America Photos, Part 6

The weather in New York was so beautiful. Most days we could wear short sleeves and then just throw on a jacket at night.

The one exception to this rule, of course, was the day we took the ferry to the Statue of Liberty. Silly me went off for the day in a t-shirt and shorts, not thinking what the wind would be like once we were on the water.

Hence, I bought the first warm looking piece of clothing I could find.
And it happened to be this:

Which wasn't so bad really, because I had planned to get something with the famous "I Heart NY" on it anyway!



Liberty Island was really pretty. It had all these pink cherry trees around the edge, which were all in bloom and so pretty!






We walked around the whole island (which wasn't very big) and then thought we'd go inside the statue (even though you can't climb to the top anymore) but when we walked around, there was a huge line waiting to go inside and we thought, forget it!

We went to the gift shop instead!

And what trip to the Statue of Liberty would be complete without trying on ridiculous merchandise such as this:


No I didn't buy it. I figured the Mickey ears from Disneyland were kitsch enough!


Once we got back to Manhattan, we spent the rest of the day exploring. We found a memorial for the Korean War right in the heart of the city.




I was quite touched by it because my Grandad served in the war for New Zealand.

Each country that had contributed was given a space for their flag and a part of the pavement with the number of their dead and wounded engraved into the concrete.

We kept walking and found this amazing church that had such a beautiful garden.

As we got closer, we realised that the garden was a graveyard! Each plot had these bright flowers in a different colour- yellow, orange, pink. It was so pretty and I remember thinking "When I'm buried, I want to be buried in a graveyard like that!"

Not only that, but it was a kind of famous church:

Oh yes, the Queen stood where we stood. So we are famous-by-proxy, right?

We kept walking and soon found ourselves walking along a very famous street:



Then we got back on the Hop on-Hop off bus so we could see a bit more of Manhattan.

Hello, Brooklyn Bridge!



I had to take a photo of this:

This is where Derek Shepheard from Grey's Anatomy - yes, I know he's a fictional character, but still! - went to medical school. Pretty cool, huh?

That night, we went to see Mary Poppins on Broadway. We actually hadn't planned to see it, but we found out that if you line up in the middle of Times Square at the tckts booth at 3pm, you can buy really cheap tickets for the remaining seats of those shows playing later that night that haven't sold out yet. We ended up getting awesome seats, like seven rows from the front! The show was amazing. I wish I could've taken photos. It was the most colourful, vibrant show I've ever seen.

A few nights later, we went to see West Side Story, which was the show we had bought tickets for in advance. We had seats on the mezzanine level, which were really good as well. Both shows were awesome, but very different. WSS was a drama, and very moving, while Mary Poppins was just fun!

The shopping in America was one thing. It was amazing. Sales, sales, sales, everywhere. The food in America was another. It was gross. Seriously, I don't know how celebrities manage to stay thin, because we tried to eat healthily and it's just not possible! You can't do it! Everything is processed, fried, refined... until there's no nutritional value left! We thought the food situation would get better once we got to New York, but we were wrong. It was the same old hamburger-pizza-fries combination everywhere you went.

That was, until we went here:



The Magnolia Bakery only makes cakes and cupcakes. They are most famous for the latter. On Sex & the City, Carrie & Miranda sat outside the Magnolia Bakery eating these cupcakes with a ginormous amount of frosting, and boom - the bakery was famous.




I cannot describe these cupcakes to you. They are indescribable. Such amazing-ness deserves more words than I can type. Look at that frosting. Incredible.

One one of our last days, we went to Central Park. I loved it there.



It was so green! That was one of the first things I noticed about it.



It would be impossible to walk around the whole park, so we got a map and walked through to the otherside, where we were going to the Museum of Natural History.


I could've stayed there all day.

This was the view as we were walking out of the park, towards the Museum. Amazing.

America Photos, Part 5

Our last day in LA was spent at Universal Studios.




I have to say, I was disappointed with this "theme park". I remembered it being much better when I went to Universal Studios in Florida when I was a kid, but maybe my memories have been embellished over time...

We had to wait for ages to get in, because there was some problem with our tickets. Haylee & I passed the time posing for photos like celebrities on the red carpet.




Anyway, the backlot tour was lots of fun. We saw the Desperate Housewives backlot, that was pretty cool, although I didn't get any decent photos. My friend Claryse, however, did!

Welcome to "Wisteria Lane"!

We also saw the War of the Worlds set; the studio had kept it there as a tourist spot.

After spending the day at Universal Studios, we all hopped back on the coach for what would be our last bus ride all together. We dropped half the group (those who were heading home to Sydney) at LAX and then the rest of us went literally around the corner to the Marriott, where we had rooms for the night before our flights left the next day. There were about 5 families, all heading to various destinations (Fiji, Hawaii, Florida... one family even hired an RV for 6 weeks to go on a trip across America!) and there was us, heading to New York.

Our flight to New York was leaving early the next morning, so after we checked into the Marriott, we got our suitcases sorted out and picked outfits for the next day.
That didn't take me very long- I'd already decided what my outfit was going to be when we had packed before leaving LA!

I decided to make use of the concierge services - okay, I asked my Dad how to do it first- because I had bought this iPod charging station at Pottery Barn that was packaged in this huge box... and I knew it would take my baggage allowance over the limit, but I had no idea how to send it home. As it was, it was 5.30pm by the time we got downstairs after checking in, and the FedEx business centre at the hotel was closed for the day. The post office was closed too. Anyway, after a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, the concierge agreed to post it for me on Monday. This may sound like not a big deal, but it was! I had this huge bulky box that I had no idea what to do with, and it took like an hour to organise for the hotel to Fed Ex it for me.

Anyway, I slept easier that night knowing the whole thing was taken care of. Once again, we only had 2 double beds to share between 3 girls, so 2 of us slept in the same bed, while 1 of us got their own bed all to themselves! We were soooo excited to be going to New York!

We wanted to look fabulous when we arrived in the Big Apple! But the joke was on us- we brought scarves and coats with us in our carry-on luggage, prepared for the big cold snap once we touched down in NYC, only to be greeted with warm Sydney-style weather!

Here's us on the plane- long sleeves and scarves, prepared for cold weather...

and Haylee & Claryse - at night, in t-shirts- when we arrived!

New York truly was a fabulous city.
We arrived at night, and it was so fun to see Times Square all lit up.

Our hotel was on Broadway, so there were lights and signs and things to do everywhere.

The next day, we went to Harlem to the Canaan Baptist Church of Christ, to see a gospel choir in their natural habitat. We ended up running late, because it was our first day in NYC and we had to figure out how to navigate the subway. When we got to the meeting point, it was deserted, and we had no idea what to do. Finally a guy came over and asked us if we were part of the tour, and he showed us to the church, which was literally around the corner.

Thank goodness we had bought tour tickets that included seeing a church service and a walking tour of Harlem, because there were 2 lines on either side of the church, both stretching out of sight around the corners! It was ridiculous. We never would have gotten inside if we had just rocked up that morning. But our guy called his guy, and then took us to another guy, who let us cut the line and come in. Then we had to wait in another line to actually get seated in the church.

The tourists were seated separately from the congregation, in a specially designed area that was actually above everyone else. We were a few rows from the front, so we had a good view for the service, but not for taking photos. This was the best I could get:

I felt like I was in Sister Act- all the church members wore black, and the choir wore robes, and the minister said "Hallelujah" and "Amen!" a lot. We watched the service for over 2 hours, in the middle of the day in the stifling heat with no air conditioning or fans (although they did give out paper hand fans with The Obamas on them!) before deciding we needed to go if we were ever going to do everything on our to-do list.

We spent the rest of the day sightseeing. We got on a Hop on- Hop off tour bus and went around the city. Because it was so hot, we sat on the top of the double decker bus and enjoyed the (not so) fresh air.

We ended up getting off at the first stop, because this was it...

... the iconic seven storey Macy's! Oh yeah, and the Empire State Building's nearby but who really cares about that when you've got seven storeys of retail bliss!

In the end, we spent most of the latter part of the day at Macy's! Haha we were such girls! I don't think we saw much of the city that day.

This was our view though... so amazing! We were right in the heart of NYC, so we didn't need to travel far.

The next day we went to see a little statue you might recognise...

Did I mention it's kinda famous? Yeah....

Of all the days, we went the day that the low flying 747 was circling around... you might have heard about the news. It was certainly big news in the US. I was so freaked out. You could tell everyone was thinking 'terrorist attack' because there was a huge 747, followed by 2 fighter jets, and 4 helicopters. I'd never been to NY before, but even I knew that wasn't normal!

Somehow, I managed to get on the ferry despite almost having an anxiety attack over the whole thing. We got shepherded through security like cattle, then had to wait for the ferry before we were on our way to the island.

It was actually really cool to see such a famous monument, even though you can't go up inside it any more because of terrorism fears. We took a bazillion photos. Definitely a "New York moment"!