NEW YORK CITY

After 6 nights in the big apple we have to say this city was just Awesome.
Bright lights big city...
On our first day there we kinda wandered around seeing what we could, then stumbled upon the tallest building in the city, Empire State Building. So we decided to see what we could see... it was amazing the view the whole way around the city, apparently you can see as far as Jersey on a clear day.. guess who was listening to the tour guide. Price not bad would recommend skipping the sky-ride part just the observation deck ticket, the queues are huge get off one elevator then queue some more before getting on another!! All in all not a bad start too our trip.
 From here we wandered aimlessly in hope of discovering another gem accidently and we were not disappointed when we found time square. Now this is where our bad sense of direction comes into play instead of "wandering" for a half hour and discovering this gem we ought to have looked at the map from when we left the front door, walked 1 avenue over and 5 streets down we would have seen this after 7 mins walk. Literally 7 mins from where we stayed.
After over coming this directional booboo we picked up the lay of the land quite quick, the traffic was crazy, the driving was worse and cyclists took their lives in their hands every time they rode the bike, pedestrians well accustomed to this just walked out, whether a little white man was there or not...
The days were long and humid, the money was not stretching very far (FYI) but we did the touristy thing and got a hop-on hop-off bus for 3 days which was great, get off where you want, be it Financial district, Greenwich, SoHo, Chinatown or Little Italy... and discover the parks, visit museums and sites...they were fabulous but be sure to get a better map of SoHo, they dont do the "grid" system ie streets and avenues...
We did a lot a lot of walking, but a lot a lot of photos(which hopefully we can put up were trying to find a decent internet cafe with the capabilities..) Some of our highlights were the Statue of Liberty, as part of our hop on hop off tour we got the MISS LIBERTY boat out to the island walked around and then onto Ellis Island.(a lot of construction here .. it was the building that the Corleone family was introduced to us) history note the first Immigrant registered here was a women from cork named Anne  (if you do intend to visit try and book tickets to the enter the crown, they only have a limited number at the gate so try and book on line at least 2 weeks in advance) Battery Park, Ground Zero in the Financial District.


to be continued...

BEFORE

After 7 months of waiting, organising and planning, both Alfie and I are nearly ready to head off... just counting down the days and the number of bags of stuff being thrown away.
The trip we have ahead is a mammoth journey across America via Fiji and onto Australia for 12months or so.
America consists of 55 days, stopping in 7 states travelling coast to coast, long bus trips, flights and trains car rental but thank god no hitch hiking!!
Destinations: New York, Washington DC, South Carolina, Memphis, Dallas, Flagstaff, Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, a 5 day road trip, San Francisco, Yosemite National Park, 12 day road trip including San Diego and LA
Staying along the way in family homes thank you LIL and TED, friends of family thank you Eileen who is kindly putting up with us for 3 days in Memphis,  in New York courtesy of Airbnb, hostels in Washington and San Francisco and my favourite spot Planet Hollywood in Vegas just from the great outdoors of the Grand Canyon.
The next few days will be crazy, mad, busy organising the last bits and pieces including money transfers, international drivers licences, dam swine flu jab :( and lots of tea to drink with family and friends.
We hope to meet up with a lot of people but unfortunately time restrictions may apply, sorry to sound corporate!!
The fab thing about Conor and Ber, Mary and Noel was the going away party we had 2 weeks ago!
It was a great night and had a lovely time catching up with you all!

I hope the "DURING" blog will be just as long and informative as this one and hopefully, with the help of computers along the way, lots of photos!!

Looking forward to keeping you updated via our blog,
Toodles for now,
Alfie and Emer