Well hello! We're here in New York and so far so good - kind of (don't panic mum's! it's not that bad!)...
The very beginning...
We woke up early on Monday morning (4am), and Clare kindly drove us to the airport with Ed's mum. We met up with Joe at the airport and said a quick goodbye before Ed's mum became hysterical!
After spending quite a few hours in the airport we finally boarded the plane. It was just Ed's luck that he had a crazy lady sat opposite the aisle from him chatting about crap that he couldn't even understand. The fake sleeping began. The flight was really good, free drinks throughout the flight and the food was really nice, suprisingly. We both had beef stroganoff (is that how you spell it?).
When we landed, we had the americans clapping the pilot - at which point Ed was telling Sarah not to clap because he finds it "very gay" and almost as though the clappers expected the pilot not to be able to land in their paranoia.
New York City
Nice and warm, we exited the airport to be greeted with about five or six random people trying to sell us rides into Manhattan. Of course, we had to decline all of these as we were heading to the yellow cabs! We jumped in one and asked for a quoted price to our hotel, which was $45 (nicely worked out Dave!). 20 miles and an hour later and we arrive at the hotel.
Sarah "loved" the fact that they screwed up the rooms and we ended up with a bunk bed in a room the size of Ed's old bedroom at his mums. The room was basic, but actually really nice - we had a TV too which was a bonus. We popped out that evening to have a look around, and had a massive burger in a Texan bar (with massive gherkins!).
The next day was baking hot - we got up around 6am and left the hotel to sight see at about 7am. We got an all day "fun-pass" for the subway (which by the way is no where near as deep as the tube in London). We headed towards south Manhattan so we could go to the statue of liberty - but as we hadn't even so much as glanced at a subway map, we got off when Ed thought that the street numbers were nearing "1st St.". We then realised that we had much further south to walk, as older downtown Manhattan use names rather than numbers for the streets.
We randomly followed a bunch of school kids in the direction Ed thought was south, and almost ended up in a mid-city high school! Anyway, we were headed in the general direction - we got a burger and hotdog from a streen vendor and eventually found the ticket booth for the boat to Liberty Island.
Statue of Liberty
Was lovely. Haha, I'm blabbering on now, but the Statue of Liberty was cool - pretty much what you expect, but the highlights were as follows...
You go through yet more airport style security (we had to before we boarded the boat over to the island), but the difference was that we went through this weird machine that puffs 8 quick blasts of air at you all over, then you have to stand there - staring at the red "don't move a muscle" light, and wait... and wait... and wait... then it goes green simultaniously with a burly officer telling you to "Move! Go Right!" to collect your possessions. Oh, and by the way - that weird machine was checking for chemical smells apparently.
The statue itself you can't go all the way up but you can get to the skirt and look up (as it's too unsafe nowadays).
Buffalo
We got an expensive $75 each ticket to Buffalo which took about eight hours. We had a driver change at one point where we had about 20 minutes to stretch our legs. Sarah goes to get a bottle of water from the shop at the bus stop. One minute to go before the coach leaves - Sarah finally appears FUMING! Her cookies she tried getting from the vending machine got stuck and she REALLY WANTED THEM. AND SHE HATES EVERYONE! AHHHHHHHHHH!
The entire coach journey didn't seem to take very long as there were loads of nice things to look at. We arrived in the coach station downtown buffalo where we met Garry - a very nice pleasant guy! We put our bags in the back of his pickup and headed to his house. From afar we spotted the campervan! We go to his house and were absolutely amazed with the van, it started fine, the engine looks great (not that I have a clue), the wheels have been changed and are new (so we effectively have three spare tyres, the two that were changed and one on the front). There is a cigarette lighter so we can charge stuff up, no rust and all the rest of it! It's amazing! (We'll take some photos soon).
Garry's Sons
These guys are great. We met Justin as were were checking out the van. He's basically been our personal taxi driver (he drives a 70's chevvy wagon!) and tour guide of Buffalo since we've been here. We went out to a restaurant called Danney's (or something like that) which served really nice food. We were served by a woman who originally comes from Southampton - and she noticed our accents (she has a very bad american twang!). She gave us their infamous 'Buffalo Wing Soup' for free (I think because she liked us) which tasted like nothing we've had before - spicy too!
That night we booked into a Motel, freshened up and waited for Justin to pick us up as we were heading out to one of Justin's favourite pastimes - Karaoke. "Oh bugger" Ed thought - as he hates bloody Karaoke.
Anyway, he arrived juat after 21:00 in a different, all american old-skool car, with his house mate Keith. Keith is nice, a little different but fine all the same! We got to the Karaoke bar and had the best evening! We had a crazy guy with long hair (absolutely smashed) to one side, and a really nice lady that even gave sarah a necklace on the other! Most drinks were bought for us (by Justins brother - Adam - amongst other people), as long as we promised to keep speaking "in that funny accent". Sarah sang Dreams by Fleetwood Mac, which was really really good. I've never heard Sarah sing in Karaoke before as I don't tend to let her back home :).
Today
We woke up around 7:30am in order to get ready for Justin to pick us up at 9am to start the process of car insurance and registration. 10am and Justin turns up (reminding you of anyone Amy? hehe), and we go pick up his friend who's buying a car off of one of Justin's friends. Anyway long story short, a few hours later, Justin's friend is all set and off he goes in his car. We're starving by this point and head to Nina's pizzeria. You have never seen pizzas this size before. Justin bought it for us, and we shared a large pizza. We didn't even finish it, and Justin's a big lad too!
Anyway, bad news - you can drive a car in the US on a UK license, but you can't really insure a car (unless you're minted and have a spare $2100). So we're back in the motel for another night working out what to do.
A little earlier, Garry popped up to the motel with a plan. He's looking at getting vintage insurance for the van, in either his or Justin's name, then we can get it registered and drive it away! This should take a few days. The other option is for Ed to go and sit his NY driving test which can take upto a month. It's really easy apparently but we can't really stay here for a month.
Good news is that Garry said he'll put us up in his house for as long as it takes, which saves on motel costs! So that's what we'll do we think!
That's where we are right now, sat in the motel, in a little bit of despair with regards to the insurance, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel. We're not going out tonight, just going to sit in, watch TV and get a good night's sleep! Justin is going to pick us up tomorrow and we'll go from there!
I doubt most of you would have read all this, but it's taken me about an hour!
Love to you all!
Ed and Sarah xxx
