St.John's

An action-packed day!

We rose to a lovely sunrise and Wendy took this great photo of the inlet in the early morning light.

We had an early breakfast with Bob & Thelma before picking up the rental car from the Hertz office, which was located at our hotel - very convenient!

Our hotel, the Marriott Courtyard.

First, we had to pick up the customs clearance papers from the shipping agent in St. John's. Once we had the papers we needed to collect the cars, we headed away from St. John's on Highway 1, the Trans Canadian Highway or TCH. It was a lovely dual carriageway which went through wonderful open country with many lakes. It was very reminiscent of the lakes of Ontario that we drove through in 2010.

After 90kms we reached the turn-off for Argentia. We drove on for a further 45kms when we reached the sea and the port of Argentia. This is where the summer ferry from Nova Scotia docks.

We quickly located the container depot and were shown the container that held our two cars. It was opened up and the dock workers reversed both cars out. Here is mine being removed from the container.

 ....and now Bob's car.

Wendy drove the Landcruiser back to St. John's whilst I drove the hire car. Here she is in the wing mirror of the Hertz Honda.

 Typical long straight roads of Newfoundland.

We got back to St. John's at about 1pm, which gave us time to sort the cars out as well as doing a bit of sightseeing. Bob and I fixed our route stickers on to our cars. I'll take a photo and post it later to the blog.

We then went to a local shopping mall to buy Wendy a new battery for her cell phone and to stock up on snacks and water to take in the car on the drive.

A few photos of the very pretty colourful houses of St. John's

We returned to the hotel to learn that Kenny and DeeAnne, who should have arrived at 1am, were now in fact arriving at about 5pm. We decided to take the short drive out to Cape Spear to see the easternmost point of land in North America.

The Cape has a lighthouse and has lovely views across a bay towards St. Johns. We all walked down to the rocky shore to stand as close as you can get to Europe!

I drove the car as far as I could to the east and we took this photo of the Garmin showing us at 52 degrees West.

Close by, we saw this sign commemorating the opening of the Cape Spear National Historic Park by the Prince and Princess of Wales in 1983.

We left the Cape for the drive back to St. John's and drove past a huge cruise liner that was docked in the port.

We then heard from Kenny that they had arrived and we agreed to meet them for an evening meal in the centre of the town.We collected them from their hotel and had a great welcome dinner at a very good steakhouse. It was the perfect way to get the drive off to a great start.

We leave St. John's tomorrow at 9am for the 300 mile drive to Twillingate, where Kenny tells us he has just learnt that there is an iceberg stuck in the bay! It should make for some great photos.

New York to St.John's, Newfoundland

A day of airports and planes and not much else!

We left New York at 9am, taking a taxi to La Guardia airport. It was a beautiful sunny morning and, apart from some bad traffic in Manhattan, the journey was uneventful.

The Manhattan skyline from the freeway on the way to the airport.

We took ages to check in for our Air Canada flight to Toronto but, with a short flight time of around ninety minutes, we were soon in Toronto waiting for our connection to St. John's. We had time for a snack lunch before boarding at around 2.45pm. I then discovered that Newfoundland is on its own time zone of three and a half hours behind GMT, so our scheduled landing was at 7.30pm and not 8pm as I had originally thought.

We collected our bags and walked outside the terminal to the taxi rank. We only had a few minutes to wait for a taxi. The driver turned out to be Ukrainian. He had lived in Canada for 15 years and had recently moved from Vancouver to Newfoundland, because the cost of education in Newfoundland is the cheapest in Canada. I would never have guessed I would learn a fact like that from a St. John's cabbie! When we told him we had been to Kiev and the Crimea, he became an instant friend and not only gave us maps of St. John's but also a Ukrainian coin, a one Hryvnia. What a wonderful moment to experience! Here we were thousands of miles away from the Ukraine and I now had a Ukrainian coin in my pocket!

We reached our hotel after a twenty minute drive to the waterfront in St. John's. The Marriott Courtyard has a wonderful view over the inlet where St. John's is located. Within a few minutes of us checking in, Bob & Thelma arrived. They had flown from London via Halifax.

We had a good meal in the hotel before heading for bed. Tomorrow we collect the cars ready to be off on Wednesday.

I'll post photos in the next day or so, as I haven't time to do it now and our next stop is in an out-of-the-way place called Twillingate, where I am sure there will be no broadband.

New York

Today is the 10th Anniversary of 9/11 and when I turned on the TV in our hotel room, friends and family members of the victims were reading out their names from the new memorial site at Ground Zero. The roll call went on for several hours and, at the exact time when each of the four planes crashed, a moment of silence was observed while a bell tolled. It was all very sobering.

After breakfast, we walked up 7th Avenue and across the south-west corner of Central Park to the Lincoln Centre where the final rehearsal was being held before this afternoon's concert. By the Centre there was a line of police security and emergency vehicles parked, with their crews at the ready, just as a precautionary measure.

In the central square of the Lincoln Centre there were a group of dancers, dressed in white, finishing their routine and walking out of the square to the sounds of a single drum beat and a mournful sounding flute.

As I went around the Centre I saw the poster for this afternoon's concert.

I left Wendy at the concert hall and walked back to the hotel going past the Trump Tower and the Time Warner Centre buildings, two enormous glass-fronted skyscrapers.

At the corner of Central Park there was this memorial to seafarers. At first I thought it was for sailors from the state of Maine but looking closer, I now think it was for sailors everywhere and the spelling of Maine was the old-fashioned way of spelling Main.

We have been blessed with good weather and much cooler temperatures than when we arrived - perfect weather for sightseeing. We met up with Wendy at lunch and then we all went back to the Lincoln Centre for the afternoon concert. Stephen had flown down from Boston and we met him outside the hall. The concert was a huge success with everyone standing to applaud at the end of The Armed Man. All Wendy's hard work learning the piece and rehearsing had been well worthwhile.

If you look very, very closely you can see Wendy in the second row of the choir and fourth from the right.

We walked back and went to the party that had been organised in Rosie O'Grady's Bar, next door to our hotel.

Edward found a good French restaurant near the Rockefeller Plaza where we had our last meal with him and Kate before they fly out at 6am tomorrow for Columbus, Ohio.

We were just round the corner from St. Patrick's Cathedral, so we walked there and listened to a large choir singing some gospel songs. Their very energetic performance reminded me of some of the choirs performing in the BBC series, Choir of the Year!

We then went back to the hotel to start the packing to be ready to leave at 9am for La Guardia Airport and the flight to St. John's on Air Canada, via Toronto. Our latest driving adventure is about to start!

New York

An early breakfast and then a short walk across the road to the Sheraton Hotel where the rehearsals were taking place.

A couple of photos taken by Wendy in the rehearsal. The first of the composer of The Armed Man, Karl Jenkins, who is conducting the performance tomorrow and the second, in black and white, of the choir listening to Jonathan Griffith, the rehearsal conductor.

 

I left Wendy and took a stroll down 7th Avenue to visit Times Square again. It was much less busy than the day before and I was able to walk up to the top of the stand they have erected to enable visitors to sit and have a great view of the Square. It gave me an opportunity to take more photos from a perfect vantage spot.

I walked back to the hotel, met up with Edward and Kate and waited for Wendy to come back after her rehearsal. As soon as Wendy returned, we had lunch at a local deli and afterwards, while Wendy went to her afternoon rehearsal, we decided to walk up 7th Avenue to Central Park and then make our way to the Guggenheim Museum of Contemporary Art.

The weather was lovely and the walk through the park was great fun. We walked to the central lake with its giant fountain.

The obelisk, which apparently is from 1450BC. I need to Google it to find out more about its history.

Close to the pond where model boats were being sailed, we were approached by a group of young men in swimming trunks asking us to make a contribution to help them with their Olympic training costs!

By the pond was this rather interesting bronze statue of Alice in Wonderland. It was a perfect place for  children to play.

We exited the park to visit the Guggenheim Museum. The architect was Frank Lloyd Wright and I wonder if Sir Norman Foster got the idea from the interior stairway for the internal spiral staircase that winds round the dome of the Reichstag in Berlin.

From there we walked down Madison Avenue. When we were near St. Patrick's Cathedral, the roads were closed off as there was a service being held there for the 343 firemen from the New York Fire Department who died in the twin towers of the World Trade Centre. There were firemen from all over the USA, as well as from around the world. They stood in massed ranks on the steps of the cathedral.

Across Madison Avenue, as we walked into the Rockefeller Centre, there were dozens of Stars and Stripes hung from flagpoles surrounding the famous Plaza.

I then spent a lazy couple of hours not doing very much before we met up again with Wendy and headed downtown to visit the High Line Gardens. I had read about these in one of the Sunday Telegraph travel sections. We took the subway from 52nd Street to 23rd Street and then walked a couple of blocks to the High Line Park.

Our first view of the High Line running across one of the Lower Manhattan Streets.

It is the most amazing regeneration project imaginable. A couple of miles of the old elevated railway that was used to move the meat to and from the meatpacking warehouses have been totally transformed. The railway track was threatened with demolition and, following a campaign to save it, New York now has a truly unique leisure park. The High Line was opened in 2009. It is a wonderful park through which you can stroll looking across Manhattan to the east, and across The Hudson River to the west.

With the sun setting and a beautiful sky, it was a perfect way to spend a couple of hours.

As it became dark, we saw the amazing twin lights that shine upwards from the site of the World Trade Centre. The beams appeared to meet at a single point reflecting on the clouds and looked like a giant star. It was a very poignant reminder of what happened ten years ago tomorrow. Sadly the photos we attempted to take did not come out well enough to post to the blog.

We ended the day by having a very good meal at a restaurant close to the southern end of the High Line.

Tomorrow Wendy has her final rehearsal in the morning in the Avery Fisher Hall at the Lincoln Centre and then the concert takes place at 2pm.

Boston to New York

As is so often the case on our travels, our stay in Boston was far too short. We said our goodbyes to Stephen and family as they went off to work and school. We had arranged a taxi to take us to Boston South Station where we were catching the 11.15 Amtrak Acela Express to New York, a three and a half hour journey through Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New York State.

The weather had improved considerably from the rather grim previous 36 hours and the sun shone as we drove to the station. Much to our surprise, Stephen turned up to say a final goodbye! His office is just around the corner from the station, so we had a lovely send-off from Boston.

The train ride was great fun and well worth doing. We had beautiful views across the countryside and the coastal regions of Rhode Island and Connecticut.

This was our first time in both states and we even went past the ferry from New London to Long Island that we will take when we drive down on our way to Savannah in a couple of weeks time.

We arrived at Pennsylvania Central station in New York at 2.45pm. We then had a half hour wait, in a long line, for a cab. Finally we reached the front of the line and loaded all our bags into the cab for the twenty minute drive to our hotel on 7th Avenue. On our way, we heard from Ed and Kate that they had just checked in, so we had a great welcome from them both when we arrived.

We partly unpacked and went to a cafe for a late lunch and, as Wendy would be rehearsing on both the next two days and would not have that much time to sightsee in New York, we all walked down 7th Avenue to Times Square and spent some time there taking photos. The Square was crowded with tourists and we were approached time and again by people working for the theatres trying to give us leaflets for the various shows on Broadway. We liked the two girls in silver outfits with outrageous headgear promoting Priscilla Queen of the Desert.

We returned to our hotel for an early night and for Wendy to get ready for tomorrow's rehearsals at the Sheraton Hotel on the other side of 7th Avenue.

Boston

We awoke to torrential rain that didn't let up for most of the morning. We had planned various things to do, including going the AAA (Triple A is the US equivalent of the AA in the UK) to get their very informative guides for all the US states and Canadian territories we are intending to visit. We use the guides to find places of interest on our route, as well as good hotels and restaurants. Also, I wanted to go to REI, an outdoor clothing and camping chain, to buy a lightweight anorak. All this had to wait till the rain let up, which it finally did just before noon.

Anita very kindly took us to a nearby post office where I could mail a package back to the UK that they had been storing for me. After the post office, we took the T (the Boston underground network) to downtown Boston and the AAA office.  We managed to get all the guides we wanted, though I am rather concerned at the additional weight of so many books and wonder whether we will now have to pay additional baggage charges on our Air Canada flight from New York to St. John's.

We left the AAA offices and went past the Old State House which is dwarfed by the skyscrapers that surround it.

Close by, on State Street, was this modern art deco-style building with gold facings running all the way up to the top.

We then continued  down to the harbourfront and the Marriott Long Wharf hotel.

This is where we stayed at the end of our drive across the States in 2007. On the way, we went through an area with art deco skyscrapers.

 Opposite the hotel is a small restaurant, Le Sel de la Terre. We had eaten there four years ago and decided to go back and have a snack lunch.

After lunch we walked back to the T and took the Blue Line and the the Green Line trains to the REI store in Brookline. I bought a very reasonably priced weatherproof anorak and Wendy bought a pair of travel trousers for $27!

It was a short walk back from the store to Stephen and Anita's house, which is on a lovely tree-lined square. The whole area around their house is made up of wonderful old brick and stone houses. Their house was built in 1912 and next year they will be celebrating its 100th birthday.

Mason Square and Stephen and Anita's house.

In the evening, we were their guests at one of Boston's finest restaurants, Number 9 Park. The food was fantastic, as was the champagne and wine. What a way to end the day!

Tomorrow we say our goodbyes to Stephen and family and take the train from Boston South Station to Penn Central in New York. The journey is just over three hours and will be a welcome break from having to use airports. An added bonus is that we arrive in the centre of New York and have only a short taxi ride to our hotel, the Manhattan at Times Square.

London to Boston

After months of planning, booking of flights, hotels and ferries and organising the shipping and customs clearance into Canada, we are on our way.

Our flight left Heathrow at noon, some 45 minutes later than scheduled because of air traffic delays. It was an uneventful seven hour flight across the Atlantic and, as we came into Boston, we encountered the weather of a tropical storm that had hit the coast of the Gulf a couple of days previously. We only broke through the cloud when we were about 500ft above the runway. It was not the sort of welcome to the US we had been hoping for! Still, we cleared US immigration and got our bags in a relatively, for the US, quick time. We were met by my nephew Stephen as we walked out of the baggage hall and he drove us the short distance to his house in Brookline, a suburb of Boston.

Stephen's wife, Anita, and their two girls, Sophia and Athena, arrived shortly after. In the evening, Anita prepared a wonderful meal for us all. It was a great way to end the first day of our US/Canadian trip.