonian's. During
the walk we saw the president's helicopter fly over, though we
weren't in a position to take a photo. The mall is a simply huge
boulevard with ten museums/galleries lining either side and ending
with the superb Capitol building. We visited the Smithsonian castle
which is also the information centre, learned that all of the
galleries and museums are free and decided to try and see a couple of
things that afternoon. Since we missed out on MoMA in NY we went to
the Hirshhorn Museum which is dedicated to modern and contemporary
art. It's a lovely museum, and we saw some original Warhol prints and
paintings, as well as a number of installations on the theme of
'destruction' which were quite interesting. It didn't take us that
long to see everything so we then made our way over to the Natural
History Museum to see the Butterly house and Insect Exhibit at the
end of the day. The Butterfly house was just brilliant – the museum
hatches their butterflies every day and has a temperature controlled,
purpose built garden inside for them. This is connected to the insect
exhibit where tarantulas, beetles, spiders, centipedes, grasshoppers
and so on are kept. It was a fun and engaging end to our day of
sightseeing.
We decided to check out the pub just down from our
hotel for tea, where Andrew had a bison burger and I had some lovely
salmon. Unlike NY where everything is open until quite late, DC is
really very, very quiet, with most stores and even cafes being shut
by 7pm. After our dinner we went back to our luxurious hotel and
promptly passed out from exhaustion.
Washingon day 2
Today was all about museums. We began with the
American History Museum, which is dedicated to the preservation of
American culture. It was brilliant. We saw Dorothy's ruby slippers,
Kermit the frog, Kelly Slater's surfboard and (possibly one of the
most exciting things) Pretty Hate Machine on tape as part of the
audio exhibit – it could have been any tape in the world, and it
was that one. This museum was excellent generally, though the war
section had a few glaring omissions, such as no reference at all to
the internment of Japanese and German citizens during the war, and
some of the language choices were quite interesting, such as the
write up about the making of the American flag being undertaken by a
number of women and an 'indentured black servant' who worked for the
family. It was a brilliant place to visit and we were there for
around four and a half hours.
We then headed back to the Natural History museum
to explore the rest of it. So many dinosaurs! We spent the rest of
the day weaving through thousands of exhibits on ocean life, mammals,
dinosaurs, geology and so on. One of our favourites was the skeleton
of the Mastodon, a huge mammoth like creature that also had teeth.
This also took a number of hours and we were there until closing,
though we did see everything. The city was even quieter than the
night before as everything must shut at 5.30pm on a Saturday, so we
went to the Hard Rock Cafe for very cheap cocktails and huge servings
of food, before finding a little Christmas market which we had a
quick look through and then we head back to our hotel. Another very
busy day.
Day 3 – National Air and Space Museum!
Breakfast was at a delightful crepe kitchen that
we found on our way to the museums, and they were delicious! I had
Nutella and strawberries and Andrew had egg and ham. Delicious! Then
we made our way to the National Air and Space Museum.
The title really says it all – this place was
incredible! We walked into the museum and were greeted by the Apollo
module, Chuck Jager's jet plane, the Spirit of St Louis and a piece
of the moon all in the first section! We decided to go on the tour,
which went for three hours, and covered some great details about the
early days of flight, changes in aviation over time, famous pilots
and astronauts, technological developments and, of course, space
exploration. After the tour we had some lunch then went and did the
full circuit of the museum on our own. It took all day but we left
with a great sense of wonder at how far we have come in just 66 years
from the first flight to landing on the moon (a bit of which we
actually touched!). We took soooo many photos, so they will really
show what we saw in detail.
The museums were now closed and so was pretty much
everything else, so we decided to grab some cheap Mexican food for
dinner and then we ended up back at our hotel by about 7pm. We
finished off season 10 of Stargate and watched The Ark of Truth and
went to bed.
Day 4 Morning
We only really had time to get some breakfast at a
lovely little bakery and then head to the airport, ready to meet
Kathy in Buffalo to begin our Christmas week in Canada. We are now
waiting in the Ronald Reagan airport eating Five Guys burgers and
they are amazing.
New York part two
Tuesday
We decided to begin our day at the Natural History Museum and we ended up spending virtually the whole day there! An astonishing place, we spent our time visiting the many dinosaur, animal and space exhibits, including he full size model of a blue whale suspended over two storeys of the marine life exhibit. The Hayden planetarium was incredible and the manner in which the animals were displayed was just beautiful, with each species positioned in its own mini exhibit made to mimic its natural environment. A truly magnificent museum, however, it did mean we never quite made it to the MET.
From the museum we headed into Times Square to get some food before seeing Book of Mormon at 7pm on Broadway. We decided to try some cheap options and went with pizza for $4 a slice. Thanks to Starbucks the internet suggested a little place just off the square where we had some of the very best pizza I've ever eaten. (It was the best - Andrew) (additional: It was called Patzeria Perfect Pizza)
Finally we arrived at the theatre and took our seats for Book of Mormon. It was phenomenal! Not only were the production values sky high but I've not laughed that much in one sitting for quite some time. The performances were incredible and the story, true to form, was utterly hilarious but also very controversial and I wouldn't be surprised if some people walked out. If it ever comes to Australia, we would see it again in a heartbeat. We decided to grab some snacks afterwards so we went back to Rockefeller centre and finished the day with tasty pastries and coffee. A brilliant day.
Wednesday
Well, this was an interesting but complicated day. We had tickets to stand in line for the Daily Show and we knew we needed to get there early, so we decided to try and get cronuts back in SoHo and then head to the theatre in the lower west side. We found the Amstelle bakery again however they were sold out of cronuts already so rather than waste the trip we decided to have a very fancy breakfast at Balthazar's. This restaurant is a very well known eatery and luckily they were able to seat us, though if it had been any other time I don't think we'd have had a chance. We had a very decadent brekkie of juice, coffee, sticky buns, crossiants, Christmas bread, cranberry loaf and rye. Really magnificent food but it's a once in a trip kind of thing as it was quite pricey. By this stage it was getting to around 12.45pm and we knew we needed to get there early, around 1.30ish for the 2.30pm handout, according to people who had been before. We did a little window shopping in SoHo and Tribeca and then began to make our way to the studio.
We underestimated the distance to the studio but still arrived at around 1.45pm when we were met with a line that doubled back and went around the block. This did not bode well. In conversations with others in the line, some were confident we would still get in whilst others decided not to bother waiting. After an excruciating wait we ended up missing out on tickets by about ten people. This was really disappointing and we were told to email the producers and explain our situation (only one more day in NY etc) and see if they could get us tickets for tomorrow. We were devastated BUT a man by the name of Ben took us aside an said that he had 4 tickets for tomorrow if we wanted them and if we gave him our email he could send them through. We gave him our details, thanked him profusely and just hoped he'd do as he promised.
At this point it was around 3pm, too late to try and get to the Statue of Liberty (which was the plan for tomorrow) and too late for the MET as well. We found a Starbucks as soon as we could to email the producers, thinking that Ben might not come through, and waited for a bit to see if anyone replied. More on that later...
We then decided to go down to the World Trade Centre 9/11 Memorial. It was an amazing sight to see how big the towers were and to see the new tower almost completed. It was a pretty emotional place and the memorial was a very fitting tribute.
As it was nearing dinner time by this stage we thought we'd try and go to Otto's, the Italian place Jo suggested, since we now had time and could look up the location. We headed back to the east end of 5th avenue and eventually found Otto's! There was a 45 minute wait, but figuring we might as well, we ordered some cheese and drinks to tide us over in the front bar. The cheeses (goats cheese, pecorino and another hard one) were lovely and each was served with its own accompaniment of truffle honey, spiced apricots and brandy cherries. A table eventually came up and we ordered peperoni pizza and the spaghetti and meatballs, which, I'm sorry to say, weren't that great. The pizza base was a little soggy and the peperoni tasted weird and the meatballs were just meh. The atmosphere was lovely, the music was great and there was good service but it felt like a slightly anti-climactic end to a somewhat disappointing day. We did some general window shopping for an hour or so and went back to our hotel.
Thursday - Last day in NY
Good news! Ben came through for us and he sent us his Daily Show tickets for our last day so we were able to get our hotel to print the information and we began our day early. Andrew had been given a list of places that apparently had good coffee, so we went on a mission to find one of them near 30 Rock called the Bluebottle. We tracked it down and also bought some pastries for breakfast and did have the best coffee so far in NY at the cafe.
Paranoid as a result of yesterday's failure to secure tickets, we went to join the line at 1pm and were very pleased to only find around 20 people there. We settled in for a long wait spent the time chatting and watching as the line grew and grew. By 2pm it was already doubled back and almost around the block again. Needless to say that when they started handing out tickets at 2.30pm we were very, very relieved to be in the first 35. With our tickets secured and sure of our instructions we had around an hour and a half before we needed to be back at the studio. It was a little warmer than previous days so we went for a stroll along the water before going to a pub opposite the studio to wait in the warm. Andrew finally got around to ordering a chilli dog, which he quite liked, and soon it was time to line up again NB: If you're ever going to go to a taping of anything in the US, be prepared for lots of queuing and airport style security, including metal detectors, bag searches and sniffer dogs - this happened both at Lettterman and Daily Show.
Finally, after more waiting we were in the studio of the Daily Show! We were both very excited and even more so when the warm up comedian explained that it was the last show of the year. This show would also turn out to be John Oliver's last show as well, so the taping was a little longer than we expected. John Stewart was funny, amicable and brilliant as always and he came and actually took questions from the audience prior to the taping. As it was John Oliver's last show there were a few moments where both men were clearly trying not to cry and it was really lovely to be there for that.
Following the taping we decided to go and do Top of the Rock which involves taking an elevator to the top (70th Floor) of the NBC building (30 Rock) and taking many, many, many photos. It was superb! The weather wasn't quite as cold as it had been, there was virtually no wind and being able to look over the city at night, straight at the Empire State Building and other famous landmarks was incredible. Both of us commented that it didn't feel real, and we were blown away by how magnificent the city looks from above. We spent around an hour and half up there, taking some video and photos, then we decided we needed some food.
I (Jess) thought that a fitting end would be icecream for tea, so I had a Ben and Jerry's 'Ron Burgundy - Scotchy Scotch Scotch' and 'Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream' hot fudge sundae. It was amazeballs. Andrew wanted some street vendor (yuk) food so a hotdog and pretzel in Times Square ended our last day in NY. We never found time for the Statue of Liberty, the MET or MoMA but that just leaves us things to do for next time. NY is a phenomenal city and one I could most definitely live in very happily.
We decided to begin our day at the Natural History Museum and we ended up spending virtually the whole day there! An astonishing place, we spent our time visiting the many dinosaur, animal and space exhibits, including he full size model of a blue whale suspended over two storeys of the marine life exhibit. The Hayden planetarium was incredible and the manner in which the animals were displayed was just beautiful, with each species positioned in its own mini exhibit made to mimic its natural environment. A truly magnificent museum, however, it did mean we never quite made it to the MET.
From the museum we headed into Times Square to get some food before seeing Book of Mormon at 7pm on Broadway. We decided to try some cheap options and went with pizza for $4 a slice. Thanks to Starbucks the internet suggested a little place just off the square where we had some of the very best pizza I've ever eaten. (It was the best - Andrew) (additional: It was called Patzeria Perfect Pizza)
Finally we arrived at the theatre and took our seats for Book of Mormon. It was phenomenal! Not only were the production values sky high but I've not laughed that much in one sitting for quite some time. The performances were incredible and the story, true to form, was utterly hilarious but also very controversial and I wouldn't be surprised if some people walked out. If it ever comes to Australia, we would see it again in a heartbeat. We decided to grab some snacks afterwards so we went back to Rockefeller centre and finished the day with tasty pastries and coffee. A brilliant day.
Wednesday
Well, this was an interesting but complicated day. We had tickets to stand in line for the Daily Show and we knew we needed to get there early, so we decided to try and get cronuts back in SoHo and then head to the theatre in the lower west side. We found the Amstelle bakery again however they were sold out of cronuts already so rather than waste the trip we decided to have a very fancy breakfast at Balthazar's. This restaurant is a very well known eatery and luckily they were able to seat us, though if it had been any other time I don't think we'd have had a chance. We had a very decadent brekkie of juice, coffee, sticky buns, crossiants, Christmas bread, cranberry loaf and rye. Really magnificent food but it's a once in a trip kind of thing as it was quite pricey. By this stage it was getting to around 12.45pm and we knew we needed to get there early, around 1.30ish for the 2.30pm handout, according to people who had been before. We did a little window shopping in SoHo and Tribeca and then began to make our way to the studio.
We underestimated the distance to the studio but still arrived at around 1.45pm when we were met with a line that doubled back and went around the block. This did not bode well. In conversations with others in the line, some were confident we would still get in whilst others decided not to bother waiting. After an excruciating wait we ended up missing out on tickets by about ten people. This was really disappointing and we were told to email the producers and explain our situation (only one more day in NY etc) and see if they could get us tickets for tomorrow. We were devastated BUT a man by the name of Ben took us aside an said that he had 4 tickets for tomorrow if we wanted them and if we gave him our email he could send them through. We gave him our details, thanked him profusely and just hoped he'd do as he promised.
At this point it was around 3pm, too late to try and get to the Statue of Liberty (which was the plan for tomorrow) and too late for the MET as well. We found a Starbucks as soon as we could to email the producers, thinking that Ben might not come through, and waited for a bit to see if anyone replied. More on that later...
We then decided to go down to the World Trade Centre 9/11 Memorial. It was an amazing sight to see how big the towers were and to see the new tower almost completed. It was a pretty emotional place and the memorial was a very fitting tribute.
As it was nearing dinner time by this stage we thought we'd try and go to Otto's, the Italian place Jo suggested, since we now had time and could look up the location. We headed back to the east end of 5th avenue and eventually found Otto's! There was a 45 minute wait, but figuring we might as well, we ordered some cheese and drinks to tide us over in the front bar. The cheeses (goats cheese, pecorino and another hard one) were lovely and each was served with its own accompaniment of truffle honey, spiced apricots and brandy cherries. A table eventually came up and we ordered peperoni pizza and the spaghetti and meatballs, which, I'm sorry to say, weren't that great. The pizza base was a little soggy and the peperoni tasted weird and the meatballs were just meh. The atmosphere was lovely, the music was great and there was good service but it felt like a slightly anti-climactic end to a somewhat disappointing day. We did some general window shopping for an hour or so and went back to our hotel.
Thursday - Last day in NY
Good news! Ben came through for us and he sent us his Daily Show tickets for our last day so we were able to get our hotel to print the information and we began our day early. Andrew had been given a list of places that apparently had good coffee, so we went on a mission to find one of them near 30 Rock called the Bluebottle. We tracked it down and also bought some pastries for breakfast and did have the best coffee so far in NY at the cafe.
Paranoid as a result of yesterday's failure to secure tickets, we went to join the line at 1pm and were very pleased to only find around 20 people there. We settled in for a long wait spent the time chatting and watching as the line grew and grew. By 2pm it was already doubled back and almost around the block again. Needless to say that when they started handing out tickets at 2.30pm we were very, very relieved to be in the first 35. With our tickets secured and sure of our instructions we had around an hour and a half before we needed to be back at the studio. It was a little warmer than previous days so we went for a stroll along the water before going to a pub opposite the studio to wait in the warm. Andrew finally got around to ordering a chilli dog, which he quite liked, and soon it was time to line up again NB: If you're ever going to go to a taping of anything in the US, be prepared for lots of queuing and airport style security, including metal detectors, bag searches and sniffer dogs - this happened both at Lettterman and Daily Show.
Finally, after more waiting we were in the studio of the Daily Show! We were both very excited and even more so when the warm up comedian explained that it was the last show of the year. This show would also turn out to be John Oliver's last show as well, so the taping was a little longer than we expected. John Stewart was funny, amicable and brilliant as always and he came and actually took questions from the audience prior to the taping. As it was John Oliver's last show there were a few moments where both men were clearly trying not to cry and it was really lovely to be there for that.
Following the taping we decided to go and do Top of the Rock which involves taking an elevator to the top (70th Floor) of the NBC building (30 Rock) and taking many, many, many photos. It was superb! The weather wasn't quite as cold as it had been, there was virtually no wind and being able to look over the city at night, straight at the Empire State Building and other famous landmarks was incredible. Both of us commented that it didn't feel real, and we were blown away by how magnificent the city looks from above. We spent around an hour and half up there, taking some video and photos, then we decided we needed some food.
I (Jess) thought that a fitting end would be icecream for tea, so I had a Ben and Jerry's 'Ron Burgundy - Scotchy Scotch Scotch' and 'Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream' hot fudge sundae. It was amazeballs. Andrew wanted some street vendor (yuk) food so a hotdog and pretzel in Times Square ended our last day in NY. We never found time for the Statue of Liberty, the MET or MoMA but that just leaves us things to do for next time. NY is a phenomenal city and one I could most definitely live in very happily.
Photo dump
Here's a link to all the photos so far:
http://s93.photobucket.com/user/tired_faith/library/North%20America%202013%20-%202014
NEW YORK CITY!
New York, New York!
Friday the 13th
Wow, only just now have time to think, let alone
write. So after the utterly ridiculous 39 hour day (which was not
helped by the final flight being a 'budget' one, meaning five hours
at the end of a 33 hour non-stop day without a TV screen or food) we
finally arrived at our hotel on Central Park at 10.44 pm local time,
having left home at 7.50am that morning. I haven't ever felt that
exhausted before, to the extent that we got into our room and crashed
almost immediately. We're still getting small bouts of vertigo as a
result of the jet lag, but otherwise we're fine now. Friday didn't
really count as a night in NY.
Saturday
Woke up and decided to head outside where, it
turned out, it was snowing heavily. And it kept snowing all day –
the forecasters here called it a 'storm' but really it was just
constant snow with some wind. We weren't particularly fussed about
what to do, so we headed towards Soho and managed to serendipitously
find the Dominique Ansell bakery (home of the cronut) so we stopped
for breakfast there and had some lovely coffee, madeleines,
caramelised apple tart and double chocolate eclair. Amazing. Somewhat
revived we began to explore Soho and discovered some delightful,
quirky and horrendously expensive shops full of amazing clothes, nick
nacks and shoes. We were going to go into Balthazar's but it was
packed so we continued to wander when we then found the rice pudding
store unique to NY so stopped for some pudding before finding a
Uniqlo where we stocked up on pretty much everything from socks to
tops. By this stage we had wandered around in the snow for quite some
time, so our shoes were utterly soaked, meaning we had to get new
ones, so I (Jess) bought some cheap Merrel's from a huge outdoor
store and the exploring continued.
We traipsed through the city getting lost
regularly, but that was the blinding snow's fault more than our own
incompetence (that's the story and we're sticking with it) before
stopping at Century 21 for more shopping and ended our first day in
Chinatown with some sesame chicken, noodles and dumplings. It was
still snowing and by now we were exhausted so we made our way back to
the hotel by about 10pm.
Sunday
We were up and about by 10am and, as a result of
the snow the day before, we decided to walk virtually the entire
length of Central Park and then visit Time Square. Central Park is
opposite our hotel and, as we're basically in Harlem, we were able to
see most of it as we wound around the lagoons, small woods, lawns,
baseball fields and up and down the terrain (which is surprisingly
hilly) that was covered in around half a foot of snow. It was
spectacular. There were kids tobogganing, squirrels frolicking, park
rangers on horse back and there's even a castle in the middle of the
park! It's 894 acres, so it was a long walk, but we stopped for tea
and pastries at the little organic cafe in the park, then culminated
with Christmas markets at the downtown end where we had hot cider and
bratwurst.
Then we walked down to Time Square, passing the Ed
Sullivan theatre (Letterman) on the way and spying a number of famous
landmarks. We were naturally wary of the smiling gentleman who
stopped us but he explained that he worked for the Late Show and if
we could answer a trivia question we could get free tickets to the
taping tomorrow. The question was 'What instrument does Paul Shaffer
play?' and of course we both answered piano, earning us free tickets
to the taping! Very lucky to be picked randomly so we'll be seeing
two tapings in NY! We also went for a look see on Broadway and bought
tickets to The Book of Mormon for Tuesday night, so we've got the
next three nights booked up.
We then headed to 30 Rock and saw the famous
Christmas tree, took some photos, and then went on to 5th
avenue where we visited Saks department store – there's no
equivalent in Australia, think DJ's on steroids but fill it with
clothing and shoes that cost hundreds to thousands of dollars per
item. We continued wandering down 5th avenue, popping in
and out of shops, and we stopped for McDonald's before continuing our
long walk. We took some photos of the Empire State Building, though
we didn't go up it, and continued our walk. We were actually looking
for Tiffany's but we didn't realise how far down in was, so we
eventually decided to get some dinner. We tried to find an Italian
place that was recommended but by this stage it was nearing 10pm,
we'd hunted through Greenwich village and up from 1st
street, and decided to get some food in a local pub. The music was
good, the food was good (why oh why don't we have sweet potato fries
here!?) but the drinks weren't cheap. Exhausted again we went back to
our hotel, having covered over 100 city blocks over the course of our
day.
Monday
A beautiful, bright but stupidly cold day – we
decided to walk the high line (a 30 block section of abandoned rail
line converted into a garden/walking path) towards Chelsea. It was a
lovely walk three storeys up, giving an excellent view of the west
side of the city and even some long distance views of the Statue of
Liberty. We then went to the Chelsea markets for food and exploring.
They are awesome, very trendy hipster territory, but awesome food
(local organic of course) and some delightful little stores with
beautiful hand-crafted wares. We weren't prepared to spend $45 on
mugs or $80 on beanies, but it was great to see everything. My
favourite store so far is Anthropologie – I'd buy everything if I
could. We had the best strawberry milkshake, bought some bread and
pastries from Amy's Bakery and then we made our way to The Strand.
The Strand is a NY institution – three floors and over 8 miles of
books, both second hand and new, with one floor devoted entirely to
rare and old books. Freakin' awesome.
Then we had to get to Time Square for Letterman
which entailed waiting in queues a bunch. We got the tickets then had
sandwiches from Hello Deli (the famous deli just around the corner)
before queueing again for the taping. We were given many 'pep talks'
that basically amounted to 'always laugh, always clap, be as excited
as humanely possible and if you stuff around you'll be thrown out'.
The taping beings with an introductory video by Alec Baldwin which
has the tag line of 'laugh now, think about it later' which was
pretty funny, and there was a fun warm up comedian before the CBS
orchestra (who were brilliant) came on. It was an awesome experience.
Letterman came out before the beginning of the show and had a mini
q&a and he was personable and funny. The band is truly amazing
live, world class musicians and of course they play for the duration
of the ads. Will Ferrell was funny and surprisingly sincere and Chris
Cornell was great. We should make it onto TV for .3 seconds as the
camera panned around the audience. We were four rows from the back of
the bottom stalls on the right hand side if you're watching. It was
brilliant!
After Letterman we headed back to 30 Rock to see
if it would be less crowded as a result of the extreme cold, and it
was marginally easier to move around. We went and had a wander under
Rockefeller centre and ate some very average food before enquiring
about the ice skating. It was $39 pp or $105 pp to skip the queue so we
decided to give our very sore feet a rest and come back to our room
and try and get some of our experiences written up or when we can
actually put this on the blog. Tomorrow will be the Natural History
Museum, MET and Book of Mormon. We could live here happily.
14th, 15th and 16th of January 2012
Paris day 6 - By Jess
Our last day in Paris, and therefore Europe, had arrived! We checked out of our hotel but, since our plane wasn't leaving until 11pm that night, we still had a whole day to fill. So we decided to go and climb the Eiffel tower. We made our way to the famous landmark, during the day this time, and got in the line to climb it. The wait was quite long, around 40 minutes, but that was nothing compared to the people waiting for the lift. We eventually got to the front of the line and began the long, long journey to the first and second levels of the tower, as far as you can walk. It was a long climb, and I was very out of breath by the first level. When we got there, though, we were delighted to find that there was an ice skating rink on the tower. We did a loop, took some photos, and then headed for the second level. This meant another long climb, which we did.
The second level rewarded us with some great views. We had a toilet break and were surprised to find they had hot water up there. We took more photos and then decided to pay the extra 4euro each to ride the lift all the way to the top of the tower, as we couldn't get any higher on foot. We got in and went all the way up. And it's a very long way up. It was, of course, freezing up the top, but we took some photos, declined the 15euro per glass champagne, and marvelled at the amazing view of Paris. It was worth the arduous walk up to stand at the top and look down at the capitol building, fountains and surrounding parks and buildings. Just beautiful.
We then headed back down to the first level of the tower for some lunch. If we had seen the cafe, we would have gone there (a word to anyone who goes there after us) but we didn't so we decided to have lunch in Restauraunt 53. We each ordered a burger and shared cheescake for dessert. It wasn't the best food, but the view was brilliant, as we were seated by a window overlooking the park area behind the tower. We took our time with lunch, as we were both stuffed from the climb, and followed lunch with cups of tea. We then left the restaurant and inquired about the ice skating.
It turned out that the ice skating was free! You just had to leave your shoes as a deposit, so off came our boots and on went the skates. We then spent the next half an hour trying, with limited success, to ice skate on the Eiffel tower. It was lots of fun but neither of us were particularly great, and I was paraniod that after our injury free holiday one of us would break an arm or something on our last day. We were getting cold so we decided it was time to say goodbye to the tower, so we got our shoes back and climbed back down.
It was getting quite late at this point so we figured it was time to head back to our hotel, pick up our bags and go to the airport. We picked up some delicious cakes on the way back to our hotel and ate them in the bar. And then it was time to leave. We grabbed our luggage and tried to naviage the metro one last time to get the train to Charles DeGaulle airport. All those stairs with all our luggage presented a bit of a challenge, but we'd learnt from previous mistakes, and left plenty of time to get to the airport. We finally made it onto our train and disembarked for the last time. Once in the airport it was surprisingly quiet, though it was quite late, and after checking in and dropping off our bags (which, thankfully, were under the weight limit) we had some late dinner and waited for our flight.
We left Europe at 11.05pm and began our time travelling journey home on Air France.
The flight wasn't great as we were in the middle two seats of the middle row, meaning any time one of us needed the loo we had to inconvenience a stranger either side of us. The chairs were also tiny, even I was squished, but at least we were given ear plugs and eye masks. I managed to get a bit of sleep, but not a lot. On the plus side, as it was Air France, the food wasn't bad and the congac was free.
We landed in Singapore after about 13 hours, for a 3 hour wait. We weren't feeling brilliant, but we had a drink, tried to freshen up and then hopped aboard our Qantas flight home. The seats were bigger this time and we were on the aisle of the middle row, and I had a gap next to me and the next person, so it was much more comfortable. The food was ok, and once again I was able to sleep a little.
We arrived back home at 6.50am (though we didn't get out of the airport until nearly 8.30am) and so ended our awesome European adventure!
13/1/12
Day 5 in Paris - By Jess
We both woke up feeling slightly less chipper than usual, but after some coffee we made our plans for another day in Paris. We decided to do some shopping today after visiting Notre Dame and then visit the Montparnasse tower for some photos and dinner, so after dallying a bit we headed towards Notre Dame, Antique book markets and BHV in the old DeVille building.
We arrived at Notre Dame and first visited the interior of the church. There were some beautiful stained glass windows and statues, though as it's a 'real' church there were parts where we couldn't go right up to in the alter. Then we decided to climb the towers and see where Quasimodo lived. Notre Dame was one of the few places in Paris that our passes wouldn't allow us to skip the line, so we waited for around 45 minutes in the line to climb the towers. The climb was very long up a seemingly endless marble helical staircase, but it wasn't as bad as we were expecting, and when we finally reached the top between the two towers the view was breathtaking. The gargoyles and other gothic details of the building are truly exquisite, and we spent quite a bit of time taking photos and enjoying the brilliant view. We made our way across the roof section to the second tower where we had another long and even narrower climb to one of the bells. the view from the very top of the second tower was even more spectacular and it was lovely seeing the interior oak structure of the bell tower and how it supported the massive bells. Once again we took our time before our long, but much easier, descent. A really fansastic start to our fifth day.
We then headed to HMV where we spent some time looking at clothes and so on, and also tried to start finding presents for people. We eventually tracked down some nice silk hankies which were on special (as everything is horridly expensive) and Andrew found some shirts. After shopping for a couple of hours, we decided to head for the famous Shakespeare bookshop and explore the antique book markets on the edge of the Sienne on the way. We must have looked at hundreds of antique books, as well as comics ad nick nacks and I found two more books that were reasonably priced, both from the 1700's. We were once again nearly thwarted by the impossible Parisian streets and we spent quite some time looking for the bookshop. We enventually found it, but only after first giving up and heading back, at which point we stumbled across it and were able to spend some time browsing English books for a change.
It was now time to head to Montparnasse and get our night photos of Paris. When we arrived at the tower we were disappointed to discover that the restaurant at the top where we had intended to have dinner was undergoing renovations and was closed, so we just caught the very fast lift to the top and spent about half an hour taking some amazing photos of the city at night. It was freezing cold, and so once our photos were done we decided to head back to our hotel to pack up and get some food.
By the time we made our way back to the hotel it was getting a bit late, so we quickly packed our bags and then headed to a restaurant in Montmatre which had good reviews. It was completely full, so we wandered around for a bit and then found the 'oldest hotel in Montmatre' where we had our last dinner in Paris. It was lovely. I had a first course of escargot (snails), which were quite nice, followed by duck and finally creme brulee for dessert. Andrew inadvertantly ordered three courses of cheese. For entree he had a baked camenbert cheese on pear slices drizzled with honey, followed by chicken in cheese sauce and a cheese platter for dessert. All the food was lovely, as was the wine, but we were cheesed out by the end of it. The creme brulee was probably the best dessert I had had all trip. We headed back to our hotel at about 1am, very full and looking forward to our last day.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)