This is an amazingly long email! I apologize for the length and hopefully you'll be able to get through it so that you can see all the crazy stuff we've done. Right now we are in a Welcome Centre in Maine heading to St.John New Brunswick. We'll see how far we make it tonight. Watch for the next email with details about the last day or so.
SMILE:)
September 12, 2009
We did a bunch of stuff in the last few days. Kennedy Space Centre was super cool. We did the NASA up close tour which brought us around to the launch sites and other areas of the Centre. Okay, they were from a distance, but still cool. We got to see a shuttle and touch a moon rock. Then it was off to the beaches of Miami. We got an awesome hotel using Hotwire. It was called Whitelaw and it was literally 30sec from the beach (not beachfront, but pretty close). The beach was awesome!!! It was a nice way to just hang out and do nothing. They were pretty empty too because it was a Tuesday. Unfortunately half way through the day it did cloud over, but it was still warm, so we hung out until around 5p and then headed back to get supper. We found out that our hotel was serving complimentary drinks from 7-8p so Trevor and I took advantage. It was great, until I realized that getting burnt at the beach and then getting drunk meant that my immune system had been down for too long and I was going to get sick (in retrospect, everything is so clear). After Miami we drove to Fort Lauderdale to see if I could meet up with one of the girls I worked with. Unfortunately she wasn’t there and I couldn’t get a hold of her L oh well, next stop. We drove as far as we could toward Washington DC. We passed through North Carolina (Kami, I did a little wave for you and Ron) and South Carolina (obviously not in that order) and then Virginia where we pulled off for the night. The next day around 5 p we finally made it to Chantilly, VG where we went to a sister Smithsonian. We saw some pretty cool air and space stuff including the concord that in Transformers is the old guy (okay I have no idea any Transformer names, but if you see the second one, you know who I’m talking about) and we saw the Enterprise shuttle and cool artifacts like their food and personal items. We also saw the Enola Gay which is the airplane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. Crazy stuff. Then around 7p we got into Washington DC and went searching on Hotwire to get a hotel. We got a Hilton, but once we got to the Hilton we realized that the Hilton is not all it’s cracked out to be. It means that parking costs $30 a day and you pay for every bloody thing including internet! It was such a scam. The room was also much smaller than our Best Western and Whitelaw AND no fridge or safety box (well you could ask for it, but the other hotels just had them in the room). At this point in the trip I was starting to feel crappy. The next day we were off to see the Smithsonian’s. We saw “the castle” where the loot pile from The Night at the Museum 2 was held and also one of the American Idol desks. And then we went to the Museum of Natural History full of stuffed animals. It sounds worse than it was. It was actually pretty cool. Ash, you would have been right at home at this place! They had a bones display from pilgrims in the 17th and 18th century and their analysis of the bones. It was cool. Then we went to the air and space museum but at that point I was definitely museum’d out! I was not pleasant company, but Trevor was awesome! We also went to see the Washington monument, the White House and the Lincoln Memorial. I don’t know how far we walked but it was insane! We got pizza that night and went back to the hotel. The next day was another round of museums and the zoo which has a panda!!! That was awesome!!! We tried doing that quick and then headed back to where the monuments and stuff were but some crazy rally and concert were going on and it was impossible to drive. We parked and ended up going to the Museum of American History which goes through how science spread and how the Americans travelled and there is one display on Pop Culture with one of 5 pairs of the original Ruby Slippers as well as a Kermit puppet and other things of that sort. We saw a CP30 from one of the movies and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle from one of the movies. Weird things like that. It was cool. But I was definitely done! We headed to our now new favorite place to eat (at least my favorite) Duccini’s grabbed a ridiculous amount of food and then headed out of Washington DC. We drove until we got to Jackson, New Jersey and parked by a lake for the night. The next day we were off to Six Flags! It was AWESOME!!! I LOVE ROLLERCOASTERS! Trevor didn’t feel too well for most of the day, but I went on most of the rollercoasters twice! It was awesome. By 5p we decided to head out and drive to New York. Once again, Hotwire put us in a Hilton. We used Hotwire outside a Crowne Plaza where we found internet. Finding internet has been interesting. There isn’t much unlocked wireless down here. Since we were going through New Jersey anyways, we decided to stop by Trevor’s old co-workers place. It was neat to see another person we knew on this crazy trip of ours. That night we got into our hotel by the Newark Airport (cheaper than New York) and slept until 10a. I just couldn’t get out of bed. We didn’t get out of the hotel room until 12p. At that point we headed to the Liberty State Park from the New Jersey side so that we could go see the Statue of Liberty. First we took a Ferry to Ellis Island, the main island of immigration. We went through the building where people would register to be immigrants in the USA. It was really neat. Then we took the ferry over to the Statue of Liberty where we actually got to go inside of the monument. We could only go up to the base of the statue on an oberservation deck that looked out to New York but it was still pretty cool. The view was great. Took some pictures then headed on the ferry back to our car. Thank goodness we went through the New Jersey side because there were probably 50X more people going on the ferry headed to New York than New Jersey. It was insane! Back at our car I figured we should head into New York but once we got there we were pretty much at a stand still. Traffic was awful. It was at that point Xenia, one of my old synchro kids, called and we told her we’d meet her. Never agree to something unless you know the full details. Apparently to get out to Long Island where she lives is 1.5hours from NewYork! But we drove out there and had supper with her which was really good. We were there quite late and then had a 1.5 hour drive back to the hotel, so once again we slept in until pretty late. This time we drove into Brooklyn and parked outside Trevor’s cousin’s place because she got back to us and said we could spend the night. It was the most interesting neighborhood. There were all these Jewish people with top hats and ringlets(the men) and the women wore black skirts and these cute hats or head wraps. It was crazy! I didn’t realize that New York had these kinds of neighborhoods. We took the metro into New York and headed to the World Trade Centre memorial site first, then it was off to Time Square where we saw the Mayor of London. Time Square was incredible! I can’t imagine seeing it all the time. This is where ADHD develops I think. So many flashing lights and adds, it’s crazy. Then we headed to Central Park before our Broadway was going to start. We went to see Wicked! It was AMAZING! That was definitely a great broadway musical to see and I highly recommend it to anyone going to New York. The singers were amazing and the set was incredible. It was so well done! After the show, we went through Time Square to our metro station. Time Square was showing Fashion week on the big screen! You should have seen all the people staring at the giant screen. It was very cool to be there. It was amazing how quiet it was even though there were so many people. Very neat. And then it was off to Manda’s for the night. We finally got in touch with her and got to talk to her briefly before she headed to bed. Her apartment was really neat. It was a very spacious high ceiling apartment with 2 bedrooms and an amazing view of New York! It was really awesome. Today, we are off to Providence to see Emanuela and Fil.
Hope everyone is doing great!
SMILEJ
The Travelling Prentices
No comments:
Post a Comment