Boris & Liz in USA 1

Hi Everyone

We have been away a week now and gone from warm in Melbourne to cold
here in Portsmouth, New Hampshire – about -1 to 8o today! On the way
with Japan Airlines, we stayed at Rydges in Sydney and Hotel Nikko
Narita near Tokyo. The flight from Narita to New York left late but
arrived nearly an hour early. Immigration and customs at JFK were very
fast and we were out of the airport 15 minutes after getting off the
plane! The Airtrain and subway are the cheapest way to Manhattan and
also quite fast. We got to 34th St in about an hour. Our hotel was
TRYP by Wyndham and very convenient – 3 minutes’ walk from the
subway, 10 minutes to Penn Station to get to Boston and many
restaurants nearby. It was also very safe being next door to a large
police station.

We had a big day on Wednesday seeing some sights of New York. We got
the subway to visit the World Trade Centre site first. 7 buildings are
being built around the sites of the twin towers and the first – 1
World Trade Centre is complete and houses an observatory for views of
lots of New York. It is the 4th tallest building in the world. The
weather was very clear so the views were amazing. After that we walked
around the site of the original towers which are now 2 holes in the
ground with water flowing down and surrounded with the names of those
who died in the 9-11 attack. We went for a long walk to and across the
Brooklyn Bridge. It was finished in 1883 and was an amazing
construction at the time. There are 6 car lanes over the bridge and a
separate raised walkway in the centre for pedestrians and cyclists.
The views from the centre over the East River are great.

After a lunch of hot dogs and a giant pretzel, we walked to the
Staten Island Ferry which is a free ride and has good views of the
Statue of Liberty and Manhattan. There were a lot of people on it and
most were tourists and went straight back which we also did. Rather
than the subway, we took the bus back which was slow but we got a tour
of the city.

We took it a bit easier on the second day and caught the bus up town
to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The collection is vast so we
looked at several areas at random. The highlight was probably the 3
Faberge Imperial eggs (of the 43 in existence) worth about $10 million
each. The large collection of French Impressionist paintings was also
excellent. We ate locally each night at Italian twice and a Thai
restaurant for our usual Thursday night dinner. It was good but not
better than our local Vanilla Orchid in Warrandyte.

On Friday, we caught the Amtrak Acela Express train to Boston. The
train itself was good but the station and boarding were chaotic. There
is no seat or car allocation and the platform is only announced 10
minutes before departure! We managed to get seats together and had a
scenic trip to Boston. We rented a car and drove here to Portsmouth,
New Hampshire for 3 nights. Yesterday, we shopped at woodwork, craft
and factory outlet places and managed to get most things on our list.
Today, we went to a popular breakfast place and then drove up the
coast to see some of the sights. It is quite cold right now so we
didn’t walk too much. Being a sunny Sunday, there were people
everywhere so we stopped early to do washing and emails.

We have already seen a lot of autumn colour and should see a lot more
in the next week as we are off to a B&B in the White Mountains
tomorrow. The weather is supposed to warm up a bit fortunately.

That’s about it for now. We are both going well although still
little bit jet lagged.

All the best

Boris and Liz