The highly anticipated day finally came! After months of preparation, we managed to sign over our apartment lease, sort through all our personal belongings, give away what wasn’t needed to a good home and box up pieces we couldn’t part with. Everything came together smoothly and we were whisked off to the bus station by Mom on her birthday.
We arrived in New York after a 10 hour bus ride that cost us $20 each by way of www.megabus.com – tickets are cheap if you book ahead, and they’re actually quite competitive compared with www.greyhound.ca
We stayed with friends and managed to see a lot of the city in just 2 days time.
We lugged along a suitcase of belongings to be mailed to Australia; research proved it was cheapest to mail from the US. Cheapest turned out to be $500 – that’s what you get for moving to the other side of the world.
We had breakfast at a popular diner called Schwartz’s near Columbia University, where we enjoyed all American burgers with our hosts and then set off to take on the NYC subway system.
Our base was in Haarlem, we headed to the south end of Manhattan so that we could work our way back up. We saw:
- 9/11 Memorial Site
- Chelsea
- Times Square
- Soho
- ** to be filled in.
Our hosts made us a great vegetarian meal, which we enjoyed over drinks before heading out to ____, a bar that coincidentally has a sister location in Melbourne and that Sean has even played at in his younger years! Small world. We then ended up at a small local gay bar where we were witness to a full on Beyoncé flavoured drag show (Sean’s very first drag experience). We had a ball dancing, all while risking getting in the way of the performer’s intense high kicks. We then found out that she and her other friend in drag were both from Toronto! Small world again.
The next morning we had a delicious NY style bagel and a large coffee before setting out to walk through Central Park. It was a gorgeous, sunny day, albeit a bit cold. We couldn’t get over how many people take advantage of the park to go running – they were in the hundreds, of all shapes, sizes and ages!
The night before we found out that Chinese New Year celebrations were taking place in Chinatown so we made our way over to join the masses of celebrators (and then wondered why we thought it was a good idea to try and cram ourselves onto the tiny sidewalks with hoards of people and firecrackers). We had a Shabu Shabu experience where you sit at a table with a hot pot and boil your own food personally! Sean got the vegetarian tray (which included many interestingly tasty Asian vegetables unknown to us) and they provided us with an array of sauces (spicy, egg, soy and peanut) for dipping. It was delicious! I ordered a Salmon bento box which was definitely not salmon and it turned my stomach. Halfway through our meal 3 crafty Chinese New Year dragons came parading through the restaurant, causing an uproar with the children and even the staff – it was quite the surprisingly odd experience!
Our 2nd attempt at taking the subway was less smooth, we waited on a platform and let 3 trains pass before realizing the train we were looking for wasn’t running on the day of the week we were waiting for it. We tried a few other attempts at figuring out our way back and were saved by a friendly (homeless?) man who sensed our frustration.
By the time we made it back to the apartment we were dead tired and aching, we ordered a pizza, kicked back and relaxed with our friend.
We got up before the crack of dawn to catch our second Megabus to Boston!
Here are the highlights of our chapter in New York!
