All at sea.

We're off on a cruise today, so we're going to be even quieter for 14 days as $50 per day for internet is more than this bloggy thing is worth.  We'll have the past weeks worth of stuff stacked up ready when we rejoin civilisation.

Try not to harm yourselves in the meantime, gnawing on your hands in anticipation.

D.C

After Philly, we took another train to the nation’s capital.  We were there for three days and rather intensively bounced around all of its (mostly free) sights and museums. DC isn’t very big, and one can walk it fairly easily when the temperature isn’t in the mid-thirties and the air isn’t like breathing through a sponge. Both of which it was while we were there, but we still marched about a fair bit. 

The first night, we walked over to the Lincoln memorial from our hotel near Dupont Circle. We got there for dusk, which made for some dramatic lighting.

  

I will mention that the climate of D.C is particularly favourable to all manner of midge, mozzy and gnat.  I will also mention that that reflecting pool you can see above, which is next to Lincoln, is a really big body of standing water, alongside which we were walking at dusk.  So I was thoroughly exsanguinated by the time I took those snaps. Chan retrieved my camera from my desiccated remains and went on her way.

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Monuments aside, the big things to get around are the various Smithsonian facilities. Well there is this, I guess:

The newer, non-burning version

The secret service are spectacularly poorly named, by the way.  They also look bored as hell.  You’d best not put down your backpack/umbrella/toddler for more than three seconds, because they’ll controlled-explosion that motherfucker in a heartbeat.

We did also get to the Capitol building (don’t tell them; they’ve been spelling it like that for ages now and it’ll just be embarrassing) where I tried to understand their system of government (Short version: Congress = Parliament; Senate = the Lords, only someone voted for them; Representatives = the Commons).  We caught a Republican rally outside, demonstrating against the most recent dealings with Iran.  Sarah Palin was there. Somehow Jesus and abortion entered the discussion. She sounded like she possibly spends her spare time driving rivets with her forehead.

Durrka derrrrr!

Back to the Smithsonian: evidently it got its name from a British scientist called James Smithson who bequeathed the yanks his fortune to set up facilities to spread knowledge and wisdom in that fledgling nation. Nice chap.  Anyway, we got around the Air and Space, American History and Natural History museums.  There’s a lot to see, but here’s some edited highlights. 

From the American History Museum:

  
Ruby slippers from the Wizard of Oz; The original Kermit; Julia Child’s kitchen (American Delia Smith); Old containers from McDonalds that made me more nostalgic than I expected

From the Air and Space Museum:

 

  
A Fokker; An X-15; A brace of A-wasters; Nazi Germany’s best London landscaper; A Hubble

Natural History Museum:

  
The Hope Diamond; A massive Bird-eating Spider that plainly wanted to eat my face; A T-Rex; a cast taken from a Giant Squid.  Bit eclectic, this one.

We also took a night guided tour around D.C, which was insightful. But while we doing that, we found someone we recognised.  Back when we were in New York Penn Station waiting for our train to Philly, there was an issue with the incoming train and a certain amount of chaos ensued.  The Station Master, Mr Jermaine Jones, came down to the floor and reorganised the trains on the ground, shifting half of our train onto another route to minimise drama on our train, and get that crowd to their destination quicker.  He kept us all in the loop and got around everyone making sure we all knew what was happening.  All in all an excellent face for Amtrak, and many grumbles were averted. 

The man at work. Brit rail firms take note.

Anyway, shifting back to D.C: Chan spotted him in the queue for our night tour because my wife is terrifying.  We introduced ourselves and he was delighted to be spotted (even though he was travelling incognito for some ‘me’ time.  I suggested a false beard and glasses next time).  He insisted on a photo:

So that was a fun (if somewhat unlikely) encounter.
When we were done here,  we picked up Das Auto and resumed our journey on the road.

Kurzfassung auf Deutsch: Wir haben ein paar Tage in Washington DC verbracht. Während wir dort waren, haben wir das Weiße Haus und das Capitol besuchten.  Das Smithsonian hat sehr vielseitige Ausstellungen.  Wir haben den Bahnhofsvorsteher von der Penn Station in New York wiedergesehen, der hat uns früher in unserer Reise geholfen. Das war überraschend!

Philly

Right, I’ve got a minute. 

Having done our time in the Big Apple, we took another Amtrak train across to Philadelphia.  It’s a significant place in American history with plenty of monuments and plaques for various Founding Father types, but shockingly nothing for the Fresh Prince. Rocky has one or two, though.

I wasn’t sure what to expect of Philly; probably something like Chicago, bearing in mind it’s the sixth most populous city in the US.  What it actually is more ‘towny’, for want of a better adjective: a lot less in the way of tall buildings than the other major cities we’ve visited and a lot more spread out.  The feel of it is a bit like Charleston, and so was a definite change of pace from New York.

Den of sedition

Philly is where the Founding Fathers (or arch traitors, depending on your perspective) debated and wrote the Declaration of Independence and U.S Constitution.  It’s also the home to the Liberty Bell: an absolute dud we sold them (it broke as soon as they used it) that has had a lot more success as a metaphor.

No refunds

We were only there for a couple of days, so we got around the necessary things like the Hall of Independence and the aforementioned failed-bell, and we went on another walking tour with a local to point out the various less obvious places, like where the Founding Fathers kicked back, tied their cravats (or whatever 18th century shit they  wore) around their heads and drank unto oblivion:

It turns out the landlord was probably a spy too.  It’s poor form when you can’t trust the walls of the boozer to keep  all your delicious secret plans of revolution in confidence.

Ben Franklin features heavily.  He’s one of those guys I keep thinking I’m mistaking for someone else because he did everything: “Wait, was he the guy with the key in the kite or the bloke signed the Declaration of Independence? Was he first Yank ambassador to France or the guy that came up with Bifocals?”.
He was all that and more. He was the Swiss army knife of revolutionary agitants, and the burgeoning U.S were cosmically lucky to have him.

 
And they made a statue of him made of keys

We took a walk around Elfreth’s alley, which is preserved Terraced-street which was notable because its residents were split along Loyalist/Patriot lines.  It worked out a bit better for one of those groups, apparently: the resident Brit lover was hanged for collusion after we bailed.

   
Someone bet on the wrong horse

Otherwise, the waterfront is pretty and also has an interesting pair of battleships and a bonus sub.

  

We went to a couple of great restaurants but nothing quite beat the majesty of a legitimate Philly Cheese Steak:

Total artery carnage

We’ll have to go here again, as I didn’t get a chance to run up the steps from Rocky while meditating on the film’s timeless message about the merits of being hit in the head repeatedly and not falling over.

Oh, and we had a nice chat with our Hungarian Uber driver on the way to the station for our train to DC. Hi, Ferenc!

Kurzfassung auf Deutsch: Wir haben ein paar Tage in Philadelphia geblieben. Es ist interessant, die Heimat der amerikanischen Revolution zu sehen, auch wenn wir die Bösen sind.

Holding pattern

I was almost caught up with you lot but the next thing I know, we’ve been in and out of Philly, then DC and then we were back on the road again.   The car is an improvement:

Das Auto

It’s a German car, but some of the trim came off in the boot so I’m assuming it was made in the US.

I will attempt to write something more substantial when I have a minute. In the meantime: wait longer.

“I like my toast done on one side…”

…said no Englishman in New York ever, Sting, you tool.

We’ve been here two weeks and we’re off to Philly tomorrow, so I’m just going to bomb-burst some things we’ve been up to in one non-chronological blob.  Chan and I went down to Greenwich Village and had a couple of drinks today, so this might be a bit rough around the edges.  (Edit- Actually, I started writing this in NY, but now I’m now in Philly and doing my very best to finish it off after five bottle of Sweet Baby Jesus.  Wish me luck.)

  
I  literally have no photographs where she isn’t holding a drink.  Please help.

We bought a couple of New York Passes before we got here (after a discount; Chan will talk about her cost-saving tips at some point) which gave us access to all things touristy, several of which I’m glad we didn’t pay extra for.

The Empire State Building

This has the  most duplicitous queuing system outside of Alton Towers.  You queue to get tickets, you queue to get in with your tickets, you get in a lift, you queue for the next lift (via a gift shop), you queue to get around the observation deck.   The view was great and all, but we’re glad we went when it was quiet and so only really queued to  escape the place.

 

Top of the Rock

Similar deal, albeit at night time: this is the observation deck of 30 Rockefeller Plaza.  Neither this nor  the Empire State had a bar, which I find offensive.

 

The RIDE

This was an odd fish. It’s a custom-made coach where you and your fellow passengers are arranged in benched seating, facing the pavement.  There are two hosts in attendance, who talk you through some irreverent sight-seeing and trivia while seemingly random members of the public break out into song and dance numbers. It’s definitely different and I rather enjoyed it. We only got the one-figured salute from the New York public once as well, which was surprising. Not sure I’d pay $150 for the pair of us normally, though.

    

Skyride

Or “Sky-shit”, as Chantelle has just shouted from the bath as I’m writing.  She gets a bit expletive after a couple: I find it’s best to let her wind down or things get ugly.  
This is a flight-simulator-esque video “ride” based in the second floor of the Empire State Building and –in the words of Gandhi- it is a thundering pile of bagshite.  Voiced by Kevin Bacon before that was sort-of ironic-cool, and featuring bleeding edge references to (and graphical samples from) mid-nineties video games, this was an insult to procrastination and exists only to draw people from the three hour queue to get to the observatory. Back in the sea with it.

Stolen publicity photo:  The people with their hands in the air wished to go to the bathroom.

Tours – Soho, Little Italy, China Town, DUMBO, Brooklyn, Midtown

We’ve tried to take some guided tours of most of the cities we’ve visited thus far, as they’ve proven to be both interesting and useful for focussing the rest of our visits.   We’ve been on three here, the first of which was around Soho, Little Italy and China town.  

  

Soho is the boutique shopping hub of New York and is remarkable largely for it’s cast-iron architecture, which features in everything New York based in TV and film you’ve ever seen. Little Italy is littler than you would imagine, having shrunk from 30 square blocks in the early 20th century, to a single street across 8 blocks – almost all of it restaurants and gelato shops. This is largely due, not to incursion from the surrounding ethnicities, but to the Italians making enough money to move somewhere nicer, like New Jersey or the Bronx. 
China Town was something else:  I’ve seen its counterparts in Liverpool, Manchester or -more recently- Montreal, but nothing quite felt like this: like a section of a foreign country had been air-dropped onto the neighbourhood.  It’s bizarre,  Our guide pointed us to a small kitchen/shop where an old Chinese lady bellowed at you to give her a dollar, and gave you five fried dumplings in return. They were fantastic.

The second tour we took was for the DUMBO area (which means Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, because Americans shouldn’t be allowed to name things) and the Brooklyn Bridge.  The bridge is interesting for having a wooden boardwalk, complete with park benches,  allowing one to stroll over.  I’m not sure it’s the family event it once was, but as an example of engineering and achievement against a background of official ineptitude and corruption, it’s first class.  The tour company got a bit greedy with this one, though, and the group was far too big.  This meant we spent 30% of the time waiting for a family of Spaniards to finish being Spanish in each locale.  Ultimately, we threw them them in the Hudson as an example for others of the non-anglosphere.

 

The other tour we took was around Midtown, looking at the major buildings, of which New York has a couple, in case you didn’t know.    The Chanin Building, the Chrysler Building, the News Building, the Empire State building: examples of gilded-age millionaire cock-waving all, but impressive at that.

   

 

The more public-minded developments like Grand Central Terminal ( not ‘Station’: traffic starts and ends there, but doesn’t pass through) and the Central Library (those of us of the same generation will only see ‘Ghostbusters’ when looking at its steps) are no less impressive.

 

 

Trufax: that clock is the largest piece of Tiffany cut glass in the world. The black brick in the second picture was left behind after they last cleaned the ceiling to show them what filthy fuckers they were, who presumably smoked sticks of unfiltered bitumen.   Also, they have alcoves in the station where you can hear each other across the room if you wish to look like a nutter bellowing at the walls:

Tit

We also did a ton of museums and art galleries, because we are classy. I’m not going to talk about them now because that might require thinking and I’m not presently qualified.

Kurzfassung auf Deutsch:  Wir haben all die Touristenattraktionen gesehen, von denen einige gut, einige davon schrecklich.  Die "Skyline" ist kategorisch Scheiße. Sehen Sie es nicht.