Author: geoff

Another fabulous day in NYC! The weatherman was wrong yet again and it was another hot, stunningly blue sky day.

I’m thinking that if Queensland Rail have an office in NYC, I’m applying for a transfer.

I’m sorry to say that I won’t be referencing Jack Reacher in the blog any more. I’ve been advised that “he’s not a real person”.

Unbelievable!

I know that he’s real because he’s been riding the 6 train, the Lexington Avenue local, heading uptown towards Grand Central Station. I’m pretty sure that I’ve been on the very same train.

I think that I made a serious error in judgement by reporting on yesterday’s vital statistics. I didn’t think that TOTIL read the blog, but it appears that she does … and so I’ve pointed out that we consumed more donuts yesterday than we should have.

I was advised this morning that we need to be a bit healthier today … and that didn’t end well because the salad we had was contaminated. I’ll tell you more about that sad story later.

Last night we went to town and saw a show on Broadway. Fabulous! We saw The Carol King Story, and it was just amazing.

It was a really late night last night. We were on the 10.30ish train out of the city and got off at our local station just before 11.00pm … along with maybe 50 or 60 other people. It was as busy as … well, you know.

By the time I’d finished off the blog, showered, read a little more of the latest Jack Reacher biography that I’m reading, it was almost 1.00am … probably about the time that those living on the eastern side of Australia were thinking about having their afternoon coffee.

So I was a little weary this morning. We didn’t get going until a bit after 9.30am.

We played subway ninjas again today, and rode the train uptown to 34th Street Penn. Station and did the Madison Square Garden “All Access Tour”. Fabulous!

We got to see all aspects of the venue, including the corporate suites, the bridge, and the player’s dressing rooms. They have just laid down the ice for the season’s ice hockey.

I was a little puzzled by the fact that the NY Rangers and the NY Knicks have their dressing rooms right next to each other – I would have thought that opposing teams’ dressing rooms would have been at opposite ends of the venue.

I’m glad that I didn’t ask that question out loud though, because apparently one is an ice hockey team and the other a basketball team, so they are unlikely to ever be playing each other, or at the same time.

Oh well, I can’t be expected to know everything!

After the tour, we went up a few blocks to the Empire State Building and booked our passes for later in the day.

It appears that I was wrong yesterday when I said we had been to Macys … I’ve become confused. Sorry 🙁

We went to Macys today. There were two key reasons for going to Macys … one because we could, and secondly because we needed a bathroom break.

Once again, gender inequality exists in NYC because ladies rest rooms can be found on levels 2,4 and 7, while men’s rest rooms are only located on level 9. And you need a map to find them.

So back to my story of the contaminated salad. TOTIL decided that we needed to be healthy today and that she felt like a salad for lunch, so we bought a salad at the cafeteria at Macys. We figured it was the least that we could do considering that we had used their rest rooms.

While I was off at the men’s, TOTIL bought the salad and a coffee. It had been hours since my last coffee and I was getting a caffeine withdrawal headache. Sad, I know.

We’ve had a bit of a bad trot with food lately. We had been buying 1/2 gallon cartons of milk from the local store, and recently I bought a full gallon – almost 4 litres of milk in one huge container.

And it was off.

Hardly surprising because it had a use by date of 09/12 – December last year!

So we tipped it all out and went back to 1/2 gallon containers.

And now we had a contaminated salad! There was cucumber in it!

Clearly a serious lack of quality control in the Macy’s food preparation department. When I get to Heaven, I’m going to be asking for an explaination for cucumber.

After lunch, we headed further uptown that we’ve ever been before – all the way up to 81st Street for a bike tour of Central Park. Fabulous!

It was diabolically hot in the park. We rode 10.00km … plus the 19450 steps that I walked today (a new record, I should add) so we got lots of exercise to burn off that salad that we had for lunch 🙁

After the bike ride, we caught the subway back downtown to have a look at Trump Tower. Pretty impressive building but some serious security going on … NYPD with semi-automatic assault weapons at the door, more NYPD lingering around outside, and then even more with scanners inside the building.

After that it was off to the Empire State Building and we got another eyeful of NYC from on top of the world. Fabulous!.

NYC is just an amazing place! My words will never do it justice because I can’t describe it, and the pictures will never do it justice either.

By this time we were both pretty wrecked, but we had planned to walk the Brooklyn Bridge this afternoon. We didn’t want to put it off because the weatherman is forecasting storms tomorrow, and by the law of averages he has to get it right eventually.

So we hopped the subway again to Brooklyn Bridge/City Hall and walked over the Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan to Brooklyn. Fabulous!

How do you end  day like that? By having world famous Grimaldis Pizza and sitting under the Brooklyn Bridge at dusk. Fabulous.

Pizza was absolutely amazing and I’ll never be able to eat Domino’s again.

Another subway ride home, coffee, shower and I’ll be ready for bed very soon.

Oh … the title of today’s post … i suppose I should explain it.

If you recognised the words, you’ll know that it is the opening line to the Seasame Street song.

Below is a picture of the Brownstone that we are living at in downtown Brooklyn. Someone suggested recently that it looks like the place where Bert and Ernie live. I’m pretty sure that it’s not, because Jon and his wife live upstairs and we have met them.

Maybe B&E live next door though …?

All for now.

Ciao

#G&KTAKEUSA

We ran the air conditioner all night last night. I’m not sure if it disturbed TOTIL, but I used earplugs and didn’t hear a thing. I often use earplugs at night for reasons that I won’t go into here … but let’s just say that I am a relatively light sleeper and easily disturbed.

It’s been hot, hot, hot again all day.

You know that you’re in trouble when your phone gives you a notification first thing in the morning (7.00am) that it is “25 degrees, 1 degree hotter than yesterday”. At 7.00am!

I mentioned yesterday that it had been hot. This weekend just gone was the Labor Day holiday weekend and everything was just crazy. I don’t know if it is the heat, or the holiday, but there was a bit of the vida loca going on, and for some unknown reason it seemed that a significant number of NY women were getting around town dressed in a style that can only be described as “unfettered”.

It was difficult not to notice.

We had a small subway incident yesterday where one of us swiped our metro card and went through the turnstile successfully, and the other one swiped their card and did not get through the turnstile.

The great thing about the metro card is that you only swipe it to enter the subway, and you don’t need to swipe to get out. The problem with the metro card is that once you have swiped your card, you cannot swipe it again for another 18 minutes.

So when one of us swiped their card and didn’t get through the turnstile, neither of us was going anywhere for at least another 18 minutes. (Well, technically one of us could have gone somewhere …)

Given the heat (I did mention the heat, right?), we went off to McDonald’s for an “any size drink for $1” special and cooled off for about 18 minutes. That fact alone possibly goes some way to explaining the number of fat Americans. Maybe that’s why they always walk around with Big Gulp cups?

On the way back to the train, it was hard not to notice a young African American lady who was small in stature, but big in other ways, running for the train. Yes, wearing less that she should have been in case you were wondering.

I can only assume that she was standing in the wrong line when God was giving out brains.

It’s a miracle that she didn’t take someone’s eye out!

But I digress.

Today was our first “normal” day in NY, with everyone back to work. We were subway ninjas today, getting on at our local station (Kingston-Throop Avenue) at about 8.30 and heading into Manhattan.

Because it was a work day, the trains were packed and everyone just seemed a bit more subdued. Maybe because they were going back to work, but I should note that most of the women also seemed much better supported.

We got off at Penn Street Station and hit the shops. A couple of days ago, TOTIL thought that she was an Uptown Girl and went shopping at Saks 5th Avenue. She looked at one pair of shoes for $975, then another pair of Jimmy Choo shoes for $2,695! Those of you who are Facebook friends would know that already. Even though she didn’t buy anything, I let her think that she was an Uptown Girl for the day.

Today we decided to shop according to our socio-economic status and we hit KMart and Target.

We then browsed around H&M, Macys, and JC Penny. I’m not sure if you are familiar with JC Penny, but a number of years ago they produced a really clever and funny advertisement called “The Dog House”.

There was only a few things that I wanted to do, but we “didn’t have time”. I would have been happy to spend a couple of hours browsing the multi-level Victoria’s Secret store, but I wasn’t allowed to because of time.

I also wanted to pick up a couple of small souvenirs but 2 x 1.3kg party packs of M&Ms were deemed too heavy to carry.

After lunch, we did a walking tour of some of the fascinating areas of NY – Soho, Little Italy and Chinatown.

So here’s a fun fact: Many suburb names in NY are actually acronyms (or acro-names according to our tour guide).

Soho stands for “SOuth of HOuston Street.

Remember the other day I was poking fun at a suburb named Dumbo? Another acronym: Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass.

Soho is now a really chic suburb, probably a bit like West End. 20 years ago you wouldn’t consider living there, and now you couldn’t afford to anyway.

TOTIL got to go into her new favourite shop and buy some pastries.

She also got some of her Uptown Girl thing back again after the walk, with a look around in Bloomingdales Soho.

It’s a funny thing – we entered Bloomingdale’s at the ground level, circled the store, went up to Level 1 and circled, up to Level 2 and circled, and didn’t see one thing for men. Only ladies wear. Who says that there is no such thing as gender discrimination?

The next suburb on the tour was Little Italy, followed by Chinatown. Really interesting, quirky suburbs with some great, cheap places to eat. Fun to explore.

This street (below) used to have more deaths per annum that the rest of NY put together.

Our tour guide – Gabby – was great, but like most 20-somethings she had trouble speaking a sentence without, like, stopping to you know, like, say like.

More likes than I ever get on Facebook, and almost as many as the number of black Chevy Suburbans that I’ve seen in the city.

I started the day feeling like a camel, because the hump on my back contained a lot of water. By the end of the day I was starting to feel like a pack-animal because the water had been replaced with souvenirs.

But we had fun, saw lots of stuff, got to eat really cheap and delicious dumplings (5 for $1.50) and we come home with sore feet. That’s the sign of a great day walking around NY!

Tonight we are off to Broadway to see a show, so I’ll have to tell you all about that tomorrow.

Today’s vital statistics:

• Number of steps taken: 17169 & 20142
• Number of subway journeys: 5
• Number of donuts consumed: 3 (although 1 was a cronut so maybe that doesn’t count)
• Number of pizza slices consumed: 2
• Number of dumplings consumed: 5
• Temperature when going to bed: 29 deg C

We love to hear from you, so please feel free to leave a comment and tell us if want want to hear more (or less) about anything in particular.

Ciao

#G&KTAKEUSA

 

Hi peeps, and welcome to the end of our third full day in NYC.

Don’t expect anything too philosophical this time … I’m too tired – but it’s a GOOD tired 🙂

Actually today was a comparatively lazy day as I have only hit about 16,000 steps today – well short of the almost 20,000 of the last couple of days. What have we been doing?

To quote Ricky Martin, we’ve been “Livin’ the Vida Loca“. NYC is one crazy place with a number of what seems to be national pastimes … but I’l talk more about that later.

Today started with a real sleep-in – 7.30 for me and I think TOTIL slept a bit after that. It was really hot last night – maybe 25 degrees minimum so we were feeling a little broiled (poached?) by this morning. There is an air conditioner in the room but it is almost noisier than a NY Subway train hurtling into the station, so our options were to sweat it out or use earplugs.

We had an open calendar today, so headed into town just after 9.30am. Keep in mind that it is the Labor Day holiday here today, so it was a bit insane. People everywhere, NYPD everywhere, and the temperature climbed to a sticky 32 degrees or so, and everyone just went a bit crazy.

We figured that nobody else would have considered getting onto the Staten Island ferry today to go sailing past the Statue of Liberty, so that was our first place to visit … along with most of the population of NYC it seems …

But it was all good. While there were hoardes of people there, the ferries are huge and we all got on with room to spare.

From there we had our very first (and hopefully very last) pretzel from a street vendor, and then we went deeper into the Financial district to see the Charging Bull statue.

Now, you may be wondering who those people are in the photo. By the time we got here it must have been about 32 degrees and there was a very long queue for photos. We were both too hot to be that concerned, so I had two options: get a photo from the tail end of the bull with it’s rather significant boy parts on display, or take a picture of the front end of the bull with whoever was standing near it at the time.

From there we walked over to the 9/11 memorial site. The place was swarming with police as you’d expect and it was a very sobering feeling to be in the place where such a hideous attack took place. The location is now a couple of large pools on the site of the buildings, with the names of all who died inscribed around the outside.

We then went up to the One World Observatory, which is higher than the Twin Towers ever were – it stands at about 102 floors high.

The views from the top are absolutely stunning!

By this time it was about 2.30 and we were getting hungry, so decided to go up to Midtown Eastside – I sound like a native NYer when I say that 🙂 – to Katz’s Deli for a pastrami sandwich on rye.

What is the significance of Katz’s Deli? It is the scene from “When Harry met Sally” and the famous line “I’ll have what she’s having”. You’ll have to watch it to understand … there may be children reading this.

We then headed up to Times Square , located between W 46th Steet, W 47th Street and Broadway.

If we thought that the day had been crazy until then, they are really living the Vida Loca up in Times Square. All manner of weird and wonderful things, thousands and thousands of people, police with assault weapons, superheros, a couple of Wonder Women who appeared to be wearing little more than a coat of paint in certain places … I wanted to go up and confirm the costumes, but TOTIL wouldn’t allow it 🙁

We made arrangements for tomorrow night at the Theatre, and then home for dinner.

So I mentioned national pastimes earlier. There are a number of things that I’ve seen that appear to me to be the national pastime of New Yorkers.

Firstly, they seem to have a predisposition for walking around with one of those “Big Gulp” cups everywhere they go. Sometimes it’s a juice, or iced coffee .. but many of them do it. On the train, walking down the street …

Next they seem to have a genetic malfunction where they honk their horn at everything that moves, and everything that doesn’t move. And they don’t have those prissy, beepy little  horns that we have – they all seem to have these loud multi-note things that scare the life out of you when you cross against the lights in front of them …

I can’t wait to get to San Francisco when we have a hire car and do it to blend in.

They also have a love affair with Chevy Suburbans. Black ones. And I don’t know if there is a collective noun for black Chevy Suburbans, but they seem to travel together. A suburb of Suburbans? Maybe a neighbourhood of Suburbans?

Maybe a city?

Maybe they all think they are Secret Service agents. Maybe they really are?

My final observation is about the way that they park their cars. Somehow they manage to jam so many cars together on the side of the street that you can barely walk between them.

You may be able to find a parking space, get your car into the parking space and think you’re pretty clever, but I challenge you to get it back out again!

All for now.

Ciao

#G&KTAKEUSA

 

“If you can’t think of something nice to say, don’t say anything at all”. Thus spoke my mother when I was a child. I think she was speaking to my sisters. Maybe me too.

She also said “keep to the left” and “if you get lost, ask a policeman.” More on that later.

Everything here is back to front, round about and upside down.

Light switches are switched up for on, and down for off. Cars have a steering wheel on the wrong side, and they drive on the wrong side of the street.

I’ve looked at a carton of milk and seen a “use by” date of 09/02/2018 and wondered why they are still selling it 7 months past it’s due date.

It’s all very confusing.

Today, the plan was a mini sleep-in and start the day at the Brooklyn Tabernacle for the 9.00am service. So we got up early, showered, had breakfast, cleaned up, made ourselves beautiful and at 8.40 checked with our BFF (Google Maps) for the best way to get to the BT. Unfortunately we found that we should have left home by about 8.15 to be on time for the 9.00 service 🙁 So our revised plan was to attend the 11.00am service

So instead we headed in to Dumbo (yes peeps, they have a suburb called Dumbo) to check out the park, look at the Brooklyn Bridge, and do the flea market.

We had a very pleasant and relaxing morning looking around, being tourists, taking photographs … and then found that we’d left it too late to get to the BT for the 11.00am service, so plan #3 was to take the final option of the 1.00pm service.

So that gave us some more spare time, and we decided to hop onto the subway and head back to Manhattan and check out the Chelsea Markets. I mentioned yesterday that you need to ensure you use the right subway entrance in order to get the right train going in the right direction.

So we were standing outside the York Street Subway station trying to figure out what direction we were heading, and a kindly and elderly New York gentleman asked us if we needed help. Our experience so far with NYers is that they are not particularly friendly, and often border on obnoxious. 

Unfortunately we didn’t really know what station we were looking for, but as he was basically heading in the same direction as us, he offered for us to tag along with him.

We spent a lovely 20 minutes or so discussing Donald Trump (nobody likes him apparently), the interesting things happening in Australian politics (BTW, who is the Prime Minister this week?), Australian weather conditions, and more.

While we finally found our way to the markets, we walked probably three times further than we needed to. Some of the blocks are very long, and you know that you are at East 16th Street and need to get to East 23rd Street, but inevitably you walk a long block only to discover that you are at East 15th Street and going the wrong way.

“Keep to the left,” my mother used to say.

Here in the USA, they keep to the right. One of us seems to be having trouble grasping that concept, so we get a few angry looks from the obnoxious NYers because we are on the wrong side of the footpath.

I figure that if TOTIL can’t get it right walking on the footpath, there is no way I’m going to let her drive when we get to San Francisco!

Sadly, despite tracking all over the West Side, we were underwhelmed with the Chelsea Markets … and then we realised that we were on the verge of missing the 1.00pm service at the BT.

Good news though, we made it to the Tabernacle in plenty of time.

Sadly, the choir was in Florida for the weekend along with the Senior Pastor, but it was still well worth the visit. Third service for the day and it was packed with >1000 people in the service.

We only had time to stay for the first hour of singing before we needed to leave and get to our next walking tour in the other side of Brooklyn.

I mentioned yesterday that I am reading a Jack Reacher book, where he was travelling on the NY subway.

In the same chapter, Reacher is also thinking about how on the NY subway the automated messaging system gives instructions in a male voice, and information in a female voice.

Well, here is fun fact: The NY automated messaging system on the NY subway does indeed use a female voice for information and a male voice for instructions.

So you get this molten chocolate female NY voice saying “This is the L line, the next stop will be Bedford Av-en-oo. Please change trains for the C and R lines at Bedford Av-en-oo”. Then you get this male voice barking “Stand clear of the closing doors, please”. Unfortunately, the male voice sound a bit like Bulwinkle to me, so it lacks the authority that it probably deserves.

Google Maps directions are pretty specific: “Travel 6 stops and get off at Bedford Ave. Head towards the N 7th Street and Bedford Ave exit at the NE corner of the station.”

My sense of direction isn’t great here in NY when I’m above ground. Put me in the subway and I’m totally lost.

“If you get lost,” my mother used to say, “ask a policeman.” And there, inside the station was one of NYPD’s finest.

Me: “Excuse me. Could you please tell me which is the NE corner of the station?”

NYPD: “How the hell would I know? I have no sense of direction down here.”

Sigh 🙁

We had a lovely afternoon wandering around the Williamsburg District of Brooklyn, looking at all sorts of eclectic, chilled and hip people doing … eclectic, chilled and hip stuff, and taking lots of photos.

Got home early tonight – about 6.00pm – and had a nice dinner at Zaca Cafe just around the corner. We just blended in with the hip crowd and watched the world go by.

That’s it for tonight peeps – I hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as we have so far.

I’m finishing up with a community service weather report. I’m glad to report that while the forecast was for heavy rain and storms, NY weather people are as equally unreliable as Australian ones. Weather was partly cloudy, mid- to high-20s and medium humidity. Absolutely beautiful, and certainly better than being at work 🙂

I’m sure that many of you have been worried sick about my little toe. Goodness knows I’m not getting any sympathy from anyone in this hemisphere. Still sore, not as red as yesterday, and still attached. I think it will survive.

Ciao

#G&KTAKEUSA

Don’t panic – there isn’t trouble in paradise. I didn’t come all the way to New York for a quickie divorce.

We had a quick dinner when we got in last night, crashed at about 9.00pm and slept the sleep of the dead. The alarm woke us at 7.00am for day 1 in New York.

Today we started the day with a 3.5 hour walking and foodie tour of East Village, departing Grand Central Station at 10.40am … all that we had to do was work out how to get there.

Have you ever used Google Maps and been shown a route to get from “A” to “B” and wondered to yourself whether Google Maps is this handy all over the world?

It is!

Thanks to Google, we were able to easily navigate the 2 blocks from home to the Kingston-Throop Metro station, purchased our unlimited trip 7 day Metro cards, and we were off.

I’ve just started re-reading a Jack Reacher novel where he is in NYC on the subway “on the 6 train, the Lexington Avenue local, heading uptown …” He then goes on to describe in detail how the trains rattle along the track and screech to a halt at the station.

All true. Trust me.

So we found our way to Grand Central Station about an hour before the tour was due to start and had a bit of a look around to get our bearings.

It’s interesting the hints that people give you before you embark on a journey. One of the key messages that we got was that public toilets in NYC are hard to find, and most places (like McDonald’s) keep theirs locked.

The next piece of advice was that if you do find an unlocked public toilet in NYC, you won’t want to use it anyway.

The final piece of advice was that “the toilets in Grand Central Station are pretty good.”

You may remember a song that was on the radio a number of years ago called “The Newcastle Song.” The chorus was “Don’t you ever let a chance go by …” Good advice to keep in mind when you are in NYC and you find a good, clean public toilet!

So we got our bearings, looked around Grand Central Station, worked out where the tour departed from, and used the facilities.

Grand Central Station is beautiful (and busy), and explains the saying “as busy as Grand Central Station!”

We did the foodie walking tour around East Village. We tried dumplings, a pice of pie (pizza) that was enormous, cupcakes with frosting, a NY hot dog, and gelato. Good fun and good value .. and we got some good tips on other places around NYC to eat.

The tour finished up at about  2.00pm and TOTIL and I set off on our own.

We found out that increasing street numbers always head uptown, and decreasing street numbers always head downtown. Good to know.

We also found out that the entrance you use when you enter the subway dictates the direction that the train goes. If you want to go uptown and you enter the station from the wrong side of the street, those trains only go downtown. Also good to know.

Armed with this important information and a map (and Google, of course), we started walking.

The East Village was crawling with NYPD today. Someone had told us that this was not uncommon on the Labour Day long weekend (this weekend).

We asked someone in a shop what all of the police activity was for and he said he thought that there was some kind of parade today.

Ha! Parade my eye! Streets were closed because of an animal rights demonstration that included maybe 1000 people shouting “Let animals live”, and “Animals have rights too” … did I mention that we had pork dumplings and a NY hotdog today?

Following that bit of excitement, we went to K-Mart, looked in the Chrysler Building and bought coffee, then found out it wasn’t the Chrysler building after all.

TOTIL looked at shoes in Saks 5th Avenue – the cheap pair were $975 and the more expensive Jimmy Choo’s were $2695 … fortunately she showed some restraint because that was pretty scary!

We then found the Rockefeller Building, confirmed it WAS the Rockefeller Building and took the lift 67 floors to “The Top of the Rock”

Amazing!

The say that you either love NY or you hate it. So far I’m loving it …

So, back to the title of this post … well, after breakfast this morning and before we set off for the day – actually before I had put my shoes on, which is an important point in this story – my right foot made unexpected, sudden and very painful contact with the foot of our bed. I declared that I thought I may have broken my little toe, and TOTIL thought it is probably just bruised.

She was once a nurse, after all.

So the walking tour, followed by us walking around Manhattan (>18,000 steps!) was spent largely by me hobbling along after TOTIL calling out …

TOTIL don’t you walk so fast, ooohhh, TOTIL don’t you walk so fast, Slow down some, ‘cause you’re making me run ….

Dinner tonight was McDonald’s. We were going to do something nicer but we were too tired and grimy to be bothered.

The first thing I did when we got home was to take off my shoes. Fortunately my little toe is still attached, however it is a different size and colour to what I remember.

I think that TOTIL may be wrong about it “only being bruised” … tomorrow should be an interesting day with another walking tour. Sigh.

Advertising sign of the day (seen in the subway train): “Arrested? Call 1-800-INNOCENT”. If only it was that easy 🙁

Ciao

#G&KTAKEUSA

We have arrived.

Got into NYC a bit later than expected, but the delays were at the SFO end with a late departure.

We’ve arrived at our accommodation in Brooklyn after almost 30 hours with virtually no sleep.

Too tired to think. Had a bagel for dinner, heading to the shower then off to bed .. zzz

It’s a terrible photo, but that’s our first glimpse of Manhattan

 

Welcome to San Francisco. Don’t get excited, we are only here for a couple of hours as we transit to NYC.

In my last post, I spoke about the odd reactions we got from people when we told them we were flying United. I’m pleased to report that my expectations were exceeded. The flight crew were lovely, the meals were good, in-flight entertainment was good, ice-cream and Tim Tams were great … pretty much 4 stars all around. They would have got 5 stars if they’d upgraded me to business class, but my expectations on that ever happening were very low.

There are a couple of things that I do need to comment about regarding United, however.

Firstly – and it may seem obvious – but United is an American airline, so the flight crew were all American. Duh!

But as you probably know, Americans talk funny. I don’t mean for that to be a criticism … just an observation. Australians all talk the same. You have no way of knowing whether an Aussie comes from Perth or Melbourne or Townsville by the way that they talk – except for the fact that North Queenslanders do tend you say “youse” (as in “do youse come here often?”), and finish most sentences with “eh” (as in “it’s hot here today, eh?”).

Other than that, we all talk the same. But not Americans.

The American flight crew also spoke quite quickly. I don’t know if that is normal, or they were just pushed for time.

So when the meal service came around, the flight crew were trying to say “we have two options for lunch today – you can have the chicken and rice, or you can have the pasta”.

What it came out as was “chickenandriceorpasta, chickenandriceorpasta?”

Our fellow passengers who are American would respond with “chicken and rice please”, or “pasta please”.

The Australian passengers mostly responded with either “yes please” or “huh?” The flight crew then responded with “no, you can have chicken and rice, OR you can have pasta.” I’m sure it wasn’t just me. 

My second observation relates to the captain of the plane. I can only assume that he has a mean streak.

As we departed Sydney this morning, he announced that our flight time to San Francisco would be 12 hours and 22 minutes. Not “a bit under 12 and a half hours”, but a very, very specific 12 hours and 22 minutes. He said it twice.

He also said that we would be cruising at 35,000 feet.

So here is my issue. If he can be so specific about how long it will take to travel from Sydney to San Francisco, why can’t he actually fly the plane at 35,000 feet? Does he have no idea of the havoc that it plays with my OCD?

Those of you that don’t know me well probably think that I’m kidding. Those of you that do know me well know that I’m not.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it), we hit some pretty bad turbulence so he needed to go up to 37,000 feet. Do you think that fixed the problem? Nope!

Then more turbulence, and up again to 40,000 feet. He’s done it again! I’m convinced that he’s doing it on purpose, but I’m trying to be “glass half full” about it.

This travelling west to east is messing with my head. We left Sydney at about 10.30 Friday morning, and thanks to the mystery that is known as the international date line, we arrived in San Francisco 4 hours before we took off from Sydney. I wonder if we kept travelling around the world west to east forever, whether we would start to become younger.

You may have noticed that i have been starting each post with the first line(s) of a song.

Today’s title/song is possibly a bit obscure. Actually it’s probably very obscure, but I challenge you to try and work out the significance. You are most welcome to submit a comment with your thoughts, and the first correct answer gets bragging rights. Not a great prize I admit.

If you can’t see where to comment, you need to click on the title of the post first, then scroll to the bottom.

If you are reading this sentence, then you are almost at the bottom.

Somehow that turned out to be a very long post, which is especially surprising considering that I’ve been sitting on a plane at somewhere between 35,001 feet and 40,001 feet for 12 hours and 22 minutes, have done nothing, and actually have nothing to say.

Now that I’ve gone back and re-read it, it sounds like a bit of a rant. It’s not really – I think it’s just tiredness. I have a working theory that caffeine can be used as a substitute for sleep, but it’s not working well for me 🙁

Anyway, onward and upward. NYC here we come.

Ciao

#G&KTAKEUSA

 

Thanks Frank.

One flight down, two to go until New York. The flight from Brisbane to Sydney was uneventful, but when they say “this is a full flight”, they aren’t kidding!

We arrived into Sydney at about 8.00pm with a pretty hard landing. Actually, I wasn’t sure if we’d crash landed or been shot down … I wanted to ask the captain but TOTIL wouldn’t allow it.

I’m no food critic, but I have to say that the meal served on the Qantas flight coming down was excellent. I had the pasta with Mediterranean meatballs, and TOTIL had the chicken and broccoli salad. So good in fact that we were offered seconds. (Apparently it’s not often that passengers eat the entire meal, and the flight attendants were SO impressed that they offered us another one each!)

The flight attendants were so lovely and friendly, it made for a great start.

No coffee served on the flight, and 8.00pm in Sydney airport is past everyone’s bedtime … but we were able to scrounge a cup at the hotel.

Used Uber for the first time ever, so that’s one more thing to cross off the list. Had a 4.9/5 star driver (Lee) and he was so nice and friendly, carried our bags, told us to relax … I gave him 5 stars because he deserved it 🙂

Spent a relaxing night at the Adina at Mascot. Nice, quiet room, very comfortable, GREAT shower … felt very relaxed. Then we hopped into the shuttle bus to the airport this morning and all that relaxation just slipped away.

If I described our shuttle bus drive as arrogant, aggressive, unfriendly, rude … I’d be describing his most endearing characteristics. Scary ride! Welcome to Sydney …

But here we sit in the AMEX lounge at the Sydney international airport pretending like we do this all the time, and waiting for our flight to depart in about 2 hours … then 13 hours to San Fransisco, transit for a couple of hours, and then about another six hours to NYC.

Woohoo!

The first question that fellow travellers always seem to ask is “who are you travelling with?” We answer “United” and we get a puzzled look, followed by “Oh … I hope it’s OK” Now I don’t really know what to expect, but I’m keeping my expectations low, just to be safe.

There probably won’t be another post for a couple of days as we sit on planes, try and get some sleep, read a book, watch a movie or three, and overcome jet lag … so don’t lose hope peeps, there will be more to come when we are in NYC.

Ciao

#G&KTAKEUSA