Around the World in 43 Days! 2007-2008

This city does run 24 hrs a day! Just visit Times Square at midnight. Wow!

Here are some added comments from Bethany for the other day...
We had a busy day touring the city seeing all the sights today. Like going up the top of the Empire State Building, catching a subway to Times Square, buying exciting hats in Chinatown

and looking at the giant Christmas Tree, decorations and ice-skaters in the Rockefeller Center. Ben and Dad went to look at Ground Zero (the twin towers site)

while mum and Bethany went shopping in this amazing 3-storey discount department store called Century 21. Shopping in most NY stores is CHEAP!!! (except for the big brands like Guess, Gucci, etc.) Today we mostly got a bus around the city with a tour guide telling us all about the city which was good and we learned HEAPS about the buildings and landmarks of NY from the windy, freezing top of a double-decker bus!

On Thursday, we saw the famous Statue of Liberty!

And Dad took a picture of us in front of it .. well he tried anyway ...

We also toured the uptown part of NY including the Eastside, Westside and we hopped off the bus to go shopping in Harlem. (Lots of cheap shops! Yay ) After having a traditional Hot Dog with sauerkraut and mustard, and a giant pretzel from a street vender, we hopped on another tour to see Brooklyn.

Other things we did in NY -
Rich and Sue got to fulfill a lifetime dream from when they did figure skating lessons whilst going out together (around 30 yrs ago!) of skating outside in NY -

We went to Broadway and saw the only musical that the whole family could agree on - Spamalot (Monty Python!)

We did the obligatory cheesecake at Juniors whilst in Broadway..

And had our photo with a NY cop and police dog (who didn't like the camera flash!)

Well, that is nearly it for New York. We are at JFK airport now, ready to fly to London in less than 1 hr. (5pm local time on Sunday 23rd December.)

We'll try to get a Christmas blog out tomorrow.
Blessings to all!
The Travelling Shoes

Gidday to everyone from the Big Apple; from the frozen Big Apple, that is!
After a straight forward flight from Orlando to New York, we had quite the eventful shuttle from the airport to our hotel near Central Park. We never realised just how many people one driver will try to pick up, how many airport stops he'll make and just how many people could be crammed into one small shuttle van!!

After dumping our gear in the Beacon, we donned our winter woolies and set off for a stroll around Central Park in 1degree temperature. All except Rich who, after stepping outside, quickly had to go back and put more clothes on. There was heaps of entertainment in the Park - frozen lakes to throw ice and rocks and sticks onto, snow to slide down, sqirrels to chase, hot nuts from a park vendor, horse and carriages going by, etc.


Luckily the weather had been snowing before we got to NY, so we had some sense of what it is like.

We thought we had seen a fair bit of the park, but when we got back after our walk we realised that we had covered only a very small percentage. A visit to Arties Deli on the way back where we thought we would get typical yankee diner food, only to be presented with a bowl of coleslaw and mixed relish pickles. Oops. We had made it to one of New York's favourite Jewish Kosher Delis! All the food (other than the pickled entree) was great, even the Knish Puppy.

Here is the view at the end of first arvo in NY -

The next day (19th) we spent mainly in downtown Manhatten. Sue had booked us on a double-decker hop on and hop off tour.

We saw Times Square, the Flatiron building (that thin one in heaps of movies),

the Empire State Bldg, and Rockafeller Centre. The Empire State bldg was a real highlight - we saw heaps and really appreciated what an effort went into building it in 1931. The weather was really ferrel on one side - see Sue all rugged up below.

There were lots of highlights, and everyone had personal favourites. Sue loved the Rockafeller Centre, Bethany liked shopping and the Empire State Bldg, I really enjoyed having lunch at NY's msot famous Pizzeria - Johns, and Benj's was finally getting to touch a guitar a famous shop, Matt Umanov's.

We have not had either internet access, energy or enough battery to blog until now, so apologies for the delayed update. We had another night's flying and realised that we have only had one night in three in a bed! We mostly managed to sleep for the 7 hr flight from Hawaii to Dallas (Texas) and then again for the 21/2 hr flight from Dallas to Orlando Florida. We were all really tired. However that did not stop us from heading straight to Disney EPCOT straight away.

We managed to do 7hrs after only arriving at 3pm. The fireworks show was spectacular and we loved all the country Christmas displays. We now have millions of pictures of different themed trees. This might just turn out to be our most Christmassy Christmas yet!

Second Disney day was at MGM. We woke up at about 10.30am so we missed most of the morning. But we managed to squeeze another 8hr day in! We all have done the rollercoaster’s even though our heads are still spinning from the travel. Disney is a blast with lots of things to see and do.

We are always too busy to eat and end up eating at the end of the night….last night we had something at our Resort the All Stars Music. We are in the Rock section with the big guitars, speaker stairwells and piano pool. Very appropriate for this family! Benjamin says he may have had to kill himself if we had been in All-stars Country.

Today (that was the 13th) we went to Universal Studios Adventure Park. (It has two parks to Disney’s 5). This was our day of thrills starting off with the Hulk (twice in succession) and working through to the duelling dragons. WOW! We ate a lot today because we had an all you can eat pass. Sue’s favourite place in Universal was Seussland and all the Chrissy decorations while Richard liked the Toon town’s ‘Dudley Do right’s Rip Saw falls’- this was a log ride which guarantees that you get wet- we did! But what we did not know that a whole heap of people had paid quarters to squirt us at the end of the ride- we got soaked! So of course we had to pay to squirt someone else. Fairs fair; Benjamin liked the roller coasters and Bethany thought the buildings were exciting- they really do a fantastic job creating atmosphere.

We finished the night with the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade down the main street in Universal Studios- complete with ticker tape.

UPDATE -
Today is the 15th December and we have gone to Magic Kingdom yesterday on the 14th and to the main bit of Universal Studios today. Magic Kingdom was like a trip down memory lane as we revisited a lot of the favourite places we had from our time at Disneyland in 2000.

Rides like Splash Mountain and Thunder Mountain, and the Pirates ride (updated after the movies with Jack Sparrow, of course!), and Sue wanted to do "It's a Small World". Benjamin drew the line at that one!!!
It was great seeing our favourite characters, like Micket etc.


And then we had the fantastic finale to the day...

Universal Studios ... (more to come tomorrow. Got to sleep now sorry :-) )

Finally it feels like we are on holidays! After a delayed flight out of Brisbane, we made it to the very hot Nadi at Fiji. Rich thought he would help you by showing where we went on the following map..

That short trip was only 3 hrs. Unfortunately, our flight out of Nadi to Hawaii was delayed until midnight, so we went out and had dinner at a seafood restaurant in downtown Nadi. Coming back at a liesurely 3hrs before our flight, we then had four shocks:
1. The flight got delayed a third time until 2am - another 2 hrs.
2. The staff at Nadi airport were a tad slow. It took THREE hours STANDING in the queue to check back in. Pls see the distance we travelled in the picture below, which took the same time as flying from Brisbane to Nadi!!

3. The flight got delayed a fourth time - another 2hrs. So now we were leaving at 4.20am. Yawnnnnnnn
4. Ending up sleeping on the gate lounge seats with the other 200 people.

Eventually we made it to Honolulu, but had to quickly change plans as we had lost half of the 2 days we have here. No problemo - have alook at these happy campers finally out of planes and queues.

Bethany did what she normally does and looked at the scenery upside down..

Of course Sue is revelling in the Christmas time - she can't help herself around all of the decorations..

Tomorrow we hope to make up for what we missed today, and get up to the surfing action on the North shore of Oahu.

To catch you up, the second day in Hawaii was a full day. We hired a car and drove around the whole island, on the wrong side of the road of course....Sue was a bit edgy with some of my turns. We started with snorkelling with the fishies at Hanuama Bay. This was really fun and there were heaps of interesting colourful fish (really big ones too!) We had a waterproof camera but that is old school so we will have to get the film developed before we have some pics.

We also visited the famous Bills pies where we bought a chocolate cream pie and managed to eat only half. We were at Waiama Bay for the Billabong Masters surf carnival - unfortunately there wasnt the 6m waves that they wanted, so the comp wasn’t on. We thought the waves were big though. We made it home to have a quick shower and get to the airport.