New York is where I'd rather be
Trip Start
Aug 30, 2009
1
4
13
Trip End
Sep 29, 2009
Where I stayed
New York City, New York
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Woke Up still feeling under the weather. Cath was exited about having breakfast in the diner so we gat dressed and next door we went.
When entering he diner the waitress takes you to a both then brings iced water over straight away she doesn't wait long before coming back to take your order.
We both chose omelettes Cath had vegetarian and I had sausage of course the waitress asked if we want cheese with these but i declined.
In about 5 minutes our omelets appear these are served with grated potatoes and buttered toast. Coffee appears soon after with top ups frequently throughout our meal.
We decide to get the van looked at the garage/service station across the road. We leave it there to go and explore the Wal-Mart a block up the road.
We find a Place call the dollar shop where everything is only 1 dollar and we mean everything. Sunglasses, frozen hamburgers, shampoo, Halloween decorations, can of soup, you get the picture.
Then over to Wal-Mart to buy a phone we find one for 60 dollars that will give us 400 minutes talk time anywhere in the world so buy it. We discover later that it does not include mobiles outside USA and takes 2 business days to activate.
Back to the garage and the guy comes out and says we have bad news the motor of the car has been filled up with heavy grade oil to build oil pressure so is almost shot and the transmission is not far behind. He can’t find the miss at highway speed it just runs rough on idle his advice is t drive it until it stops. I tell him as long as we get 10 days out of it we are ahead. So off we head to NYC
Traveled towards New Jersey and got on the new jersey –New York Pike this is a toll way that goes right thru (over) New Jersey. They give you a ticket when you enter and you pay the toll depending where you get off we only got off at a petrol station to have lunch and use the internet to find a hotel as we did not actually exit the turnpike we did not have to pay. We had no luck finding a hotel as we were searching like dumb tourists for a hotel with free parking. We eventually rang the Americana Hotel and they said they had a room for 108 dollars per night with parking close buy for 35 dollars per day. So that’s where we headed
We left the New Jersey turnpike and paid our 8 dollars for the trip and then went on the spaghetti like freeways on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River. We decided to take the Lincoln tunnel as this exits near Times Square we thought that this is as good a place as any to arrive in New York. We took the exit to the tunnel and proceeded to join a parking lot as there are three separate 2 lane tunnels. The middle one reverses during peak hour as this was 4:30 pm we only had 1 tunnel which about 8 lanes of traffic have to squeeze into. We soon learned how to barge in as drivers manners are not heard of in NY
Once inside the tunnel with dozens of busses all empty going back into town to take everyone out the traffic moved fairly briskly. We emerged into NYC at about 5:30 PM. What an initiation traffic hear moves at a frightening pace the cab drivers constantly on the horn reminding out of Towner’s like us to keep moving. Nearly all the roads are one way so it was fairly easy to drive as long as you can keep up to about 45 -50 MPH.
The guide book told us our hotel was on 69 W 38th Street we took this as meaning the junction of 69 west street and 38th street we had no luck in typing the coordinates of the hotel into our GPS so we just put in west 69th street and headed in that direction this took us thru Times Square with lines queuing around the block lining up for shows and then out past Central Park. Once we had found 69th street we drove around in circles for ages before we decided to ring the hotel only to find out its address was number 69 on west 38th street between 6th and 5th avenues ( in NYC streets run East West and avenues Run North South with Broadway cutting a diagonal thru the lot). with the correct address we headed back down town. When we pulled over to get our bearings we looked up to find we were parked outside our hotel so locked up the car and we went upstairs.
We couldn’t have asked for a better location. The hotel whilst not flash was clean and secure our room was about the size of our bedroom at home with a sink, TV air con and a cupboard we were on the 4th floor with the shared bathroom right next door. After check in it was time to find something to eat so we headed in the direction of the empire state building. On the corner of 36th street and 6th Ave. we found our first NY Pizza Shop Pronto Pizza. We ordered a slice each and 2 Heinekens as no local beer was available and sat at a high table with stools on the footpath and watched New York go buy.1 Slice was enough.
We then set of to the Empire State building to see where we were going to catch the tour bus the next day. We located the bus stop and found an Italian eatery selling ice-cream.
We ordered a Twinkie which was 2 scoops and then went to do some tourist shopping at the many souvenir shops. Stuff was fairly cheap 3 t-shirts for 10 dollars (don’t forget the tax) etc. our guy at the hotel said we could park on the street tonight but we would have to move before 6 am so we then set of to find a car park that would take our van. We had a problem as the van is about 8feet high and is too big for most garages. We found one on 36th street so decided to go back to the hotel and get up early move the van, have breakfast and then start our sight seeing open top bus tour at 8am.
So it was back to the hotel we decided to book another night to make tomorrow easier
Great day had what an experience peak hour traffic Times Square.
