Grand Central, Central Park & Empire State Building

A peek out the window this morning showed clear skies and bright sunshine. Rather quick change after the snow of yesterday. Still pretty cold temperature of 7C as the maximum.

After a bit of a sleep-in for Jesse who has caught a cold, we headed out to Grand Central Station. Along the way we found a road side Sunday market so had a browse through it. Grand Central Terminal was not as busy as expected, but it was a Sunday and it is still a pretty impressive building.

From Grand Central we took the subway out to uptown 87th St, where the Guggenheim Museum is located. Unfortunately the spiral portion of the museum was close for repairs so we did not get to visit it. Central Park is right next to Guggenheim so we had a wander through the muddy paths in the park. Portions of it where still covered in snow that had not melted despite the mid afternoon sunshine.

Next on the agenda was to go to the top of the Empire State Building. It was completed in 1931, just one year and forty five days after breaking ground. They built one floor per day! A pretty incredible feat. In the lobby is an Art Deco Masterpiece made out of 23K gold and aluminium leaf, depicting the building set against a map of the Empire State and surrounding areas.

There was a bit of a queue and strict security screening. After an hour's delay we managed to get tickets to head up to the observation deck. The elevators only go to the 80th floor, and there was the option to wait half an hour for the other elevator or to walk up 6 floors. Time to stretch those legs! :) We paid a bit extra to go to the newly reopened 102nd floor, which turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. The area had glassed in windows that were smudged so could not get any good photos. The 86th floor had the open-air area which was nice but really, really cold. The sun was starting to set by this time, so we got great twilight and night views of New York.

-Y-

Let it SNOW!

I started to get a sore throat last night and so we decided to take it slow this morning and kick back at the hotel.  I have to admit that when I heard that snow was forecast today that I didn't quite believe it, but sure enough, just before midday Yumi stuck her head to look out the window and squealed - IT'S SNOWING!

It's the first time either of us have really seen snow fall so it was pretty exciting I have to admit.
We enjoyed watching it fall and build up, but eventually got hungry and decided to head out for a wander as I was feeling better.  We rugged up as good as we could and decided to head up to the Sony Wonder lab to see what it was all about.
Now snow is pretty cool when it's falling, but snow turns into slush and we discovered this hiking up the 14 blocks to the Sony Wonder Lab.  We were getting hungry around this time too, and decided to stop at TGIF where we both had a lovely steak before heading off to the Sony Wonder Lab once more.
The snow/sleet hadn't slowed and the wind had picked up, so our hands were freezing before long and we decided to stop at Uni Qlo and pick up some gloves - man what a difference they made!  We continued our hike to the Sony Wonder Lab and unfortunately were a little disappointed with the Sony experience - half the setups they had were either broken or under repair.
We decided to do a little shopping on the way back and discovered that Esprit had 40% off everything - I picked up a scarf here - thus completing my winter outfit and keeping my throat warm.  We managed a quick visit to Tiffany's and Co before they shut their doors for the night and then hiked the 14 blocks back to the hotel, by this point we both had soaked jeans and shoes and we were glad to change into clean and dry clothes.
Apparently there was up to 6 inches of snow that fell today in some areas of New York - and it was predicted that at least 10 inches would fall before it stopped sometime after midnight.  It's also the earliest snow recorded since the civil war days when they started recording it, so that's pretty amazing.
Crazily enough it's forecast for sunshine again tomorrow - though it'll still be cold, but hopefully we can do some more sightseeing tomorrow!

New York, New York

We arrived in the evening on our first day in New York, so after checking in to our hotel we decided to go for a walk and try and get our bearings and find some place to eat.

Our Hotel is very conveniently located, we're 2 blocks from Times Square, 2 blocks from Grand Central Station and surrounded by all the Broadway theatres.  We also have an awesome balcony view!

We wandered down to Times Square first, and as Yumi had a hankering for seafood again we went to Bubba Gump's Shrimp Company.  This is a chain of stores, all with Forrest Gump as it's hero and before we were able to get our meal we were grilled with questions about the Forrest Gump movie.  To attract the waitress' attention you would flip a license plate that said 'Run Forrest Run' to 'Stop Forrest Stop'.  The food was pretty average though, so we skipped dessert and set off to find the TKTS booth to see if we could see a show that night.  We knew so little about any of the shows so it was like lucky dip for us and we ended up picking 'Anything Goes' - which conveniently was playing only a street away from our hotel.

The show was fun, being a musical comedy about a guy who jumped on board a cruise ship trying to follow the girl of his dreams.  We had a good laugh at all the antics that happened aboard.

Yumi had a meeting with the New York Poisons Info Center the next day, so while she got a tour of their facility I decided to get my bearings and wander around the NY streets, first walking up to the Rockefeller Plaza, then about 20 blocks down 6th Avenue before walking back up 5th Avenue.  I found Macy's, supposedly one of their largest stores (it took up almost an entire block), and had fun wandering around it before heading back to the hotel to meet up with Yumi again.  We were both hungry by then so decided to head out and grab a burger for lunch and went to Heartland Brewery (HB)  Burger.  They brew their own beers at this place and we got a couple of their mini-pint glasses as souvenirs. 

It'd been raining most of this day and the clouds meant there was no point going sightseeing so we decided to head up to the Rockefeller Plaza and check out the Sony Wonder Lab - though after the walk up there we discovered it was closed for maintenance that day.  Instead we wandered back and ended up going inside the new Global Flagship Store of Uni Qlo - which had only recently opened and had some great opening bargains available.  I picked up a nice Cashmere jumper and a couple of t-shirts, while Yumi bought a couple of merino tops.  The place was massive and we lost each other a few times inside.  We headed back to the hotel after that, the rain had worsened and we were pretty damp when we got back to our hotel.

The next day was sunny and clear though - making up completely for the day before and we headed up to the Rockefeller building once more this time aiming to go up to the Top of the Rock which had an impressive view of the city around it.

Including the impressive Empire State building and the Chrysler Building.

We took many many photos of the city around, see them in our picasa album here.

After that we had booked a 90 minute Midtown Harbor Cruise, so we headed off to that.  We arrived a bit too late for the 2pm tour we'd originally booked, so we went on the 4pm tour instead.  Now despite the sunny and clear day, it was very cold after a day of raining and we were both regretting not buying gloves and earmuffs for the harbor cruise - we got to see some beautiful sights, including the whole Manhattan skyline, the new One World Trade Centre building (still being built), Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan Bridge, and of course Lady Liberty herself - but we froze somewhat in the process.

Tampa, Florida

After the cold of Washington DC, we headed off to Tampa to enjoy a bit of sunshine and to catch up with my Uncle and his family. It was a nice treat not to have to walk everywhere after the 10 miles in DC! :)

We had a wander around International Plaza and lunch there, followed by a drive around downtown Tampa, Channelside, a glimpse of Harbour Island, then back to uncle KK's beautiful home just outside of town. We saw some eagles and a blue heron by the lake. The best of city and country living combined.  We hit Hungry Harry's BBQ Restaurant for dinner that night - Jesse had Baby backed BBQ ribs for dinner, while I had the mixed platter with Ribs, Chicken, Pulled Pork and Beef.  They were huge meals so we had no room for desert at the end!

We mainly just took it easy and had a bit of a pause here. We got to check out Uncle KK's Lego and awesome robots collection. Had a chance to go to the Ellenton Premium Outlet for some retail therapy. It was a bit of a drive, but I think we got a few bargain items! Thanks for driving us there Uncle KK and Aunty Maha!

Tuesday we were treated to lunch at Columbia's in Ybor city. It was a very delicious paella! Will have to go home and try to make my own paella again. Ybor city is the older part of Tampa, a bit run down, full of cigar shops and nightclubs. The main highlight of the day was definitely the segway tour of downtown Tampa. We met up with our guide at Channelside for a quick briefing on the do's and don'ts of the segway. This was followed by a half hour  practice on the segway before we headed out. A bit apprehensive at first but soon got the hang of it. It is certainly a very cool human transporter, though at $5300 each I won't let Jesse buy one.

After we were all comfortable on our segways we started zipping down the sidewalks along the harbour, down by the river, through the heart of the city, going past the University of Tampa with its interesting Henry Plant Building, then back to Channelside. It was great fun, and as we all started getting more comfortable on the segway could enjoy the view more and take some photos and videos. Cold stone ice-cream and some delicious Vietnamese spring rolls topped off our last night in Tampa.

- Y -

Washington, D.C. - the city of monuments and sore feet

This city has 155 monuments, plus heaps of museums, galleries, etc and we had just over one day to see it all!
We arrived last night at Ronald Reagan Airport around 6pm.  It was around 7pm by the time we'd checked into our hotel and decided to wander out for some night photos of Washington, DC.

We walked to the White House first, got some photos from the front then made our way to the other side.
We then wandered up to the Washington Monument which was glowing in the distance.  From there we saw the Capitol building in the distance by then and thought we'd walk closer.. not realising really how far it was - we walked.. and walked and walked, and then decided we really didn't feel like walking much further and so took our best photos and headed back.  We meandered past the National Gallery, National Archives, Dept of Justice and walked back the rest of the way to our hotel - stopping only briefly to grab a quick dinner on the way.

This morning we decided to sleep in and take it easy to start with, both our batteries were low so we didn't get going on our travels until 11am or so.  We caught the Metro to get closer to the Capitol Building and this time wandered right up to it and got some awesome photos of it, the Grant memorial, then we wandered up to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and had a wander around inside.  This place had a huge collection of planes, rockets, and satellites.  The plane that Amelia Earheart flew, the Wright Brothers planes, and NASA's spacecraft that they landed on the moon.  Pretty cool stuff.
We then walked over to the Smithsonian National History Museum and rushed through, but got to see some pretty amazing exhibits, including the beautiful Hope Diamond - one of the largest flawless diamonds in the world.
We were pretty tired by this point, and decided to catch a pedi-cab to the Lincoln Memorial and give our feet a bit of a break.  The pedi-cab guy was great and we felt bad for him when we realised how far it really was (prolly 2-3 miles or about 3-4km) and gave him a bit extra.
The Lincoln memorial was pretty cool - got some great photos of it and then we wandered back along past the Korean War memorial, Martin Luthor King memorial, and made our way around the tidal basin to the Jefferson Memorial.
We were both getting pretty tired by this point and I'd worked up a blister on my toe and was starting to limp so we decided to head back - we caught the Metro back to the White House and got a few more shots of it in the daytime before heading back to the hotel where we had dinner and called it a day.
By my calculation, we've traveled around 10 miles (16km) since we got here!

- J -

EMP - Experience Music Project

A really cool place to spend a few hours is the EMP located in Seattle Center.  They had a special Avatar, Nirvana and Battlestar Galactica exhibition on. They also have a hands-on sound lab to play in, even a left handed guitar! :)

Avatar was really good, showing the various ideas and development that went into each plant, animal, character in the movie. It showed how they filmed and edited the various scenes, and how they made use of the virtual camera. Each scene was filmed with over 100 cameras everywhere, so it is then easy to go back and pick the angle that the director wanted. They had a show clip where you could try to film your own little scene, makes for very hilarious watching as it is not so easy.

The Sound lab was cool, giving you the chance to try and play the guitar, drums and keyboard, with little tutorials on how to use each piece of instrument. They also had little recording booths that you can try and record your own music, with various mixing equipment, just like a real recording artist. Very fun!

The most impressive was the Root and Branches sculpture in the middle,named "If VI was IX" by artist and composer Trimpin. It is made up of 700 guitars all linked in, to make a computer controlled self playing guitar. These sounds are programmed on a specific formula to create music live that you can listen to via headsets. Not surprisingly the creator of that sculpture has musical training and an electrical engineering degree.

-Y-

Engines not included

The Boeing factory in Seattle claims to be the world's largest building. The whole area is so large it has its own zip code! They employ approx 60,000 employees, working 24/7 in 3 shifts. The employees have to come to work over staggered times each shift just to avoid a traffic jam! There are 13 cafes on site, otherwise it would take too long for an employee to have lunch. Each door is 80 feet high by 100 yards wide (24m x 91.5m), it takes 20 minutes to open the doors to each assembly line. They have their privately owned freeway overhead pass, heavily reinforced to be able to withstand the weight of the plane, once it is completely assembled and ready to be moved to the runway for test flights. Just for an idea of how massive the whole place is.

On the tour they took us to see the Boeing 747, 777 and the latest 787 Dreamliner assembly lines. The 787 is the latest aircraft, being outfitted on a moving assembly line like the 777. When they get up to full production estimates are to be able to have one fully assembled in 3 days! All the materials are pre-fab and flown in on the 747 Dreamlifter, which has been modified to have a bigger almost bubble like look to it. I liked the fact that the engineers have their desks right on the side of the assembly hangar, so if there are problems/questions, they are not far away. The 787 is made of 51% composite, which makes it lighter and less likely to corrode, as a result they can have cabin humidity up to a comfortable 35%, LED lighting, larger windows, and 1-1.5 inches wide seats in economy. Dreamliner indeed!

Engines are not included in the price of the aircraft. You have to buy the engines separately, then have it delivered to Boeing for it to be installed.

Once assembled it is then painted with a special ionisation technique, so it does not shear off at high speeds. Now why do you think majority of aircrafts are painted white? There is a good reason for it.

-Y-