Okay, so, as I touched on in my Toronto entry; I’d decided originally that I wanted to be in Boston for at least an extra night. I sort of like to have 2 days to explore in bigger cities; and in Boston my thoughts were that I’d also need a day for Cambridge and a day trip to Providence. In total I was in Boston for five nights – 3 in the first lot, 2 in the second; but because of the 4th of July being thrown in and also because of allowing for arriving later in the day/checking out/etc – I really didn’t get a full five days in total. Providence was cut, which is okay. I suspect that if I come back to the US at any point for ‘travelling’ purposes (as opposed to vacationing) then I’d spend a lot more time in the New England area anyway.
I arrived back around 3pm on the 3rd of July; by the time I got to the hostel from the airport it was probably 4:30. It’s really refreshing coming back to a city that you’ve already been to. When I was in Europe I was able to do it a couple of times – I came back to Budapest after going to Romania and although I stayed in a different area I just felt more at ease. In London I came back to the same hostel, and then I came back to London a third time but to a different hostel. It feels great when you’re getting to that point where you don’t need to like, be quadruple checking the subway map to make sure you’re going in the right direction. The hostel in Boston had been okay, not great, but not horrible enough to make me cancel my second reservation. On the bright side I was put on a first floor room (again, like Toronto, yay for the suitcase) and the room was cooler (with both a fan and working AC) but the bed was like, a joke. I was on the top bunk – which I’ve resigned myself to a lot of the time, it happens, it’s not the end of the world. But this bed was like.... okay the original railing had come off and so they had this weird plstic railing on. The ladder wasn’t on the side, it was on the end, and it involved like having to hike your leg over the bed end and meanwhile your head is precariously close to the fan. Overall it was a death trap – and this isn’t mentioning that because of the wall sort of being weird in the room, half of my bed was against the wall but the other half had like, two feet between me and the wall – meaning that if I had a restless night I could soooo fall off the damn thing. Awesome.
Unfortunately it was laundry time again (I do it about every 5 days it seems) so I had to allow time to do that. More important than laundry however was sourcing some red beads – for Canada Day, I realise I never mentioned, that I bought a shirt at Niagara Falls that was red with a moose and it says ‘Canada, eh?’ so I wore that. For July 4th I have a blue top with white polka dots and I thought if I wore it with like, long red beads it could be cute. So I went out to the downtown crossing area where I hadn’t been yet but I knew there were quite a few stores and I found this jewellery store which for me, as a jewellery freak... oh my God. If I wasn’t on a bit of a budget both with cash and room in my suitcase... I would’ve gone beserk. Then I spent a bit of time out wandering along Boylston Street which is this long street which my hostel I think is probably in the middle of, but I got the subway a stop away from my usual stop and walked along, which included a trip to the Prudential Center which is meant to be some really great shopping venue but it didn’t seem that brilliant to me. I had Panda Express for dinner; then went back to do laundry.
When you’re on a top bunk the best thing is when there’s a bank of lockers next to you, it means that you can like, put your few essential things (for me – phone, the key to the room, a book, my glasses, a water bottle) up on there within reach. It’s hard to describe but basically there was a locker separating me and the person in the next top bunk. She had put her second pillow on there, I sort of tucked my glasses and book and key underneath the pillow and went to sleep. I woke up at 3am needing to pee. I reached out to grab my glasses and the key. Nothing was there. The pillow was gone. A bunch of her stuff was on the other side. None of my stuff.
There are hostel horror stories about things being stolen and all sorts and I was just like... in that moment I didn’t know what to think. The phone I have bought is a piece of crap, Charlie St. Cloud is of high value to me but not something you’d really steal over, and seriously, who wants my glasses? I didn’t want to wake people up or whatever but a part of me was just freaking out. When you’re travelling and especially when you’re travelling alone, your possessions become really important. I don’t like people touching my things without permission. It’s an invasion of privacy and it’s coming into my little bubble of space and on so many levels it bothers me. I said out loud, loudly, “where the fuck is all my stuff?” (excuse my French) and being 3am they were all asleep and no one responded. I had my iTouch and I was attempting to shine the light around to see something but it was dim and I didn’t have my glasses. Meanwhile, the whole reason I was awake was because I needed to pee. A part of me thought ‘just sort it in the morning’ but if it was a theft issue it needed to be dealt with immediately. Anyway so I got off the bunk, turned on my little night light, cringing because I didn’t want to wake people up, even if one of them was a potential thief. I immediately spotted my phone – it was on the floor next to the girl beneath me. Odd. I then looked behind the locker. There were my glasses. Finally I spotted my key and Charlie (the key in Charlie as a bookmark; it was like a card key) like, right up against the wall behind my bunk sort of under the bed of the girl next to me. The only logical explanation for any of this is that the dumbass in the top bunk pulled her pillow off, sent my stuff flying, and didn’t bother to pick it up. Maybe she didn’t realise; but seriously, how do you not hear or notice a phone and a book falling off a locker which is taller than a top bunk? Seriously?
Fortunately for her I didn’t see her again. If I had, I would’ve told her to show some respect and held back from strangling her. I was seriously, seriously mad. I really... I mean in hindsight it’s whatever but in the moment I was FUMING mad. It’s so disrespectful. I would like to give her the benefit of the doubt and think she didn’t notice but I cannot comprehend how much of a dumbass you must be to not notice something like that.
So my July 4th was off to a spectacular start, me in a foul mood, ranting and raving online about the incident like a lunatic. To add to it, when I’d checked in the day before I’d enquired about whether there was anything being hosted by the hostel and they said no, which was disappointing. I know that they’re ‘family friendly’ but I would’ve thought they’d at least have said like ‘anyone who wants to go to the fireworks meet at X time’ or something. Anyway I decided I’d go for a wander about town looking for festivities and then come back to the hostel later in the day to suss out whether there might be anyone else at a loose end to hang out with. I knew of a few events and things that were going on, the main was the Charles River fireworks which are renowned, and so my must see thing was these fireworks.
There was a lot of activity going on in the main part of town without there actually seeming like there was much happening to create so many people milling around. By city hall was the ‘information desk’ for the ‘Boston Harbourfest’ sort of like this week of July 4th related ‘events’ all over the city; some of which you had to pay for – i.e. you could pay to participate in a re-enactment of the Boston Tea Party. Anyway around this information desk was a bunch of... okay, so, there were about 239580 people handing out free Minute Maid (a juice) and the boy scouts had a climbing wall and a flag raising ceremony and a kid recited the erm, thingy... um... oh crap. Pledge of Allegiance? Is that what it’s called? And that was kinda it, there were some product stands, like, go up and play with a Blackberry whatever the latest edition was... it was weird. Anyway near this area was Quincy Market, again, HEAPS of people around; I saw some orchestra perform who are supposedly famous (okay I heard them, I was so far back in the crowd that I could hardly see them) and street performers but nothing officially historical really going on. I wound up getting the subway out to some random stops because, that’s what I do. I went to Newton Centre (hi Craig :)) and to Riverside which was a HUGE mistake because evidently Riverside is the main park and ride for the Red Sox game that was on and I got there and my eyes boggled at the sheer volume of people who were just lining up to get a TICKET for the train, let alone the people who were waiting on the platform. So honestly my day time was pretty uneventful.
As planned I headed back to the hostel late afternoon and I overheard the guy who I think is the manager of the hostel telling some other people something about ‘meeting at 6pm.’ I was like :/ okayyy yesterday you had nothing planned. I figured I’d go with it and I discovered at 6pm that they were hosting a cookout/barbeque/whatever word you want to use – I call it a street party because literally we were out on the street around the corner from the hostel main entrance. Reason for this – they had ‘jungle juice’ and the hostel isn’t actually licensed to have alcohol on premises of any description – to sell, for us to have it, anything – and so if the police turned up or whatever, it wasn’t anything to do with the hostel, it was just a bunch of random people who decided to have burgers and hotdogs and jungle juice on the street. IT WAS FREE which was the important thing. The police DID turn up – they were just patrolling the streets I think – and the issue was that there was alcohol in public – a lot of the guys had gone and bought beer too. By now the jungle juice was gone. And as soon as the police were out of sight the hostel manager says loudly ‘okay, if you have beer, IT NEEDS TO BE IN PAPER BAG IF THEY COME BACK AGAIN.’
To my annoyance, the guys who I sort of ‘befriended’ decided to go off to a bar and I wasn’t too keen on the idea because the hostel apparently had scored some ‘excellent rooftop view’ for the fireworks. Long story short; turns out that the manager is friends with a guy who lives around the corner and he was pretty much inviting whoever to come up to his apartment building rooftop. I’m sure that you could’ve seen the fireworks from there – I went with the crowd, went up to this rooftop not really knowing any of the people who were still around – and I’d been up there for about five minutes when someone decided to let off their own fireworks. They went zooming around in every which direction in a not so safe fashion and thus far that day I’d been burnt by a cigarette, tripped over in front of everyone at this party, nearly been knocked over by a crazy cyclist and had my scare of my stuff being stolen and this near death by fireworks was just too much for me and I decided to high tail it toward the Charles River.
Me and everyone else in the city.
I cannot explain how many people there were. I didn’t need to know how to get to the Charles River – as soon as I was heading in the direction I was joining this mass of people moving in that direction. You got to the bridge that goes from the Boston side to the Cambridge side by MIT and it came to a stand still. The police had shut off the bridge, no one else could get on. Since it was just me on my own it was easier to sort of try to get through all the people to try and get a decent location. I just kept going along the river on the Boston side. The problem is that there are lots of trees lining the river. If there were no trees, you could be anywhere and have a brilliant view; but the trees mean that you kind of need to find a clearing among it all. I was really, really happy with my final location, I darted around a little and wound up getting a pretty decent view, albeit partially obstructed by tree, but I was so close to the place where they were being let off that I could FEEL the fireworks, if that makes sense.
I had a little drama getting back to the hostel, I just sorta went with the crowd but wound up coming off the river further past the hostel than I’d even been and so I didn’t recognise anything. Thank God the people behind me were normal and nice and not scary and they saw me craning my neck to read a street sign and looking at my map and they gave me directions voluntarily without me even having to ask :)
July 5th was a bank holiday since July 4th fell on a Sunday and it was also the day that I was due to check out and leave Boston. My bus wasn’t til a bit later in the afternoon though so I decided to put my suitcase in a locker and have another few hours of time to check out some things. I went to Cambridge Central (the subway station between MIT and Harvard) and briefly to South Boston (I wanted to do this purely because in Good Will Hunting he lives there <3) and spent some more time in the Back Bay and the immediate area around my hostel which is actually a cute funky area, the Berklee College of Music is right there so it has a hip, young, muso vibe. And I got some fruit from Whole Foods for the bus ride.
I’m glad that I got to see the fireworks – they are a big deal, like the biggest July 4th fireworks in the nation I’ve been told – and even though I really didn’t experience much at all in my Boston 2.0 other than a day where I just having little things go wrong and by the end I just wanted to curl in a ball and cry... it was still a good experience, one of those life things that I can say that I spent July 4th 2010 watching the fireworks at the Charles River in Boston. Pretty freaking cool :)
Although in Canada I got my pin and a flag so I think Canada Day wins ;)
Friday, July 9, 2010
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
One goose, two geese; one moose, two.... meese?
When I decided to go to Toronto, it was this really sort of horrendous decision because I kind of really wanted to do Montreal – Ottawa – Toronto or vice versa but all the flights I was looking at were disgustingly expensive and I was running out of time and even after I was able to cut the hypothetical Missouri from my trip, I wasn’t really with enough time. Finally I found an okay priced return from Boston – Toronto and so the decision was made to break Boston into two bits – I’d wanted five nights there initially because I knew I wanted a day in Cambridge and I’d really wanted a day to go to Providence but that didn’t end up happening. ANYWAY. I also knew that I wanted to be in the United State for July 4th and so I wound up booking flights on the 29th and leaving on the 3rd, and was informed that I’d inadvertently booked to be in Canada for Canada Day. Which was a cool experience, something that I can ‘say I did’ but that actually kind of wind up being a pain because it was a day where a lot of things were shut and then even though I didn’t get completely drunk (just very very very very very tipsy) I was bit blech the next day.
I’m telling this all out of order. Let’s go back. So I had four nights in Toronto. I arrived sort of late afternoon after a relatively uneventful flight with Air Canada from Boston. The most amusing thing is that I got to the airport pretty early and I was informed by the lady at the Air Canada desk that there’s like, nothing in their little departure area so don’t go in yet. She said that I’d be able to go into the ‘main’ area but just have to go through security twice. I didn’t bother, just stuck around in the check in area using the free wi-fi (thanks Logan Airport!) and when I got into the departure area I realised just how serious she was. Air Canada has this little section with just three gates and their own security bag thingy and there’s one ‘cafe’ which is a loose term. There’s a fridge against the wall, a bunch of shelves with sandwiches/cookies/muffins, a coffee maker and a girl wearing black wandering around the terminal and she looks up and sees you there and comes over to do the payment.
I’d booked a shuttle to get from the Airport to Toronto – my God shuttles make life just so freaking easy. You get on the bus at the airport, you relax, and if you’re not dropped off right at your hostel it’s pretty nearby. (about two blocks in this instance). There is public transport going to the airport, but it’s something like two buses and a trolley and it takes up to four hours depending on what connections you get. So I splurged and booked a shuttle, it was the hostels recommended method of getting there anyway. Found the hostel, was on a first floor room (sweeeet. Lugging suitcases up and down stairs in these buildings without elevators gets so, so, so old very quickly) and scored a bottom bunk. Sweeeeeet again.
I didn’t do a lot on my first night in Toronto. I got directions to the grocery store, had a wander around in the immediate area, got Subway for dinner (Canadian Subway is no different to American Subway from what I saw; other than that they didn’t have an ‘American cheese’ option, it was just cheddar) and went back to the hostel and had a pretty early night.
The next day was a highlight of the trip. July 30th if I was at home would’ve been Eclipse Day but Eclipse was pushed back a couple of days so that I could go to Niagara Falls. This was pretty much my sole purpose for coming to Toronto. I didn’t go staking out Hairspray filming places once, didn’t really care to, didn’t even know about Canada Day – I’d just researched into Niagara Falls and just like how I was able to do a tour from Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon, Toronto is the logical jumping off point for tours to Niagara. The drive was pleasant, squished in like sardines but that’s fine. The tour guide chickie went around doing payments for the tour and for the Maid of the Mist, which is the boat that goes in the river and right into the falls. If you bought your ticket for it through her you got a couple of dollars off. It was timed pretty much absolutely perfectly – the bus pulled up and she took all of us who had bought MotM tickets straight down to the ferry thing, got our tickets, we powered through the whole entry area, got our ponchos and as we were power walking they were calling out that there were two minutes until departure.
The Maid of the Mist was the highlight of the whole day; I actually got off and contemplated buying another ticket to go on again. You get given this blue poncho which you need. To explain how much you need it, and just how close you are and how much you’re getting sprayed; as you’re at the wettest point only people with those like, disposable waterproof cameras have them out. The advantage to the fear of camera damage is that you actually were able to ENJOY IT instead of feeling like you needed to be taking a thousand photographs. That moment in time as I was standing with the Niagara Falls raining on my head... it was a very surreal moment in time. It’s hard to really define that feeling. I was kinda like a little kid, running around to different sides of the boat to get different views and snapping shots when I wasn’t in fear of my camera getting wrecked.
From the sheer stunning beauty of Niagara Falls is the world’s second tackiest town – only Las Vegas is tackier. But having such tackiness right beside the Falls... it’s a thing of sadness to me. I get that Niagara has become like this tourist attraction and that people go there and stay there and there’s only so much time you can spend looking at the Falls and so these companies are capitalising upon tourist trade. But like... a Wax Museum and Dracula’s Haunted Mansion and some other haunted thingy and video game arcades and a zillion souvenir places and fast food joints and ice cream parlours and a Hershey World and... the list goes on. All bright and gaudy with colourful signs designed to entice youth to demand their parents spend money.
We had about two and a half hours of time at Niagara Falls; after which point we took a bit of a scenic/informational drive along Niagara Parkway and headed toward a town called Niagara on the Lake which was super cute and way less tacky. I wound up walking along and chatting with an English girl who’d been sitting behind me on the tour bus – I never actually got her name, she’s one of those people who I lament that we hadn’t been staying at the same hostel and had the opportunity to hang out more because we were really quite similar in terms of multiple trips abroad, not so much into the getting drunk in every city in the world, changed degrees and recently graduated. Niagara on the Lake was about a 45 minute stop, and the next stop on the tour was at a winery where we did some wine tasting so that the dumb tourists would go in, buy wine, the winery makes money and then a certain percentage of commission goes to the tour company. See, I know exactly how this works. This particular winery actually is part owned by Dan Aykroyd (they labelled him as being from Ghostbusters and Blues Brothers and I was like, ooh from My Girl!) they stock his particular brand of wine but I didn’t taste it, sorry Dan, they gave us a sample of his red and I stuck just to trying the white wine samples.
We got back around, hrm, 8pm? At which point I went on a mad dash out to find an open liquor store because I knew they’d all be closed the next day for Canada Day. The big liquor store is LCBO (erm... Liquor something something Ontario) and it was open til 9pm and when I arrived it was absolute chaos. It was amusing, exactly like how it would be at home before a public holiday.
Canada Day itself; well, I allowed a little time of exploring/touristing in the morning and early afternoon and headed to the Eaton Centre which is like, a big massive mall where most stores were actually open – I guess it’s like Surfers Paradise at home where things are open like, all the time, even Christmas. Just outside the Eaton Centre was like a plaza/square/whatever and there was some multi cultural Canada Day concert on and I scored a free crappy paper Canadian Flag and a little pin. :) I waved my flag around happily all the way back to the hostel. There were a few people out in the garden already drinking but I stuck indoors. I went out to see what was happening at about 2:30 (the BBBQ was designated to start at 3pm) and there was no one out there at all. So I went back to my netbook having already opened my little bottle of vodka and was productive with my writing. One of the girls from my dorm room came to chat and said people were now outside so we headed out and seriously, there were more people there than I realised were staying at the hostel – turns out this hostel takes up pretty much the entire block and I had no idea, I just thought it was our building. Plus they’d invited some hostel ‘alumni’ who are in the area. Scored a big juicy burger (freeee being the important thing) for linner (it was probably 5pm by the time I got mine) and had fun chatting with some people. We wound up arranging a group of people who wanted to go toward the water for the fireworks. I went out for a wander with Anita (the girl who’d originally talked to me) on her quest for cake and by the time we got back to the hostel there was pretty much time to get changed and then meet up with these people who wanted to go to the fireworks. I didn’t even know where they were so I was just following the crowd and all I know is that we wound up sort of along the harbourside where the fireworks were being let off a little ways away but you could still see them.
Next day was... yeah. Kind of like Philly except Philly I’d been a lot more drunk and more hungover. I think Toronto was this mixture of just being TIRED in a general sense plus a bit of the day after drinking a bit. It was a slow start to the morning and I missed out on the breakfast (which, I just realised I hadn’t mentioned, was pancakes & maple syrup. They didn’t provide any toast or cereal, just pancakes) so went out and got myself fed and looked around but I was honestly just exhausted. There was a movie theatre around the corner from my hostel and it seemed like fate – time to go see Eclipse :) I got back to the hostel after seeing it in the IMAX theatre and spazzed with Kelly about it on Fan Forum and then I decided that since it was my last day in Toronto I should do SOMETHING of importance and so I decided to fork out the cash and go to CN Tower.
CN Tower, according to the website, is the world’s tallest building. I’m told that there’s now a building in Dubai that is taller however CN Tower are in denial and haven’t updated their marketing materials. Quite honestly I hadn’t heard of it before going to Toronto. Seriously, I hadn’t. My guide book (the one I lost) didn’t have a Toronto section, it was a USA book, and most of what I know about tourist attractions was derived from that book. Maybe I’m just severely uneducated. I know that Q1 in my home city WAS the world’s tallest residential building until the 01 in... erm... somewhere... overtook it. When I arrived at CN Tower they claimed it to be an hour queue, I honestly don’t know if it was, I didn’t look at the time very purposefully. The ‘claim to fame’ for CN Tower other than the height itself is this glass floor thing they have. It’s only in one tiny section but there’s this part where you’re standing literally on glass floor and you can see the ground beneath it. I thought it was a bit overrated and I much much preferred the main observation deck (although I’d love if they cleaned the windows) and also the outdoor observation deck – that feeling of having the wind whipping around is so surreal, it reminded me a lot of the Eiffel Tower. The elevator ride going up and down also is half cool/half scary because the elevator is on the outside of the building and there’s glass floor and a window so you can see out and ‘down into the elevator shaft’ (like, the operator tells you to look down like an elevator shaft is something every tourist wants to see.) I don’t know, I guess I just don’t like spending money on these sorts of tacky tourist experiences. The view was super pretty though, especially on the side where you could see Lake Ontario and the harbour and LO is one of the Great Lakes so that’s pretty cool.
I feel like I really didn’t see much in Toronto. There was a lot of wandering around which is often my MO when I’m touristing; I know that to the outside person reading my blog or whatever it’s like ‘so what did you DO’ and I very genuinely just enjoy going out and walking around in the streets looking around. I like looking at foreign chains and looking at the prices of things and seeing how ‘the regular people live’ and experiencing the culture on that level. I feel like you learn more about people that way. I like going into Starbucks in different cities and seeing what the customer service is like. A caramel frappuccino tastes the same everywhere but people treat you differently everywhere.
Anyway yes... so that brings me to the end of my time in Toronto... until next time...
I’m telling this all out of order. Let’s go back. So I had four nights in Toronto. I arrived sort of late afternoon after a relatively uneventful flight with Air Canada from Boston. The most amusing thing is that I got to the airport pretty early and I was informed by the lady at the Air Canada desk that there’s like, nothing in their little departure area so don’t go in yet. She said that I’d be able to go into the ‘main’ area but just have to go through security twice. I didn’t bother, just stuck around in the check in area using the free wi-fi (thanks Logan Airport!) and when I got into the departure area I realised just how serious she was. Air Canada has this little section with just three gates and their own security bag thingy and there’s one ‘cafe’ which is a loose term. There’s a fridge against the wall, a bunch of shelves with sandwiches/cookies/muffins, a coffee maker and a girl wearing black wandering around the terminal and she looks up and sees you there and comes over to do the payment.
I’d booked a shuttle to get from the Airport to Toronto – my God shuttles make life just so freaking easy. You get on the bus at the airport, you relax, and if you’re not dropped off right at your hostel it’s pretty nearby. (about two blocks in this instance). There is public transport going to the airport, but it’s something like two buses and a trolley and it takes up to four hours depending on what connections you get. So I splurged and booked a shuttle, it was the hostels recommended method of getting there anyway. Found the hostel, was on a first floor room (sweeeet. Lugging suitcases up and down stairs in these buildings without elevators gets so, so, so old very quickly) and scored a bottom bunk. Sweeeeeet again.
I didn’t do a lot on my first night in Toronto. I got directions to the grocery store, had a wander around in the immediate area, got Subway for dinner (Canadian Subway is no different to American Subway from what I saw; other than that they didn’t have an ‘American cheese’ option, it was just cheddar) and went back to the hostel and had a pretty early night.
The next day was a highlight of the trip. July 30th if I was at home would’ve been Eclipse Day but Eclipse was pushed back a couple of days so that I could go to Niagara Falls. This was pretty much my sole purpose for coming to Toronto. I didn’t go staking out Hairspray filming places once, didn’t really care to, didn’t even know about Canada Day – I’d just researched into Niagara Falls and just like how I was able to do a tour from Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon, Toronto is the logical jumping off point for tours to Niagara. The drive was pleasant, squished in like sardines but that’s fine. The tour guide chickie went around doing payments for the tour and for the Maid of the Mist, which is the boat that goes in the river and right into the falls. If you bought your ticket for it through her you got a couple of dollars off. It was timed pretty much absolutely perfectly – the bus pulled up and she took all of us who had bought MotM tickets straight down to the ferry thing, got our tickets, we powered through the whole entry area, got our ponchos and as we were power walking they were calling out that there were two minutes until departure.
The Maid of the Mist was the highlight of the whole day; I actually got off and contemplated buying another ticket to go on again. You get given this blue poncho which you need. To explain how much you need it, and just how close you are and how much you’re getting sprayed; as you’re at the wettest point only people with those like, disposable waterproof cameras have them out. The advantage to the fear of camera damage is that you actually were able to ENJOY IT instead of feeling like you needed to be taking a thousand photographs. That moment in time as I was standing with the Niagara Falls raining on my head... it was a very surreal moment in time. It’s hard to really define that feeling. I was kinda like a little kid, running around to different sides of the boat to get different views and snapping shots when I wasn’t in fear of my camera getting wrecked.
From the sheer stunning beauty of Niagara Falls is the world’s second tackiest town – only Las Vegas is tackier. But having such tackiness right beside the Falls... it’s a thing of sadness to me. I get that Niagara has become like this tourist attraction and that people go there and stay there and there’s only so much time you can spend looking at the Falls and so these companies are capitalising upon tourist trade. But like... a Wax Museum and Dracula’s Haunted Mansion and some other haunted thingy and video game arcades and a zillion souvenir places and fast food joints and ice cream parlours and a Hershey World and... the list goes on. All bright and gaudy with colourful signs designed to entice youth to demand their parents spend money.
We had about two and a half hours of time at Niagara Falls; after which point we took a bit of a scenic/informational drive along Niagara Parkway and headed toward a town called Niagara on the Lake which was super cute and way less tacky. I wound up walking along and chatting with an English girl who’d been sitting behind me on the tour bus – I never actually got her name, she’s one of those people who I lament that we hadn’t been staying at the same hostel and had the opportunity to hang out more because we were really quite similar in terms of multiple trips abroad, not so much into the getting drunk in every city in the world, changed degrees and recently graduated. Niagara on the Lake was about a 45 minute stop, and the next stop on the tour was at a winery where we did some wine tasting so that the dumb tourists would go in, buy wine, the winery makes money and then a certain percentage of commission goes to the tour company. See, I know exactly how this works. This particular winery actually is part owned by Dan Aykroyd (they labelled him as being from Ghostbusters and Blues Brothers and I was like, ooh from My Girl!) they stock his particular brand of wine but I didn’t taste it, sorry Dan, they gave us a sample of his red and I stuck just to trying the white wine samples.
We got back around, hrm, 8pm? At which point I went on a mad dash out to find an open liquor store because I knew they’d all be closed the next day for Canada Day. The big liquor store is LCBO (erm... Liquor something something Ontario) and it was open til 9pm and when I arrived it was absolute chaos. It was amusing, exactly like how it would be at home before a public holiday.
Canada Day itself; well, I allowed a little time of exploring/touristing in the morning and early afternoon and headed to the Eaton Centre which is like, a big massive mall where most stores were actually open – I guess it’s like Surfers Paradise at home where things are open like, all the time, even Christmas. Just outside the Eaton Centre was like a plaza/square/whatever and there was some multi cultural Canada Day concert on and I scored a free crappy paper Canadian Flag and a little pin. :) I waved my flag around happily all the way back to the hostel. There were a few people out in the garden already drinking but I stuck indoors. I went out to see what was happening at about 2:30 (the BBBQ was designated to start at 3pm) and there was no one out there at all. So I went back to my netbook having already opened my little bottle of vodka and was productive with my writing. One of the girls from my dorm room came to chat and said people were now outside so we headed out and seriously, there were more people there than I realised were staying at the hostel – turns out this hostel takes up pretty much the entire block and I had no idea, I just thought it was our building. Plus they’d invited some hostel ‘alumni’ who are in the area. Scored a big juicy burger (freeee being the important thing) for linner (it was probably 5pm by the time I got mine) and had fun chatting with some people. We wound up arranging a group of people who wanted to go toward the water for the fireworks. I went out for a wander with Anita (the girl who’d originally talked to me) on her quest for cake and by the time we got back to the hostel there was pretty much time to get changed and then meet up with these people who wanted to go to the fireworks. I didn’t even know where they were so I was just following the crowd and all I know is that we wound up sort of along the harbourside where the fireworks were being let off a little ways away but you could still see them.
Next day was... yeah. Kind of like Philly except Philly I’d been a lot more drunk and more hungover. I think Toronto was this mixture of just being TIRED in a general sense plus a bit of the day after drinking a bit. It was a slow start to the morning and I missed out on the breakfast (which, I just realised I hadn’t mentioned, was pancakes & maple syrup. They didn’t provide any toast or cereal, just pancakes) so went out and got myself fed and looked around but I was honestly just exhausted. There was a movie theatre around the corner from my hostel and it seemed like fate – time to go see Eclipse :) I got back to the hostel after seeing it in the IMAX theatre and spazzed with Kelly about it on Fan Forum and then I decided that since it was my last day in Toronto I should do SOMETHING of importance and so I decided to fork out the cash and go to CN Tower.
CN Tower, according to the website, is the world’s tallest building. I’m told that there’s now a building in Dubai that is taller however CN Tower are in denial and haven’t updated their marketing materials. Quite honestly I hadn’t heard of it before going to Toronto. Seriously, I hadn’t. My guide book (the one I lost) didn’t have a Toronto section, it was a USA book, and most of what I know about tourist attractions was derived from that book. Maybe I’m just severely uneducated. I know that Q1 in my home city WAS the world’s tallest residential building until the 01 in... erm... somewhere... overtook it. When I arrived at CN Tower they claimed it to be an hour queue, I honestly don’t know if it was, I didn’t look at the time very purposefully. The ‘claim to fame’ for CN Tower other than the height itself is this glass floor thing they have. It’s only in one tiny section but there’s this part where you’re standing literally on glass floor and you can see the ground beneath it. I thought it was a bit overrated and I much much preferred the main observation deck (although I’d love if they cleaned the windows) and also the outdoor observation deck – that feeling of having the wind whipping around is so surreal, it reminded me a lot of the Eiffel Tower. The elevator ride going up and down also is half cool/half scary because the elevator is on the outside of the building and there’s glass floor and a window so you can see out and ‘down into the elevator shaft’ (like, the operator tells you to look down like an elevator shaft is something every tourist wants to see.) I don’t know, I guess I just don’t like spending money on these sorts of tacky tourist experiences. The view was super pretty though, especially on the side where you could see Lake Ontario and the harbour and LO is one of the Great Lakes so that’s pretty cool.
I feel like I really didn’t see much in Toronto. There was a lot of wandering around which is often my MO when I’m touristing; I know that to the outside person reading my blog or whatever it’s like ‘so what did you DO’ and I very genuinely just enjoy going out and walking around in the streets looking around. I like looking at foreign chains and looking at the prices of things and seeing how ‘the regular people live’ and experiencing the culture on that level. I feel like you learn more about people that way. I like going into Starbucks in different cities and seeing what the customer service is like. A caramel frappuccino tastes the same everywhere but people treat you differently everywhere.
Anyway yes... so that brings me to the end of my time in Toronto... until next time...
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Tea parties, freedom and the intellectually minded
I’m slowly catching up! I’m posting this from Boston – but Boston 2.0; because after leaving Boston I went to Toronto and now I’m back in Boston for Independence Day. Not too shabby I’d say in catching up a little :)
My trip from Philadelphia to Boston was once again with Megabus. I actually had to change buses in New York City. NYC is so iconic, you just... you know you’re there. It’s a recognisable skyline. I was getting all hyped up for NYC as we arrived on the bus, listing lyrics from I Want It All on my Twitter account (Megabus Wi-Fi still rocks) and then I had about two hours in New York City so I was able to see a little bit and have a piece of pizza and a pretzel and then just as I was all hyped up on NYC fever I had to go join the queue for my Boston bus – which in itself was amusing. NYC is the Megabus hub and it’s literally just a sign on the road just outside of Penn Station; and masses of people waiting for different buses in one big mob of people. Finally they called for our bus to start lining up – at least, we thought they did, because as I’m standing behind some hot gay boys we were all like ‘is this the Boston queue...’ and no one really knew. The bus that was before ours going to DC had been loaded and yet these people were being allowed to come up late – like, ten, fifteen minutes after it was meant to depart – and were getting on; this one lady had about 239508 suitcases and they seemed to just keep appearing from somewhere and she was being sent to the Megabus office across the road to pay for excess luggage. Meanwhile our bus is double parked and it can’t pull in because these idiots are holding up the line and we were like, seriously, if this was plane, you wouldn’t be getting on. Finally I was on the bus, in my seat, and these other idiots were holding everyone up because they had ten of them and they wanted ten seats together. Sorry, it’s a bus, you just get on and sit where there’s room and if you’re picky you need to get there early and be at the front of the line. It was so utterly ridiculous and I felt like saying ‘just sit the eff down and shut up.’ Like an hour and a half later we were finally on the road heading out of the city – it seriously took like an hour to fight through all of the NYC traffic and the bus crawled all the way from downtown along the west side heading uptown. My wi-fi cut out about half way through the ride but nonetheless it all was okay.
My biggest worry was that I didn’t actually have a set of directions to my hostel. I have this ‘travel guide’ that I put together at home with all of my bookings (transport and accommodation) and it has specific directions to the hostels that weren’t in my guidebook – like, after getting out of x subway station turn left here, right there, left here and then the hostel will be on the right. But because this hostel was in my guidebook (you know, the one I left in DC) I’d just typed up the subway directions and to get out at Hynes/Convention Center and after that I didn’t know. I’d found a crappy cartoon like map at the bus station that I seriously could not locate the street that my hostel was on. My back up plan was that I’d call Jess and get her to look it up on Google Maps and find directions for me but luckily there was a locality map at the subway station and I found the street on there and all was good.
I was so freaking excited to be in Boston that I didn’t care that the shitty HI hostel was a bit bland and the room was really hot and I was on a top bunk with a rickety railing. Didn’t care about any of it. Normally arriving at a hostel at 7pm I’d probably just get some dinner and then chill but the Boston fever had me after getting dinner going for a walk in the neighbourhood for about an hour. I just had this wonderful vibe right there from the beginning. I’ve always wanted to go to Boston – I used to be really, really intensely involved in the TV show The Practice which was set in Boston and since then I’ve kind of loved the city. And then Dawson’s Creek – the College Years – was in Boston and it goes on with things that always had me feeling more of a pull toward Boston than any other US city. Evening 1 as I was super tired was already living up to my expectations and I was so excited to get going the next day that I was actually awake and raring and ready to go, leaving the hostel by 9am – you have to realise how early this is in Dani time. It was Sunday and so by default Sunday was my touristing in Boston day and Monday was for Cambridge and the college tours; because the college tours didn’t run on the weekend. I started out by walking the Boston Freedom Trail, taking my time and taking a few hours to do it. When you finish the Freedom Trail you’re kind of nowhere near the subway and I wasn’t familiar with the bus system so I had to walk a fair ways to get back to the subway. I was looking on the subway map contemplating the rest of my itinerary for the day and out of pure curiosity I just had to take the blue subway line destined for ‘Wonderland.’ Turns out that Wonderland is more like a wasteland on one side with the beach on the other side – so I got to go dip my toe in the Atlantic Ocean :) I did some research later on, wondering why exactly this station is called Wonderland and it turns out that AGES ago, like, a hundred years ago almost, there was an amusement park called Wonderland which is now a Greyhound Station Parking Area – like where all the Greyhound buses sleep while they’re not operating. So there’s a bit of trivia for you.
I headed to the harbour area where I spent a good amount of time wandering around. Quincy Market is a short walk from the harbour so I’d gotten the subway to the Quincy station and spent some time in that area first; I’d already been through while doing the freedom trail that morning but a few hours seems to make a world of difference in the liveliness of the area; there were now heaps more stalls and these like, ‘British Guards’ and they did a ‘Changing of the Guard’ ceremony (read: a comedy routine.) Then I headed to the actual waterfront area, which I adored (it’s funny. I don’t like swimming a lot, I don’t sail or anything like that, but I loooove taking photos at waterfronts with boats). It looked like it was going to storm and it started to sprinkle so I headed back toward the subway and thought it was time for my afternoon rest. I chilled at the hostel for a couple of hours (when you’re fair like me, you kind of do this automatically for skin protection reasons, even with all the sunscreen in the world it isn’t good to be out in the sun for too many hours straight).
I then went back out for a walk along the Charles River. If you’re familiar with Boston, my hostel was sort of between Back Bay and Fenway Park; taking the most direct walking route to the water was only about ten minutes at which point I was right across the river from MIT. I walked a long way, pretty much right into Boston city but going along the waterfront. I wasn’t really sure quite where I could cut inland to find the subway, I was just playing it by ear, but I actually timed it pretty well – where I cut inland I’d wound up at the Boston Common and Public Gardens – super, super pretty and muchly enjoyable. Except for the whole thing where I was wandering around trying to find the public bathroom, finally found it and it was closed. Hence that when I ducked into Starbucks just near the park, there was a giant queue for the bathroom; and then I went to McDonalds – same thing. They had ONE TOILET for everyone and there was a sign specifying that it was for customers only and I crossed my legs and bought a crappy burger and made myself eat it (didn’t enjoy it at all, problem with all this North American fast food is that McD’s is really really crappy in comparison to some of the other ones) and then got in the bathroom queue which was filled with all these people breaking the rules and not buying from McD’s and taking FOREVER. I felt like saying, just hurry up, get in do your thing and get out and if you’re doing something that’ll take longer than get out of the queue because I was SERIOUSLY about to pee my pants. This is one of the biggest problems with travelling, seriously, locating bathrooms when you need them. You drink more water while you’re walking around and stuff and you need to pee more and it’s just a horrible cycle.
By now it was pushing 8pm so I just headed back to my hostel where I was still a bit hungry even after my gross burger so I grabbed a slice of pizza and then spent a couple of hours relaxing and catching up with some of my writing and whatnot. I was prepared to get up early again the next morning – with two college tours to squish into one day.
Actually I should note at this point that for all its run-downness, HI hostels usually have a really great breakfast and this hostel was no exception. Cereal and toast is common fare but they also had bagels, lots of options of spreads, and not only did they have coffee but they had hot chocolate powder so I was able to make a mocha :) A hostel with a decent breakfast can make such a difference to starting your day; if there is no breakfast or a breakfast that only goes for an hour and you miss it or a breakfast that you don’t want, you get set back with having to spend the first half hour of the morning in search of whatever it is that you need – in my case, often a Starbucks suffices and there is one on just about every street corner in most cities here.
Anyway, so, I had researched the times of the free campus tours and I was attending the 10am tour of Harvard University and the 3pm tour of MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). The Harvard tour was more of a historical tour – they have separate potential future students tours that you can register for if you’re a high school student/family of said student. It was run by a student though (hot nerd alert – you just know how intelligent this guy is, he’s at Harvard to start with, and just some of the words in his vocabulary, I was blinking at him. He was a major of French Literature – he’s partial to Economics also however the Harvard school of Economics is quite prestigious and therefore the class sizes are huge and as he explained to us, he prefers having more individual contact time with professors and in his major there is never more than fifteen students in a class. Anyway so because it was run by a student, people were asking questions about the academic life and what not that sort of gave the tour a balance between history and present reality. I was quite amused by the fact that still in professors contracts is written in that they have the right to bring their livestock to the college and let them graze on the grass in the Harvard Yard; and we were told of a professor who retired about a year and a half ago who decided it would be humorous to exercise said right and brought in a cow from his farm in Connecticut and let it graze which all the freshman supposedly were spun out by. Another amusing part of the tour was when we were told about how ‘this is the building were the university president’s office is... and the two upper floors are freshman dorms.’ Apparently they are very ‘selective’ when deciding what freshman to put into those dorms and when you start at Harvard and fill out your housing forms they ask questions about your likely hours that you’ll keep, the type of music you listen to, what your favourite activities are, that sort of thing. I got to get my photo of the statue of John Harvard which is evidently the third most photographed statue in the United States – only the Statue of Liberty and the Lincoln Memorial are photographed more. Funny story though is that this statue is also known as the statue of lies because it isn’t actually Harvard – they don’t know what Harvard looks like because the pictures they had of him were burnt down in this fire in the library many, many years ago and it was just a random person used as a model for the statue.
The whole Harvard area is quite cute, I do really like the vibe of Cambridge. I went and had a frappuccino at Starbucks after the tour and it was fascinated being surrounded by various students who are taking summer courses, slogging away with their books. I was truly surrounded by so much intelligence and it rather made me feel a bit inferior.
I hopped onto the subway to go to the Kendall/MIT station; the subway is about a five – ten minute walk from the main part of the college, but where I got off the subway there was a whole little funky area of Cambridge including the college co-op store and various eateries. MIT is a very recognisable school if you’re into particular movies – two of my favourite movies ever use MIT as a setting – Good Will Hunting and 21 – and so for me it was really, really cool being there. I was there early even taking a longer route to walk from the subway station to the area where the tour was leaving so I used the free MIT wireless (thanks MIT) on my iTouch to look up where the closest Subway was – it was right across the street in the student union haha. Ate my first American Subway for this trip (I had it about five times last trip so it wasn’t that exciting, and it was actually rather disappointing because they’d ran out of the bread that I wanted and then they’d ran out of the cookie I wanted – but I did get TWO cookies to compensate/they were still warm and they were stuck together haha.
The tour of MIT was really cool, the tour guide has this sort of obsession with MIT hacks (MIT students are sort of known for performing these elaborate practical jokes, like somehow getting a police car onto the roof of the MIT dome, changing the famous lettering that is high on the ceiling in the main MIT hall and leaving it there for weeks until someone noticed) and told lots of stories of them throughout the ‘technical stuff’. We got to hear a bit about housing life and how it works differently at MIT with trying to ploy people to join a particular house with these parties during the first week of the year with different themes – i.e. one house has a jello swimming pool, one lines all the walls with layers and layers of bubble wrap. Harvard feels pretentious to me, MIT has this sort of self deprecating nerdish vibe to it, in its co-op stores with the merchandise they have all these shirts with nerdy slogans and things that I found amusing.
My really awesome day was marred by the end of the day, when I was on the subway heading back to the hostel. The green line subway that my hostel is on isn’t like a train, it’s like a trolley but underground, it’s very bumpy and screechy and not at all stable. It was late, around 7pm, and the trolley was really, really crowded, I was standing cramped in the middle. A blind lady with a cane got onto the trolley and not one person offered her their seat. I turned around at the people closest to me in seats, these Valley girl looking things with their high heels and shopping bags and I glared at them. I don’t care how long your day has been, I don’t care how sore your feet are – YOU GIVE UP A SEAT FOR A BLIND PERSON. I was really, really, really upset about this, I can’t explain just how upset. The poor lady was like, clutching to a pole in the corner and people just kept piling on and she was getting more squished and all these people just stayed sitting and I seriously just felt... I felt like this is one of those examples of why the world has negative opinion of Americans and American culture; that anyone could have been brought up in such a manner. Even on the London tube which gets absolutely insane during peak hour, people offer seats to those that they should – the handicapped, elderly, pregnant women.
By the time I got back to my hostel it was pushing 7pm, so I pretty much just had dinner and that wrapped up my evening – ranting about the above situation for ages on Twitter.
That one incident aside, I really really love Boston. Just something in the air perhaps? The culture, the vibe, the architecture. It all kind of calls out to me. I’m headed back there now (I write this on the plane from Toronto to Boston) just for a couple of nights so I’ll be there for July 4th which I’m super excited for – the hostel is a ‘family friendly no alcohol’ type place but even without alcohol, there’s events going on around the city and evidently there’s a fireworks show on the Charles so hopefully it’ll be a great day :)
My trip from Philadelphia to Boston was once again with Megabus. I actually had to change buses in New York City. NYC is so iconic, you just... you know you’re there. It’s a recognisable skyline. I was getting all hyped up for NYC as we arrived on the bus, listing lyrics from I Want It All on my Twitter account (Megabus Wi-Fi still rocks) and then I had about two hours in New York City so I was able to see a little bit and have a piece of pizza and a pretzel and then just as I was all hyped up on NYC fever I had to go join the queue for my Boston bus – which in itself was amusing. NYC is the Megabus hub and it’s literally just a sign on the road just outside of Penn Station; and masses of people waiting for different buses in one big mob of people. Finally they called for our bus to start lining up – at least, we thought they did, because as I’m standing behind some hot gay boys we were all like ‘is this the Boston queue...’ and no one really knew. The bus that was before ours going to DC had been loaded and yet these people were being allowed to come up late – like, ten, fifteen minutes after it was meant to depart – and were getting on; this one lady had about 239508 suitcases and they seemed to just keep appearing from somewhere and she was being sent to the Megabus office across the road to pay for excess luggage. Meanwhile our bus is double parked and it can’t pull in because these idiots are holding up the line and we were like, seriously, if this was plane, you wouldn’t be getting on. Finally I was on the bus, in my seat, and these other idiots were holding everyone up because they had ten of them and they wanted ten seats together. Sorry, it’s a bus, you just get on and sit where there’s room and if you’re picky you need to get there early and be at the front of the line. It was so utterly ridiculous and I felt like saying ‘just sit the eff down and shut up.’ Like an hour and a half later we were finally on the road heading out of the city – it seriously took like an hour to fight through all of the NYC traffic and the bus crawled all the way from downtown along the west side heading uptown. My wi-fi cut out about half way through the ride but nonetheless it all was okay.
My biggest worry was that I didn’t actually have a set of directions to my hostel. I have this ‘travel guide’ that I put together at home with all of my bookings (transport and accommodation) and it has specific directions to the hostels that weren’t in my guidebook – like, after getting out of x subway station turn left here, right there, left here and then the hostel will be on the right. But because this hostel was in my guidebook (you know, the one I left in DC) I’d just typed up the subway directions and to get out at Hynes/Convention Center and after that I didn’t know. I’d found a crappy cartoon like map at the bus station that I seriously could not locate the street that my hostel was on. My back up plan was that I’d call Jess and get her to look it up on Google Maps and find directions for me but luckily there was a locality map at the subway station and I found the street on there and all was good.
I was so freaking excited to be in Boston that I didn’t care that the shitty HI hostel was a bit bland and the room was really hot and I was on a top bunk with a rickety railing. Didn’t care about any of it. Normally arriving at a hostel at 7pm I’d probably just get some dinner and then chill but the Boston fever had me after getting dinner going for a walk in the neighbourhood for about an hour. I just had this wonderful vibe right there from the beginning. I’ve always wanted to go to Boston – I used to be really, really intensely involved in the TV show The Practice which was set in Boston and since then I’ve kind of loved the city. And then Dawson’s Creek – the College Years – was in Boston and it goes on with things that always had me feeling more of a pull toward Boston than any other US city. Evening 1 as I was super tired was already living up to my expectations and I was so excited to get going the next day that I was actually awake and raring and ready to go, leaving the hostel by 9am – you have to realise how early this is in Dani time. It was Sunday and so by default Sunday was my touristing in Boston day and Monday was for Cambridge and the college tours; because the college tours didn’t run on the weekend. I started out by walking the Boston Freedom Trail, taking my time and taking a few hours to do it. When you finish the Freedom Trail you’re kind of nowhere near the subway and I wasn’t familiar with the bus system so I had to walk a fair ways to get back to the subway. I was looking on the subway map contemplating the rest of my itinerary for the day and out of pure curiosity I just had to take the blue subway line destined for ‘Wonderland.’ Turns out that Wonderland is more like a wasteland on one side with the beach on the other side – so I got to go dip my toe in the Atlantic Ocean :) I did some research later on, wondering why exactly this station is called Wonderland and it turns out that AGES ago, like, a hundred years ago almost, there was an amusement park called Wonderland which is now a Greyhound Station Parking Area – like where all the Greyhound buses sleep while they’re not operating. So there’s a bit of trivia for you.
I headed to the harbour area where I spent a good amount of time wandering around. Quincy Market is a short walk from the harbour so I’d gotten the subway to the Quincy station and spent some time in that area first; I’d already been through while doing the freedom trail that morning but a few hours seems to make a world of difference in the liveliness of the area; there were now heaps more stalls and these like, ‘British Guards’ and they did a ‘Changing of the Guard’ ceremony (read: a comedy routine.) Then I headed to the actual waterfront area, which I adored (it’s funny. I don’t like swimming a lot, I don’t sail or anything like that, but I loooove taking photos at waterfronts with boats). It looked like it was going to storm and it started to sprinkle so I headed back toward the subway and thought it was time for my afternoon rest. I chilled at the hostel for a couple of hours (when you’re fair like me, you kind of do this automatically for skin protection reasons, even with all the sunscreen in the world it isn’t good to be out in the sun for too many hours straight).
I then went back out for a walk along the Charles River. If you’re familiar with Boston, my hostel was sort of between Back Bay and Fenway Park; taking the most direct walking route to the water was only about ten minutes at which point I was right across the river from MIT. I walked a long way, pretty much right into Boston city but going along the waterfront. I wasn’t really sure quite where I could cut inland to find the subway, I was just playing it by ear, but I actually timed it pretty well – where I cut inland I’d wound up at the Boston Common and Public Gardens – super, super pretty and muchly enjoyable. Except for the whole thing where I was wandering around trying to find the public bathroom, finally found it and it was closed. Hence that when I ducked into Starbucks just near the park, there was a giant queue for the bathroom; and then I went to McDonalds – same thing. They had ONE TOILET for everyone and there was a sign specifying that it was for customers only and I crossed my legs and bought a crappy burger and made myself eat it (didn’t enjoy it at all, problem with all this North American fast food is that McD’s is really really crappy in comparison to some of the other ones) and then got in the bathroom queue which was filled with all these people breaking the rules and not buying from McD’s and taking FOREVER. I felt like saying, just hurry up, get in do your thing and get out and if you’re doing something that’ll take longer than get out of the queue because I was SERIOUSLY about to pee my pants. This is one of the biggest problems with travelling, seriously, locating bathrooms when you need them. You drink more water while you’re walking around and stuff and you need to pee more and it’s just a horrible cycle.
By now it was pushing 8pm so I just headed back to my hostel where I was still a bit hungry even after my gross burger so I grabbed a slice of pizza and then spent a couple of hours relaxing and catching up with some of my writing and whatnot. I was prepared to get up early again the next morning – with two college tours to squish into one day.
Actually I should note at this point that for all its run-downness, HI hostels usually have a really great breakfast and this hostel was no exception. Cereal and toast is common fare but they also had bagels, lots of options of spreads, and not only did they have coffee but they had hot chocolate powder so I was able to make a mocha :) A hostel with a decent breakfast can make such a difference to starting your day; if there is no breakfast or a breakfast that only goes for an hour and you miss it or a breakfast that you don’t want, you get set back with having to spend the first half hour of the morning in search of whatever it is that you need – in my case, often a Starbucks suffices and there is one on just about every street corner in most cities here.
Anyway, so, I had researched the times of the free campus tours and I was attending the 10am tour of Harvard University and the 3pm tour of MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). The Harvard tour was more of a historical tour – they have separate potential future students tours that you can register for if you’re a high school student/family of said student. It was run by a student though (hot nerd alert – you just know how intelligent this guy is, he’s at Harvard to start with, and just some of the words in his vocabulary, I was blinking at him. He was a major of French Literature – he’s partial to Economics also however the Harvard school of Economics is quite prestigious and therefore the class sizes are huge and as he explained to us, he prefers having more individual contact time with professors and in his major there is never more than fifteen students in a class. Anyway so because it was run by a student, people were asking questions about the academic life and what not that sort of gave the tour a balance between history and present reality. I was quite amused by the fact that still in professors contracts is written in that they have the right to bring their livestock to the college and let them graze on the grass in the Harvard Yard; and we were told of a professor who retired about a year and a half ago who decided it would be humorous to exercise said right and brought in a cow from his farm in Connecticut and let it graze which all the freshman supposedly were spun out by. Another amusing part of the tour was when we were told about how ‘this is the building were the university president’s office is... and the two upper floors are freshman dorms.’ Apparently they are very ‘selective’ when deciding what freshman to put into those dorms and when you start at Harvard and fill out your housing forms they ask questions about your likely hours that you’ll keep, the type of music you listen to, what your favourite activities are, that sort of thing. I got to get my photo of the statue of John Harvard which is evidently the third most photographed statue in the United States – only the Statue of Liberty and the Lincoln Memorial are photographed more. Funny story though is that this statue is also known as the statue of lies because it isn’t actually Harvard – they don’t know what Harvard looks like because the pictures they had of him were burnt down in this fire in the library many, many years ago and it was just a random person used as a model for the statue.
The whole Harvard area is quite cute, I do really like the vibe of Cambridge. I went and had a frappuccino at Starbucks after the tour and it was fascinated being surrounded by various students who are taking summer courses, slogging away with their books. I was truly surrounded by so much intelligence and it rather made me feel a bit inferior.
I hopped onto the subway to go to the Kendall/MIT station; the subway is about a five – ten minute walk from the main part of the college, but where I got off the subway there was a whole little funky area of Cambridge including the college co-op store and various eateries. MIT is a very recognisable school if you’re into particular movies – two of my favourite movies ever use MIT as a setting – Good Will Hunting and 21 – and so for me it was really, really cool being there. I was there early even taking a longer route to walk from the subway station to the area where the tour was leaving so I used the free MIT wireless (thanks MIT) on my iTouch to look up where the closest Subway was – it was right across the street in the student union haha. Ate my first American Subway for this trip (I had it about five times last trip so it wasn’t that exciting, and it was actually rather disappointing because they’d ran out of the bread that I wanted and then they’d ran out of the cookie I wanted – but I did get TWO cookies to compensate/they were still warm and they were stuck together haha.
The tour of MIT was really cool, the tour guide has this sort of obsession with MIT hacks (MIT students are sort of known for performing these elaborate practical jokes, like somehow getting a police car onto the roof of the MIT dome, changing the famous lettering that is high on the ceiling in the main MIT hall and leaving it there for weeks until someone noticed) and told lots of stories of them throughout the ‘technical stuff’. We got to hear a bit about housing life and how it works differently at MIT with trying to ploy people to join a particular house with these parties during the first week of the year with different themes – i.e. one house has a jello swimming pool, one lines all the walls with layers and layers of bubble wrap. Harvard feels pretentious to me, MIT has this sort of self deprecating nerdish vibe to it, in its co-op stores with the merchandise they have all these shirts with nerdy slogans and things that I found amusing.
My really awesome day was marred by the end of the day, when I was on the subway heading back to the hostel. The green line subway that my hostel is on isn’t like a train, it’s like a trolley but underground, it’s very bumpy and screechy and not at all stable. It was late, around 7pm, and the trolley was really, really crowded, I was standing cramped in the middle. A blind lady with a cane got onto the trolley and not one person offered her their seat. I turned around at the people closest to me in seats, these Valley girl looking things with their high heels and shopping bags and I glared at them. I don’t care how long your day has been, I don’t care how sore your feet are – YOU GIVE UP A SEAT FOR A BLIND PERSON. I was really, really, really upset about this, I can’t explain just how upset. The poor lady was like, clutching to a pole in the corner and people just kept piling on and she was getting more squished and all these people just stayed sitting and I seriously just felt... I felt like this is one of those examples of why the world has negative opinion of Americans and American culture; that anyone could have been brought up in such a manner. Even on the London tube which gets absolutely insane during peak hour, people offer seats to those that they should – the handicapped, elderly, pregnant women.
By the time I got back to my hostel it was pushing 7pm, so I pretty much just had dinner and that wrapped up my evening – ranting about the above situation for ages on Twitter.
That one incident aside, I really really love Boston. Just something in the air perhaps? The culture, the vibe, the architecture. It all kind of calls out to me. I’m headed back there now (I write this on the plane from Toronto to Boston) just for a couple of nights so I’ll be there for July 4th which I’m super excited for – the hostel is a ‘family friendly no alcohol’ type place but even without alcohol, there’s events going on around the city and evidently there’s a fireworks show on the Charles so hopefully it’ll be a great day :)
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Cheesesteaks and 75c beer.
I’m getting behind in my journal. I started writing this entry as I was leaving Philadelphia and here I am, finally finishing it up, after I’ve since been to Boston and I’m now in Toronto, about to leave tomorrow.
I felt like starting out this entry with just some general reflections of my present travelling experiences that I’ve been mulling over in my brain – writing them out helps me to sort of consolidate my own thoughts. This is such a different vibe to travelling in Europe. There are subtle differences in terms of the crowds at hostels, less people on long winded trips (because North America physically don’t let you do it), more British people than in Europe, when you do run into Australians they’re on longer trips. Me deciding to bring a suitcase with me had been a thing of contention for me. My next trip, should there be one, I’ll likely do the backpack on wheels thing. I’d wanted to try to feel as normal as possible here but there are impracticalities – a lot of hostels don’t have elevators for example. Emotionally the experience is different – there is an end point, and there’s sporadic support systems throughout the way. I’ve hardly been in touch with anyone from home – I haven’t heard much at all from friends, not even on Facebook, and so this online support network I’ve built have been proving themselves as being fiercely loyal. My muse hasn’t kicked into gear like I’d hoped – oh well. Big deal. I’m still feeling up in the air about life. The good thing about travelling is that no one judges your story. At home, I sense the judgement – yes, that’s right, I changed my degree and deferred and now I’ve been looking for work and now I can’t find work so I thought I’d go flitting around the world again. A lot of people you meet travelling have similar stories about the travel bug and that intense need to see the world around them, the fear of getting bogged down in the mundanity of life.
In many ways my experience travelling has proved to me in the online sense who are friends and who are acquaintances. The people who know I’m abroad and might be in their area and they haven’t shot through a PM or whatever. Doesn’t exactly make me feel the need to go out of my way to meet them, no matter how much other people swear by their goodness. The people who make the effort to alter their posting habits to cross my path, to come onto Twitter more than maybe they did before, to come into Off Topic threads when they didn’t used to... it means so much to me. It’s lonely here at times, no one to REALLY share it with, and it doesn’t help when you don’t hear from people who you’d normally expect to hear from and when you do it’s rather superficial. Yeah I’m off doing amazing things and seeing the world – doesn’t mean that I don’t crave human interaction.
Anyway. To move on from my musing, to talk about my experience in Philadelphia. So for a first this trip, I was using means other than aircraft to hop between cities – I’ve got a few Megabus trips booked on the east coast and also from Milwaukee – Chicago. Megabus are SUPER cheap – context, is that I think the most expensive date I booked was my bus from Boston to New York City which is on July 5th, a bank holiday this year. It was $13. Originally I hadn’t been sure about Philadelphia. I was looking at my itinerary and shuffling things around – one of the things I was building around was that I had to be in NYC after a particular date because Nel was going away for summer camp for a week. Anyway and I remember posing the question to people with a few possible cities, including Philly, Denver, Salt Lake... I wound up ignoring all the feedback and choosing Philly because Megabus introduced a new route from DC – Philly (previously to get from DC – Philly you could’ve gotten a bus from DC – NYC and then from NYC – Philly) which had a promotional sale and I scored a $1 ticket. Bargain. Part of why Megabus is so cheap is because they don’t have ‘stations’ or facilities in the US. It’s just like a regular bus stop on the side of the street at a designated location. In Washington DC it was in a parking lot, and to the side there was a fancy shade cloth – definitely fancier than the Philly or NYC stations I can now tell you – and a homeless bum on the side of the crowd of people shouting at us all to hurry up or we’ll miss the bus. Anyway, as I was waiting in this parking lot I realised that I didn’t have my guide book with me! I have a Let’s Go USA book which truthfully I’ve hardly looked at – but it’s a nice security blanket to have, most of the cities I’m going to it has a mini map and so worst case scenario if I can’t procure a map straight away upon arrival I could dig out the book to help me navigate to my hostel if necessary.
So we had more emotional tears from me and because I was frantically looking through my bag thinking SURELY I’d just not looked properly and it was on the bottom, as the people stood up from where they were milling around and started to queue up, I was shoved toward the back even though I’d gotten there before most of them. I knew exactly where it would’ve gone – there was this gap between my bed and the sofa in DC and I had knelt down and glanced there but evidently not hard enough. I’m more annoyed with myself than anything – travelling with a mini laptop renders a guidebook pretty meaningless, you can Google just about everything, it’s mainly the map thing but my fingers are crossed that I’ll be able to push through without it. I’ve told myself from the beginning that as long as I don’t lose my wallet, passport or camera, it doesn’t matter. And preferably not my netbook either. Clothes, books – whatever. I can replace it. As was pointed out when I was initially freaking out about the matter on Twitter I could get the hostel to courier it somewhere but I seriously don’t know if the DC hostel would do that sort of thing (they weren’t very... accommodating with that sort of thing) and even if they did, it’s a big thick heavy book and the price it would cost, seriously, it would be cheaper to buy the exact same book again and dress it up identically so I feel like I never lost it.
Anyway so after all that I spent most of the bus ride to Philly from DC stewing – although I did get my first experience of enjoying the novel wifi on board Megabus, and also had a mini flip out when I realised we were going past Baltimore. (Note: where Hairspray is set.) I arrived in Philly and managed to find my way to the hostel. One of the loud British girls who had been in DC had raved about the hostel I was going to and first impressions – it lived up. Apple Hostel is in the HI chain which I’d been dubious about. In Europe, Hostelling International hostels are known for being dowdy, boring, bland. They’ll be clean though, and a lot of cities/smaller towns that don’t have hostels in Europe will have a HI which was nearly always when I stayed in one – when there was no other option. However in the US it seems that HI are different – I’ve got two more booked after Apple, both in NYC and Boston... actually my Chicago one might be HI affiliated too, I can’t quite remember. They are advertised as featuring fun and parties and bar crawls – the opposite of in Europe, where they are more ‘family friendly.’ Apple Hostel is the best hostel I’ve stayed at in North America so far. I wish I’d been in Philly longer just to enjoy the hostel. In an awesome location in a street between Market and Chestnut (two of the main streets) near the river front. It was clean and immaculate – I personally saw staff coming in to do periodic checks of the bathroom in our dorm on probably four occasions. Little things when you’re travelling like lots of power outlets throughout the room, little lamps for each bunk, plenty of space so you can have your suitcase out without making it impossible to walk around. These little things you come to appreciate, once you’ve stayed in a hostel where you’re fighting to be able to charge your camera. There was a comfy lounge, great strong Wifi access, a super cute kitchen and dining area. It was only a few dollars more a night than the shithole in Washington DC. My only gripe is that there was this like, dim censor light in the entry to the room which would only work at night once the lights were turned off (which gets done around 11pm by staff) and it was a strong censor – I had a bed really close to the door and if I rolled over, the light came on. But the concept of the sensor light was fantastic – it was just executed in a way where I was afraid to move haha.
Anyway on day 1 I arrived around maybe 3pm? I took my time settling in because the minute I’d arrived – thunderstorm. Good timing. The hostel staff (including HOTTIE RYAN) assured us when we checked in (a group of us sort of walked in around the same time and had commented to one another how glad we were that we missed the storm) that in Philly it would be fine again in 20 minutes. They were right. Anyway so once it was pretty much fined up I went off for a bit of an explore in the immediate area around the hostel. I love when people think I look so self assured that I must be a local and I get asked for directions. These people pulled me over almost as soon as I hit a main street and I was like, ‘um, I think it’s that way but let’s look at my map (which I’d gotten for free at the hostel) to be sure.’ It was still pretty grey and spitting a bit so I didn’t go too far, just to get a feel for the immediate area. I went to a cafe, hungry because I hadn’t had a proper lunch, ready to have my first Philly Cheesesteak experience. I enjoyed it muchly and I think my body was happy with me that I fed it red meat – I’m weird with red meat, I never really crave it or want it but when I eat it I usually enjoy it a lot, particularly beef – like I’ll usually choose a chicken burger but if I have a beef burger I always really enjoy it. Anyway. Enough about my eating habits.
I went back to the hostel ready for the bar crawl they had planned – I don’t usually get into planned hostel activities but in North America this is only the second hostel that has even ran anything like this –the other was in Vancouver and it was like a dumb trivia night – and it was preluded by free drinks so I was like, count me in. Now, it was a Thursday night and I know Thursday nights often have major drink specials but OH MY GOD. To begin with, the hostel provided hard liquor – like they put out bottles of vodka, gin, rum, bourbon and mixers and it was a free for all. Surprisingly no one was really free for alling – evidently not many Australians were around. At the first bar I paid one dollar, one single dollar, for a bottle of bud light. At the second bar, they had as drink specials cans of beer for SEVENTY FIVE CENTS. If you didn’t want the crappy seventy five cent beer, just about the most expensive beer was two dollars. At the third bar SPIRITS were a dollar. ONE DOLLAR. Some of my university professors talk about ‘I remember back in the day when you could get a rum and coke for a dollar in Surfers Paradise... oh those were the days.’ If I was LUCKY I’d pay $4 for a spirit mixer at home. Average is six or seven dollars, I’ve paid up to $10 some places. SO THIS WAS INSANE. Given tipping culture, someone asked the guy from the hostel, and he said that he wouldn’t put down a dollar for a dollar drink so he’d order two at once and leave a dollar, or like, buy for a friend so they could do the same. EVEN TAKING INTO ACCOUNT TIPPING THIS IS RIDICULOUS. SEVENTY FIVE CENTS FOR BEER. Alcohol is so cheap in the United States; I’d already made this observation in grocery stores so I don’t know why this surprised me so much. And yet Australia evidently has this massive drinking problem... proves that charging more doesn’t do anything to curb the problem. At the hostel the guy had told us to bring no more than $30 and that was if we were planning to have a HUGE night. I was like, um, at home that’s four drinks. One of the bars also had tacos for a dollar. How convenient is that!
Anyone who knows me well knows that sometimes I don’t handle my alcohol well – I’ve had nights where I have nine vodkas and I’m barely feeling it; but sometimes it goes the other way. I guess I haven’t drank in a while (other than a few drinks at Audrey’s which had food among it all) and mixing the vodka and beer (when I don’t even like beer, also) just made it bad. Anyway, I could feel that I wasn’t coping well and it was like, I could keep drinking and just vomit and then not be able to see any of Philly the next day, or I could call it quits. So I called it quits. In typical drinking fashion, I grabbed a slice of pizza and a bottle of water from a place right near the hostel – I’ve no idea how much it cost – where the guy in line behind me got angry at me when he asked if he could have a bite of my pizza and I said no. It was only around midnight when I stumbled into bed.
I did okay the next morning. I let myself sleep in til 9:30; I had a bad headache but Nurofen fixed that. The hostel breakfast was cereal (which they only provide Friday, Saturday and Sunday; how convenient that I was there Friday Saturday morning :)) which I ate some of but then just threw the rest out. I had coffee; and then set out to explore Philly – and about two blocks away was tempted by one of the many, many, many street vendors (think, mini silver caravans; like the pretzel/hotdog vendors in New York City) selling food – a bacon egg and cheese sandwich was calling out to me. MUCH BETTER FOR SLIGHT HANGOVER. With that in my system I was pretty much good to go. I started out just walking around and even though Philadelphia isn’t that big, I was under time pressure and for $5 you can get a hop on hop off ticket for one of the buses which is designed for tourists – it stops at the main tourist stops. So I got that from the visitor information center.
Philly is really trying really hard to be known for more than a Cheesesteak Sandwich, and rightfully so. There’s a lot of history in this relatively small city (at least the city centre isn’t that big comparative to other cities) and for free, they’re willing to share it. Around the tourist spots there are these little ‘story time’ spots with workers/volunteers (not sure which one) there and you can go up and they’ll tell you a historic story about that spot. In the visitor information center there’s people dressed up in... erm... olden day clothing? Haha. And singing songs and telling stories and sort of providing half entertainment half useful historical information. There’s a push for historically related tourism, taking you to the important sites in the context of Philadelphia history on tour buses – both narrated (expensive) and like the one I did (cheap, just taking you there).
I only really had a day in Philly and I honestly didn’t even make it a packed day, but I feel like it gave me a really excellent taste for the city. I went out to Penn’s Landing to have a look at the river, in the area around the information center with the Liberty Bell and the Constitution Center. Generally up that end (between the river and the information center; where my hostel is about in the middle) is the historical district – ‘old town’ – with a lot of the older buildings. I went out as far west as the ‘Free Library’ (I’m honestly not quite certain whether this is relevant in that in the US libraries aren’t free; or that when it was first established it was unique in being free. It’s in a VERY old buildings) which still functions as a library and I went for a wander inside in the older sections and you could just SMELL the history – that musty book smell that if you have an inner geek like me you kind of love. There’s a lot of funky historical type buildings and monuments in that area that I won’t bore you with a recollection of. I then headed to the town hall area which sort of seemed to be like the CBD, a lot of the buildings were new, highrises, with businesspeople in suits rushing about and a Starbucks on every other corner. This is where I got my second Cheesesteak from a street vendor this time and took it to ‘Love Park’ (aka JFK Plaza) called so because there’s this really cute photo spot with like a modern art funky ‘LOVE’ thingy and in the background a view of the fountain and found a corner of shade to eat my lunch. As I was headed back to find the bus stop a random err... less fortunate looking... gentlemen approached me. The United States, in every city I’ve been to, there is a homeless problem. Philly wasn’t bad in the area where my hostel was but on the subway (which I only used getting to and from the Megabus stop and my hostel when I arrived and left Philly) and in this CBD area there were the most prominent population. Sometimes they just ask for money, you look away (and ifyou’re me you feel incredibly guilty every time) or apologise and say you don’t have any cash on you or whatever. Sometimes, if they’re male, they come up and act like they’re hitting on you and then ask for money. This is the worst kind, the ones that get into my space and where I start to clutch to my bag a little more firmly. I’d told myself that next time this happened I’d pretend I like, didn’t speak English. I could say in Japanese ‘do you speak Japanese?’ but it would sound Asian and weird if they were vaguely educated and so I instead thought I’d start to talk in German. (I know about three sentences in German.) I got as far as ‘Sprechen...’ and the guy started to talk to me in German! I was like, oh shit. So then I had to admit that I didn’t speak German, he laughed, and then I said ‘look, sorry, don’t want to talk to you and don’t have any money’ and got up and left.
Another random story about people asking for money is that I’ve used a few times, when I’ve got my luggage with me, at train stations/subway stations. A lot of the time people are asking for money to get on the whatever form of transport it is. I tell them that I’ve just arrived in America and I don’t have any cash on me and if they’d like some Australian coins they can have them. They sort of blink and walk away – this is where I got my bright idea of speaking in German from lol.
To round off the day I finished with a spot of shopping which was mostly unsuccessful (my newfound love Old Navy were having this MASSIVE sale but all the stuff in my size range was gone (typical). I had Cheesesteak for my third time for dinner, for a bit of difference ordering a Chicken Cheesesteak (so, instead of beef it’s chicken...) which my chicken loving self quite enjoyed.
That wraps up the basic gist of Philadelphia...
I felt like starting out this entry with just some general reflections of my present travelling experiences that I’ve been mulling over in my brain – writing them out helps me to sort of consolidate my own thoughts. This is such a different vibe to travelling in Europe. There are subtle differences in terms of the crowds at hostels, less people on long winded trips (because North America physically don’t let you do it), more British people than in Europe, when you do run into Australians they’re on longer trips. Me deciding to bring a suitcase with me had been a thing of contention for me. My next trip, should there be one, I’ll likely do the backpack on wheels thing. I’d wanted to try to feel as normal as possible here but there are impracticalities – a lot of hostels don’t have elevators for example. Emotionally the experience is different – there is an end point, and there’s sporadic support systems throughout the way. I’ve hardly been in touch with anyone from home – I haven’t heard much at all from friends, not even on Facebook, and so this online support network I’ve built have been proving themselves as being fiercely loyal. My muse hasn’t kicked into gear like I’d hoped – oh well. Big deal. I’m still feeling up in the air about life. The good thing about travelling is that no one judges your story. At home, I sense the judgement – yes, that’s right, I changed my degree and deferred and now I’ve been looking for work and now I can’t find work so I thought I’d go flitting around the world again. A lot of people you meet travelling have similar stories about the travel bug and that intense need to see the world around them, the fear of getting bogged down in the mundanity of life.
In many ways my experience travelling has proved to me in the online sense who are friends and who are acquaintances. The people who know I’m abroad and might be in their area and they haven’t shot through a PM or whatever. Doesn’t exactly make me feel the need to go out of my way to meet them, no matter how much other people swear by their goodness. The people who make the effort to alter their posting habits to cross my path, to come onto Twitter more than maybe they did before, to come into Off Topic threads when they didn’t used to... it means so much to me. It’s lonely here at times, no one to REALLY share it with, and it doesn’t help when you don’t hear from people who you’d normally expect to hear from and when you do it’s rather superficial. Yeah I’m off doing amazing things and seeing the world – doesn’t mean that I don’t crave human interaction.
Anyway. To move on from my musing, to talk about my experience in Philadelphia. So for a first this trip, I was using means other than aircraft to hop between cities – I’ve got a few Megabus trips booked on the east coast and also from Milwaukee – Chicago. Megabus are SUPER cheap – context, is that I think the most expensive date I booked was my bus from Boston to New York City which is on July 5th, a bank holiday this year. It was $13. Originally I hadn’t been sure about Philadelphia. I was looking at my itinerary and shuffling things around – one of the things I was building around was that I had to be in NYC after a particular date because Nel was going away for summer camp for a week. Anyway and I remember posing the question to people with a few possible cities, including Philly, Denver, Salt Lake... I wound up ignoring all the feedback and choosing Philly because Megabus introduced a new route from DC – Philly (previously to get from DC – Philly you could’ve gotten a bus from DC – NYC and then from NYC – Philly) which had a promotional sale and I scored a $1 ticket. Bargain. Part of why Megabus is so cheap is because they don’t have ‘stations’ or facilities in the US. It’s just like a regular bus stop on the side of the street at a designated location. In Washington DC it was in a parking lot, and to the side there was a fancy shade cloth – definitely fancier than the Philly or NYC stations I can now tell you – and a homeless bum on the side of the crowd of people shouting at us all to hurry up or we’ll miss the bus. Anyway, as I was waiting in this parking lot I realised that I didn’t have my guide book with me! I have a Let’s Go USA book which truthfully I’ve hardly looked at – but it’s a nice security blanket to have, most of the cities I’m going to it has a mini map and so worst case scenario if I can’t procure a map straight away upon arrival I could dig out the book to help me navigate to my hostel if necessary.
So we had more emotional tears from me and because I was frantically looking through my bag thinking SURELY I’d just not looked properly and it was on the bottom, as the people stood up from where they were milling around and started to queue up, I was shoved toward the back even though I’d gotten there before most of them. I knew exactly where it would’ve gone – there was this gap between my bed and the sofa in DC and I had knelt down and glanced there but evidently not hard enough. I’m more annoyed with myself than anything – travelling with a mini laptop renders a guidebook pretty meaningless, you can Google just about everything, it’s mainly the map thing but my fingers are crossed that I’ll be able to push through without it. I’ve told myself from the beginning that as long as I don’t lose my wallet, passport or camera, it doesn’t matter. And preferably not my netbook either. Clothes, books – whatever. I can replace it. As was pointed out when I was initially freaking out about the matter on Twitter I could get the hostel to courier it somewhere but I seriously don’t know if the DC hostel would do that sort of thing (they weren’t very... accommodating with that sort of thing) and even if they did, it’s a big thick heavy book and the price it would cost, seriously, it would be cheaper to buy the exact same book again and dress it up identically so I feel like I never lost it.
Anyway so after all that I spent most of the bus ride to Philly from DC stewing – although I did get my first experience of enjoying the novel wifi on board Megabus, and also had a mini flip out when I realised we were going past Baltimore. (Note: where Hairspray is set.) I arrived in Philly and managed to find my way to the hostel. One of the loud British girls who had been in DC had raved about the hostel I was going to and first impressions – it lived up. Apple Hostel is in the HI chain which I’d been dubious about. In Europe, Hostelling International hostels are known for being dowdy, boring, bland. They’ll be clean though, and a lot of cities/smaller towns that don’t have hostels in Europe will have a HI which was nearly always when I stayed in one – when there was no other option. However in the US it seems that HI are different – I’ve got two more booked after Apple, both in NYC and Boston... actually my Chicago one might be HI affiliated too, I can’t quite remember. They are advertised as featuring fun and parties and bar crawls – the opposite of in Europe, where they are more ‘family friendly.’ Apple Hostel is the best hostel I’ve stayed at in North America so far. I wish I’d been in Philly longer just to enjoy the hostel. In an awesome location in a street between Market and Chestnut (two of the main streets) near the river front. It was clean and immaculate – I personally saw staff coming in to do periodic checks of the bathroom in our dorm on probably four occasions. Little things when you’re travelling like lots of power outlets throughout the room, little lamps for each bunk, plenty of space so you can have your suitcase out without making it impossible to walk around. These little things you come to appreciate, once you’ve stayed in a hostel where you’re fighting to be able to charge your camera. There was a comfy lounge, great strong Wifi access, a super cute kitchen and dining area. It was only a few dollars more a night than the shithole in Washington DC. My only gripe is that there was this like, dim censor light in the entry to the room which would only work at night once the lights were turned off (which gets done around 11pm by staff) and it was a strong censor – I had a bed really close to the door and if I rolled over, the light came on. But the concept of the sensor light was fantastic – it was just executed in a way where I was afraid to move haha.
Anyway on day 1 I arrived around maybe 3pm? I took my time settling in because the minute I’d arrived – thunderstorm. Good timing. The hostel staff (including HOTTIE RYAN) assured us when we checked in (a group of us sort of walked in around the same time and had commented to one another how glad we were that we missed the storm) that in Philly it would be fine again in 20 minutes. They were right. Anyway so once it was pretty much fined up I went off for a bit of an explore in the immediate area around the hostel. I love when people think I look so self assured that I must be a local and I get asked for directions. These people pulled me over almost as soon as I hit a main street and I was like, ‘um, I think it’s that way but let’s look at my map (which I’d gotten for free at the hostel) to be sure.’ It was still pretty grey and spitting a bit so I didn’t go too far, just to get a feel for the immediate area. I went to a cafe, hungry because I hadn’t had a proper lunch, ready to have my first Philly Cheesesteak experience. I enjoyed it muchly and I think my body was happy with me that I fed it red meat – I’m weird with red meat, I never really crave it or want it but when I eat it I usually enjoy it a lot, particularly beef – like I’ll usually choose a chicken burger but if I have a beef burger I always really enjoy it. Anyway. Enough about my eating habits.
I went back to the hostel ready for the bar crawl they had planned – I don’t usually get into planned hostel activities but in North America this is only the second hostel that has even ran anything like this –the other was in Vancouver and it was like a dumb trivia night – and it was preluded by free drinks so I was like, count me in. Now, it was a Thursday night and I know Thursday nights often have major drink specials but OH MY GOD. To begin with, the hostel provided hard liquor – like they put out bottles of vodka, gin, rum, bourbon and mixers and it was a free for all. Surprisingly no one was really free for alling – evidently not many Australians were around. At the first bar I paid one dollar, one single dollar, for a bottle of bud light. At the second bar, they had as drink specials cans of beer for SEVENTY FIVE CENTS. If you didn’t want the crappy seventy five cent beer, just about the most expensive beer was two dollars. At the third bar SPIRITS were a dollar. ONE DOLLAR. Some of my university professors talk about ‘I remember back in the day when you could get a rum and coke for a dollar in Surfers Paradise... oh those were the days.’ If I was LUCKY I’d pay $4 for a spirit mixer at home. Average is six or seven dollars, I’ve paid up to $10 some places. SO THIS WAS INSANE. Given tipping culture, someone asked the guy from the hostel, and he said that he wouldn’t put down a dollar for a dollar drink so he’d order two at once and leave a dollar, or like, buy for a friend so they could do the same. EVEN TAKING INTO ACCOUNT TIPPING THIS IS RIDICULOUS. SEVENTY FIVE CENTS FOR BEER. Alcohol is so cheap in the United States; I’d already made this observation in grocery stores so I don’t know why this surprised me so much. And yet Australia evidently has this massive drinking problem... proves that charging more doesn’t do anything to curb the problem. At the hostel the guy had told us to bring no more than $30 and that was if we were planning to have a HUGE night. I was like, um, at home that’s four drinks. One of the bars also had tacos for a dollar. How convenient is that!
Anyone who knows me well knows that sometimes I don’t handle my alcohol well – I’ve had nights where I have nine vodkas and I’m barely feeling it; but sometimes it goes the other way. I guess I haven’t drank in a while (other than a few drinks at Audrey’s which had food among it all) and mixing the vodka and beer (when I don’t even like beer, also) just made it bad. Anyway, I could feel that I wasn’t coping well and it was like, I could keep drinking and just vomit and then not be able to see any of Philly the next day, or I could call it quits. So I called it quits. In typical drinking fashion, I grabbed a slice of pizza and a bottle of water from a place right near the hostel – I’ve no idea how much it cost – where the guy in line behind me got angry at me when he asked if he could have a bite of my pizza and I said no. It was only around midnight when I stumbled into bed.
I did okay the next morning. I let myself sleep in til 9:30; I had a bad headache but Nurofen fixed that. The hostel breakfast was cereal (which they only provide Friday, Saturday and Sunday; how convenient that I was there Friday Saturday morning :)) which I ate some of but then just threw the rest out. I had coffee; and then set out to explore Philly – and about two blocks away was tempted by one of the many, many, many street vendors (think, mini silver caravans; like the pretzel/hotdog vendors in New York City) selling food – a bacon egg and cheese sandwich was calling out to me. MUCH BETTER FOR SLIGHT HANGOVER. With that in my system I was pretty much good to go. I started out just walking around and even though Philadelphia isn’t that big, I was under time pressure and for $5 you can get a hop on hop off ticket for one of the buses which is designed for tourists – it stops at the main tourist stops. So I got that from the visitor information center.
Philly is really trying really hard to be known for more than a Cheesesteak Sandwich, and rightfully so. There’s a lot of history in this relatively small city (at least the city centre isn’t that big comparative to other cities) and for free, they’re willing to share it. Around the tourist spots there are these little ‘story time’ spots with workers/volunteers (not sure which one) there and you can go up and they’ll tell you a historic story about that spot. In the visitor information center there’s people dressed up in... erm... olden day clothing? Haha. And singing songs and telling stories and sort of providing half entertainment half useful historical information. There’s a push for historically related tourism, taking you to the important sites in the context of Philadelphia history on tour buses – both narrated (expensive) and like the one I did (cheap, just taking you there).
I only really had a day in Philly and I honestly didn’t even make it a packed day, but I feel like it gave me a really excellent taste for the city. I went out to Penn’s Landing to have a look at the river, in the area around the information center with the Liberty Bell and the Constitution Center. Generally up that end (between the river and the information center; where my hostel is about in the middle) is the historical district – ‘old town’ – with a lot of the older buildings. I went out as far west as the ‘Free Library’ (I’m honestly not quite certain whether this is relevant in that in the US libraries aren’t free; or that when it was first established it was unique in being free. It’s in a VERY old buildings) which still functions as a library and I went for a wander inside in the older sections and you could just SMELL the history – that musty book smell that if you have an inner geek like me you kind of love. There’s a lot of funky historical type buildings and monuments in that area that I won’t bore you with a recollection of. I then headed to the town hall area which sort of seemed to be like the CBD, a lot of the buildings were new, highrises, with businesspeople in suits rushing about and a Starbucks on every other corner. This is where I got my second Cheesesteak from a street vendor this time and took it to ‘Love Park’ (aka JFK Plaza) called so because there’s this really cute photo spot with like a modern art funky ‘LOVE’ thingy and in the background a view of the fountain and found a corner of shade to eat my lunch. As I was headed back to find the bus stop a random err... less fortunate looking... gentlemen approached me. The United States, in every city I’ve been to, there is a homeless problem. Philly wasn’t bad in the area where my hostel was but on the subway (which I only used getting to and from the Megabus stop and my hostel when I arrived and left Philly) and in this CBD area there were the most prominent population. Sometimes they just ask for money, you look away (and ifyou’re me you feel incredibly guilty every time) or apologise and say you don’t have any cash on you or whatever. Sometimes, if they’re male, they come up and act like they’re hitting on you and then ask for money. This is the worst kind, the ones that get into my space and where I start to clutch to my bag a little more firmly. I’d told myself that next time this happened I’d pretend I like, didn’t speak English. I could say in Japanese ‘do you speak Japanese?’ but it would sound Asian and weird if they were vaguely educated and so I instead thought I’d start to talk in German. (I know about three sentences in German.) I got as far as ‘Sprechen...’ and the guy started to talk to me in German! I was like, oh shit. So then I had to admit that I didn’t speak German, he laughed, and then I said ‘look, sorry, don’t want to talk to you and don’t have any money’ and got up and left.
Another random story about people asking for money is that I’ve used a few times, when I’ve got my luggage with me, at train stations/subway stations. A lot of the time people are asking for money to get on the whatever form of transport it is. I tell them that I’ve just arrived in America and I don’t have any cash on me and if they’d like some Australian coins they can have them. They sort of blink and walk away – this is where I got my bright idea of speaking in German from lol.
To round off the day I finished with a spot of shopping which was mostly unsuccessful (my newfound love Old Navy were having this MASSIVE sale but all the stuff in my size range was gone (typical). I had Cheesesteak for my third time for dinner, for a bit of difference ordering a Chicken Cheesesteak (so, instead of beef it’s chicken...) which my chicken loving self quite enjoyed.
That wraps up the basic gist of Philadelphia...
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Obama-ville.
I must have like PMS or something. I feel like since I left Orlando I’ve just been really moody and sensitive. I mean, fair enough that when I was dropped off at the Orlando Airport that I cried – best case scenario is that Jess gets to take a mini vacation in the next month and I see her again – we have hypothetical plans for said meet up but it isn’t set in stone and it’s dependant on a few other things. Or perhaps one day I’ll come back to the US. But the reality is that I might never see her or any of the people who I meet again. That’s the reality, I’m not trying to be negative, I’m being realistic. I might go home, get settled into ‘real life’ and it just might not happen. It’s not like farewelling a family member or a friend who lives a short flight away. I think it warrants being sad about. But then when I arrived in Washington DC, I was once again feeling really, really emotional. I got on the bus that was to take me from Dulles Airport into the city and it was packed and people were being really rude and ignorant and had all their stuff in the aisle and I had to like, LIFT my suitcase above their stuff in the space of the tiny bus aisle and I felt like saying ‘MOVE YOUR FUCKING SHIT, I’M TRYING TO FIND A SPACE TO STAND IN HERE.’ I literally was teary – yes I know, not really a big deal, I had to stand, not the first time I’ve done it and won’t be the last. It’s not like I’d typically get upset over this sort of thing! And then I was dropped off at the metro station and had to get the metro north a few stops and it’s the kind where you load money onto your ticket and you use it when you get on and when you get off and it takes off the requisite amount and it didn’t work and I just wanted to find my freaking hostel and get inside because I was hot and tired and hungry and pissy. And the lady from the metro station asked ‘where did you come from?’ meaning what station – to work out how much money I should have on there – and in my moment of teariness I just could NOT remember what the name of the station had been and I said tearfully ‘Australia! I don’t know!’
Finally, I got out of the damn station and found the hostel, it was a few blocks away. I had to wait a while to get checked in because there was a bit of a back up but that was okay – I was sitting inside on a couch. Check in was fine, was taken to my bunk – bottom bunk, yay! – and I was able to get my laptop hooked up with the wireless to use Google Maps to find the nearest grocery store. The hostel was in a visually really cute sort of historic area, lots of old buildings, that style where you go up some steps to get in the front door and then there’s a lower level which is at street level, you know? I gather it is also in the Hispanic/Latin area; the nearest grocery store turned out to be, like an international foods place (read: kinda weird food). The whole hostel was really hot – it had these mini cooling units set out sporadically where if you’re like RIGHT in front of it then you’re cool but anywhere else and it hardly hits you. The dorm room was insanely hot and I was on the opposite side of the room from the tiny cooler. Thank Goodness I was super tired otherwise I never would’ve gotten to sleep.
I should prelude my round up of the things that I saw/visited in DC by highlighting to Americans/British people studying in America reading that my knowledge of American History and politics is pretty minimal. I know that Obama is the head honcho, I know that George was the first head honcho, my knowledge of Watergate is from seeing the movie Dick, I mostly recognised things in DC from the movie Forrest Gump. You recognise things but you don’t quite understand the extent of their importance in history.
I started out my morning by getting the metro to Smithsonian station, where I wandered along The Mall where all of the Smithsonian Museums are. I took some photos at the Smithsonian Castle, then headed to the Air & Space Museum which is evidently the world’s most visited museum. I figure hey, if it’s free... why not? I don’t know. I’m not really into museum style learning. You could spend a whole day in one of these museums if you were actually going to walk through every bit and read every little piece of information and take it all in. I did the speedy tour – I took some photos of cool looking things, found the section on planets to see what they had to say about Pluto (so sad. I’m still upset. Pluto is a real planet, dammit!) and that was pretty much it. I walked back in the other direction along the Mall to the American History museum and spent a little more time there but still didn’t look at everything in detail. It was soooo crowded – there were zillions of like, school age groups and just walking through was giving me Wizarding World flashbacks. I had lunch in the cafeteria and paid a ridiculous price for a cheeseburger (it was nice eating beef. I’ve been eating chicken chicken and more chicken) and a cookie and diet coke.
My next stop was the White House. Embarrassingly I saw the Treasury Building first and I thought that was it and I was like, um, where’s all the security and stuff? Then got closer and could see the sign lol. I kept going and THEN I found the White House. My ‘that’s it?’ reaction occurred from the south side where you’re really, really far away. I set out to check out the north view – stopping at a Starbucks on the way (I shall claim it to be the Starbucks that Obama would go to) to not only get a cold drink but to just escape from the heat for a little while. The northern view is more impressive, I must say. After bidding Obama farewell, I spent the afternoon literally wandering around in the Penn Quarter, checking out things like the Ford Theater, various government buildings, the Old Post Office (where, seriously, to get into a crappy little food court I had to have my bag go through an X-Ray scanner. I’ve never been bag checked so many times in one day before.) By this point I was EXHAUSTED and I had a lot still planned for the day – the main thing being that at 6pm I was going on a walking tour. So I decided to go to the park near the Washington Monument across the road from where the tour was leaving and chill. I sat on a bench doing nothing but people watching and listening to music for 30 minutes, then I laid down on the grass and I think I actually cat napped. My feet were grateful for this more than an hour of downtime.
The walking tour was akin to those that I did in Europe; you don’t pay anything upfront, you’re ‘morally’ meant to tip but I suppose how much you tip is really up to you. In Europe people paid between 5 – 20 in whatever currency it was. Anyway, for me, I really wanted to do this tour because if I went and looked at a lot of these historical monuments on my own it would be like ‘oh okay, so it’s a big stone thingy high in the sky. Awesome. Snap. Next.’ The walking tour goes for about two hours but in that time you only over just over a mile – you stop, the guy talks about places, you’re walking fairly slowly – it’s family friendly, it’s advertised as being fine for kids. Through the course of the walking tour not only did the guide, Christopher, talk about the actual monuments that we visited but when we could see things like the White House from afar he talked about it, also the Capitol and Smithsonian and just generally about DC and its history. We physically went to the Washington Monument, the WWII Memorial, the Vietnam Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial... I know I’m leaving something out. The sky had been darkening throughout the tour and just as we arrived at the final stop at the Lincoln memorial it started to pour with massive thundering going on as well. Everyone who had been in the vicinity of the monument being a tourist clambered up the stairs and sheltered in the undercover area at the top where the noise was deafening between all the talking, shouting, tour guides trying to control their groups and the rain and thunder. I bid farewell to Christopher giving him $5 (probably a really minimal tip but I saw a guy with a family of 4 give him $10 so I felt better) because there’d been a break in the storm. The walk to the closest metro wasn’t short – surprising that they’d actually plan this tour to end in a random place away from public transport – but it took me through the cute area of George Washington University and then I had the pleasure of boarding the metro at a station called Foggy Bottom.
By the time I got back to my hostel it was after 9pm and I was starving and proof of how starving I was is evident in that my two minute noodles were DELICIOUS and I really don’t particularly like two minute noodles – I don’t even know why I’d bought them the afternoon before, really. The next morning I set out to the metro station taking a different route to try and find this other grocery store I’d Googled – wayyy better than the other random one. Seriously, I don’t know if Australia is expensive or if the US is just cheap. My biggest weakness in any grocery store is the bakery department. In the US, they have like a whole section with donuts and pastries going at like 60c each. RIDICULOUS. In Australia, they’d be like $2 to get a single one. Anyway so yes, weakness + really cheap = me buying food that I really don’t need but that I just want and it’s like ‘shit, for 60c, why not?!’ Breakfast in hand, I headed for the Capitol area, where I went to the Library of Congress (one of the most ornate buildings I’ve ever been in; I think the only more spectacular building was the Palace in Bucharest) and to take some photos from the outside of the United States Supreme Court and the Capitol.
I got back on the metro to spend the rest of my day in another state, to be technical – in Virginia, just over the river. I started out at the Arlington Cemetery, which I hadn’t really heard of but Jess had recommended and then I saw it in my guidebook and so I figured why not. The grounds are really huge and to be honest I was having a lazy day – my feet were already sore, my knees were sore, my thighs were sore – so I paid $7 to go on the little train thing that takes you around the massive grounds and stops at the main locations and narrates other ones along the way. I wasn’t going to be caring enough to go and walk around and look at every person of notes grave site so this thing was pretty much perfect, taking me to the two main things that I wanted to see – being the burial place of JFK and his family; and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. JFK’s was quite spectacular with like, a flame thingy and the eeriness was particularly poignant – people are chatting and talking and then they go past the sign that says to be respectful and quiet and they actually pay attention to it.
The Tomb of the Unknowns is visited mostly for the Changing of the Guard which occurs every half hour – hour depending on the time of day/season. The Tomb is guarded 24/7 in all weather and the whole situation is very dramatic and taken very seriously, guarded by real trained military in a proper ritual ceremony. From a few places around the cemetery there were pretty views of DC, I guess it’s a bit more elevated, but unfortunately it was kinda hazy so my photos didn’t really turn out well :(
After leaving Arlington Cemetary I headed to the Pentagon – I should say, I TRIED to. I got out at Pentagon Station and was met by signs telling me that photography is not allowed, with security guards everywhere. You can’t go in unless you’ve prebooked a tour. There is like a Pentagon Memorial there from 911 but there was all this security going on and I couldn’t get through the way you had to go to get to it so I don’t know what the hell was going on but I didn’t care enough to try and make it happen and instead made my way straight back down to the metro to go to the next station, Pentagon City – which essentially is a mall. I had my first Panda Express experience and yes I had the orange chicken which was fantastic. The mall itself was just a mall, really. I had Starbucks before I left making it a rather expensive trip to attempt to look at the Pentagon.
A part of me thinks I should’ve done a bit more research and then perhaps my time in DC would’ve held more meaning, in a wider historical context. I still really enjoyed it – I know enough and I’m generally cultured enough to understand the importance of the things I was seeing and the walking tour was a highlight, I guess because I really was provided with the sort of information that I like to hear – just like how in Europe all of my New Europe walking tours were city highlights for me. Walking through the streets near the White House and the Capitol I felt very... insignificant. These men and women hold such wider power. For all I know, the guy who ordered at Starbucks before me is some highly important person in the Obama administration and he’s responsible for some policy which will affect not only the United States but the wider globe. I enjoy the concept of making it all more real – when I was in London and they pointed out where Charles and the family live when they’re around, it was a case of taking the unreal and turning it into something more tangible, which I greatly appreciate.
I wish I’d had the chance to go out in DC but there really didn’t seem to be much of a party culture at all; even at the hostel people were sitting around drinking beer but not really going out. A couple of British girls I’d been chatting with, they went out on my last night and they said that everyone was looking at them like ‘why are you dressed up, where are you going?’ as though going out is an abnormal thing to do. It would’ve been cool to go to a bar near the White House and have a cocktail and think that I’m drinking with Obama’s buddies.
Next stop after Washington was Philadelphia – I’m finishing this entry on the bus leaving Philly. So hopefully I can catch up in the hours ahead. :)
Finally, I got out of the damn station and found the hostel, it was a few blocks away. I had to wait a while to get checked in because there was a bit of a back up but that was okay – I was sitting inside on a couch. Check in was fine, was taken to my bunk – bottom bunk, yay! – and I was able to get my laptop hooked up with the wireless to use Google Maps to find the nearest grocery store. The hostel was in a visually really cute sort of historic area, lots of old buildings, that style where you go up some steps to get in the front door and then there’s a lower level which is at street level, you know? I gather it is also in the Hispanic/Latin area; the nearest grocery store turned out to be, like an international foods place (read: kinda weird food). The whole hostel was really hot – it had these mini cooling units set out sporadically where if you’re like RIGHT in front of it then you’re cool but anywhere else and it hardly hits you. The dorm room was insanely hot and I was on the opposite side of the room from the tiny cooler. Thank Goodness I was super tired otherwise I never would’ve gotten to sleep.
I should prelude my round up of the things that I saw/visited in DC by highlighting to Americans/British people studying in America reading that my knowledge of American History and politics is pretty minimal. I know that Obama is the head honcho, I know that George was the first head honcho, my knowledge of Watergate is from seeing the movie Dick, I mostly recognised things in DC from the movie Forrest Gump. You recognise things but you don’t quite understand the extent of their importance in history.
I started out my morning by getting the metro to Smithsonian station, where I wandered along The Mall where all of the Smithsonian Museums are. I took some photos at the Smithsonian Castle, then headed to the Air & Space Museum which is evidently the world’s most visited museum. I figure hey, if it’s free... why not? I don’t know. I’m not really into museum style learning. You could spend a whole day in one of these museums if you were actually going to walk through every bit and read every little piece of information and take it all in. I did the speedy tour – I took some photos of cool looking things, found the section on planets to see what they had to say about Pluto (so sad. I’m still upset. Pluto is a real planet, dammit!) and that was pretty much it. I walked back in the other direction along the Mall to the American History museum and spent a little more time there but still didn’t look at everything in detail. It was soooo crowded – there were zillions of like, school age groups and just walking through was giving me Wizarding World flashbacks. I had lunch in the cafeteria and paid a ridiculous price for a cheeseburger (it was nice eating beef. I’ve been eating chicken chicken and more chicken) and a cookie and diet coke.
My next stop was the White House. Embarrassingly I saw the Treasury Building first and I thought that was it and I was like, um, where’s all the security and stuff? Then got closer and could see the sign lol. I kept going and THEN I found the White House. My ‘that’s it?’ reaction occurred from the south side where you’re really, really far away. I set out to check out the north view – stopping at a Starbucks on the way (I shall claim it to be the Starbucks that Obama would go to) to not only get a cold drink but to just escape from the heat for a little while. The northern view is more impressive, I must say. After bidding Obama farewell, I spent the afternoon literally wandering around in the Penn Quarter, checking out things like the Ford Theater, various government buildings, the Old Post Office (where, seriously, to get into a crappy little food court I had to have my bag go through an X-Ray scanner. I’ve never been bag checked so many times in one day before.) By this point I was EXHAUSTED and I had a lot still planned for the day – the main thing being that at 6pm I was going on a walking tour. So I decided to go to the park near the Washington Monument across the road from where the tour was leaving and chill. I sat on a bench doing nothing but people watching and listening to music for 30 minutes, then I laid down on the grass and I think I actually cat napped. My feet were grateful for this more than an hour of downtime.
The walking tour was akin to those that I did in Europe; you don’t pay anything upfront, you’re ‘morally’ meant to tip but I suppose how much you tip is really up to you. In Europe people paid between 5 – 20 in whatever currency it was. Anyway, for me, I really wanted to do this tour because if I went and looked at a lot of these historical monuments on my own it would be like ‘oh okay, so it’s a big stone thingy high in the sky. Awesome. Snap. Next.’ The walking tour goes for about two hours but in that time you only over just over a mile – you stop, the guy talks about places, you’re walking fairly slowly – it’s family friendly, it’s advertised as being fine for kids. Through the course of the walking tour not only did the guide, Christopher, talk about the actual monuments that we visited but when we could see things like the White House from afar he talked about it, also the Capitol and Smithsonian and just generally about DC and its history. We physically went to the Washington Monument, the WWII Memorial, the Vietnam Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial... I know I’m leaving something out. The sky had been darkening throughout the tour and just as we arrived at the final stop at the Lincoln memorial it started to pour with massive thundering going on as well. Everyone who had been in the vicinity of the monument being a tourist clambered up the stairs and sheltered in the undercover area at the top where the noise was deafening between all the talking, shouting, tour guides trying to control their groups and the rain and thunder. I bid farewell to Christopher giving him $5 (probably a really minimal tip but I saw a guy with a family of 4 give him $10 so I felt better) because there’d been a break in the storm. The walk to the closest metro wasn’t short – surprising that they’d actually plan this tour to end in a random place away from public transport – but it took me through the cute area of George Washington University and then I had the pleasure of boarding the metro at a station called Foggy Bottom.
By the time I got back to my hostel it was after 9pm and I was starving and proof of how starving I was is evident in that my two minute noodles were DELICIOUS and I really don’t particularly like two minute noodles – I don’t even know why I’d bought them the afternoon before, really. The next morning I set out to the metro station taking a different route to try and find this other grocery store I’d Googled – wayyy better than the other random one. Seriously, I don’t know if Australia is expensive or if the US is just cheap. My biggest weakness in any grocery store is the bakery department. In the US, they have like a whole section with donuts and pastries going at like 60c each. RIDICULOUS. In Australia, they’d be like $2 to get a single one. Anyway so yes, weakness + really cheap = me buying food that I really don’t need but that I just want and it’s like ‘shit, for 60c, why not?!’ Breakfast in hand, I headed for the Capitol area, where I went to the Library of Congress (one of the most ornate buildings I’ve ever been in; I think the only more spectacular building was the Palace in Bucharest) and to take some photos from the outside of the United States Supreme Court and the Capitol.
I got back on the metro to spend the rest of my day in another state, to be technical – in Virginia, just over the river. I started out at the Arlington Cemetery, which I hadn’t really heard of but Jess had recommended and then I saw it in my guidebook and so I figured why not. The grounds are really huge and to be honest I was having a lazy day – my feet were already sore, my knees were sore, my thighs were sore – so I paid $7 to go on the little train thing that takes you around the massive grounds and stops at the main locations and narrates other ones along the way. I wasn’t going to be caring enough to go and walk around and look at every person of notes grave site so this thing was pretty much perfect, taking me to the two main things that I wanted to see – being the burial place of JFK and his family; and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. JFK’s was quite spectacular with like, a flame thingy and the eeriness was particularly poignant – people are chatting and talking and then they go past the sign that says to be respectful and quiet and they actually pay attention to it.
The Tomb of the Unknowns is visited mostly for the Changing of the Guard which occurs every half hour – hour depending on the time of day/season. The Tomb is guarded 24/7 in all weather and the whole situation is very dramatic and taken very seriously, guarded by real trained military in a proper ritual ceremony. From a few places around the cemetery there were pretty views of DC, I guess it’s a bit more elevated, but unfortunately it was kinda hazy so my photos didn’t really turn out well :(
After leaving Arlington Cemetary I headed to the Pentagon – I should say, I TRIED to. I got out at Pentagon Station and was met by signs telling me that photography is not allowed, with security guards everywhere. You can’t go in unless you’ve prebooked a tour. There is like a Pentagon Memorial there from 911 but there was all this security going on and I couldn’t get through the way you had to go to get to it so I don’t know what the hell was going on but I didn’t care enough to try and make it happen and instead made my way straight back down to the metro to go to the next station, Pentagon City – which essentially is a mall. I had my first Panda Express experience and yes I had the orange chicken which was fantastic. The mall itself was just a mall, really. I had Starbucks before I left making it a rather expensive trip to attempt to look at the Pentagon.
A part of me thinks I should’ve done a bit more research and then perhaps my time in DC would’ve held more meaning, in a wider historical context. I still really enjoyed it – I know enough and I’m generally cultured enough to understand the importance of the things I was seeing and the walking tour was a highlight, I guess because I really was provided with the sort of information that I like to hear – just like how in Europe all of my New Europe walking tours were city highlights for me. Walking through the streets near the White House and the Capitol I felt very... insignificant. These men and women hold such wider power. For all I know, the guy who ordered at Starbucks before me is some highly important person in the Obama administration and he’s responsible for some policy which will affect not only the United States but the wider globe. I enjoy the concept of making it all more real – when I was in London and they pointed out where Charles and the family live when they’re around, it was a case of taking the unreal and turning it into something more tangible, which I greatly appreciate.
I wish I’d had the chance to go out in DC but there really didn’t seem to be much of a party culture at all; even at the hostel people were sitting around drinking beer but not really going out. A couple of British girls I’d been chatting with, they went out on my last night and they said that everyone was looking at them like ‘why are you dressed up, where are you going?’ as though going out is an abnormal thing to do. It would’ve been cool to go to a bar near the White House and have a cocktail and think that I’m drinking with Obama’s buddies.
Next stop after Washington was Philadelphia – I’m finishing this entry on the bus leaving Philly. So hopefully I can catch up in the hours ahead. :)
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Where dreams come true: Orlando, Florida
Florida is one of the states of the United States which I think non-Americans have a little more knowledge of – even if it is very limited. Spring break, CSI: Miami, Theme Park Central, the beach, old people retiring in Florida. It all doesn’t really seem to mesh logically at all; and yet this is the outside perception. Two of my closest online friends have been living in Florida, when I originally booked my trip the hope was to meet both but life intervened and didn’t want both meetings to happen. That’s life – I bitched and moaned and then all I could do was move on – complaining wasn’t going to solve anything or make anyone feel better. So by the time that it came to booking specifics, I knew that Orlando, Florida was an essential destination. My friendship with Jess sprung up kind of randomly, really. We’d both been around on Fan Forum, specifically at f251, for a while and exchanged occasional PM’s and what not, and then suddenly the PMing was all the time and it became AIMing and then next thing I knew, I was booking this trip to the US to include a stop in Orlando and in fact Orlando was pretty much a ‘it must happen regardless of the prices of flights’ sort of thing.
Jess has been this endless source of support for the longest time, in ‘the fandom’, in my normal life, in the lead up to my trip in a trip planning capacity. And I was nervous but excited to meet her (and so I started singing a song about being nervous but excited – people just stared at me! There was zero choreography, ZERO!) because for me it’s an even bigger deal meeting the people who I’m close to online. Worst case scenario is taking someone who you adore online, meeting them in real life and not clicking and then it’s all just muddled and not good. With Jess – at least from my perspective – the worries were entirely paranoid and ridiculous. From the moment meeting her outside the Orlando International Airport to the moment of departure I felt nothing but really happy to be in her presence. I landed around 7pm and so by the time that we went to grab dinner (my first experience at Chilli’s) and went back to her place that was pretty much night 1 completed.
We had two very specific days planned out – one being Islands of Adventure at Universal on Friday for the opening of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter; the other being Magic Kingdom which we decided would be best to attend on Sunday, to space out the theme parks. I’d talked about wanting to go to a Floridian beach and we tossed around other ideas but by the time we got going on Thursday (this being June 17) I decided that I’d rather just stick to her local area for a look see – we had a HUGE day planned for Friday, wanting to arrive at the park REALLY early. We went to First Watch for breakfast (yum!) and then I was taken on a tour of UCF (The University of Central Florida) where I was really fascinated by Greek Row and looking at all the sorority/fraternity houses. After the UCF tour we then went and did a little shopping – I’m officially an Old Navy addict, just so you know, especially their sale items. The standard Orlando thunderstorm of the afternoon hit and so we went back to chill at Jess’s for a while, and went back out for dinner later on at an Italian restaurant. We’d had plans to start our movie marathon but it just didn’t happen – we both got online and this is what happens when you get two moderators who are obsessed with a blue eyed man who is in Maui... we got distracted lol. We’d also planned to try to be asleep REALLY early but also, that didn’t happen – we’re both late night people, so even with plans to wake up at 4am, we were awake after midnight.
Yes, you read right, plans to be awake that early. When I was trip planning, I was looking into the Orlando theme parks and I realised that the Harry park was opening when I’d be in the country and when it came to booking my itinerary, it actually worked out pretty nicely. Harry Potter fans are hardcore, we knew that being there early was critical. And so, a brief nap later and we were stumbling out of bed, forcing ourselves to get going. We were aiming to arrive at Islands by 5:30am. We were pretty much on schedule – so was everyone else in the universe. I’m no stranger to the sitting around all day for a fangirl type experience thing, but never before have I seen so many people awake and going at 5:30 in the morning – and we were probably, like, a thousand people back from the front or something like that. It started out just being this MASS of people waiting outside at City Walk. There was no logic, no queueing, no barriers. Basically I was prepared for stampede when they opened things up. The park wasn’t due to open til 10, the ribbon cutting ceremony was at 9am and part of why we had wanted to arrive so early was in the hope that the first however many people would get to attend the ribbon cutting. It wasn’t completely light when they started letting people through to have their tickets checked and what not, and then it was this stampede of people toward the Wizarding World, taking the longest route possible throughout the park. We then wound up stationed in another queue for a few hours. Masses of people on the path sitting around uncomfortably trying to work out what was going on. Between different people around us going to talk to staff members, we deduced that we were in ‘group 3.’ There was a group who was in for the Today Show taping/the ceremony – to this day I’m not quite sure if these were only like VIP guests or if there were general people who were hardcore and arrived at 1am there. They’d get let in, then group 2 (who were somehow queued up from a different direction) and then our mob. I realised only at this point that being the dumbass I was, when I’d taken my memory card out of my camera the night before to check something on my computer, I hadn’t put it back in. Thank freaking God that Jess brought her camera, she’d briefly contemplated not bothering and just relying on mine. We were both on Twitter following things – learning that evidently the queue behind us was snaking throughout the whole park. We were being told that we’d get in around 11am, 11:30am but we were let in a lot earlier than that. We could hear the ceremony going on, with cheers and screaming and stuff. Group 2 started to be let in (we could see them) creating a mosh pit because of course we all stood up and surged forward in anticipation; someone starting to lead a ‘let us in’ chant. Amusingly I heard a guy behind me read a Tweet I’d made out loud haha – I’d been using a #wwohp tag. And then finally, they let us in.
I don’t think I can explain the surreal feeling of first entering The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. You literally feel like you’ve been transported into the series. It is just so... it’s so intricate! Every nook and cranny of the architectural design. We were walking through Hogsmeade in awe heading toward Hogwarts castle – which also happens to be the flagship ride. We got into the queue; it was healthy but not insane – outside people were talking about how they’d heard the queue for Hogwarts was going to be up to 5 hours. The majority of the queue you’re being ‘entertained’ by the walk – you’re walking through Hogwarts castle, literally, there’s stuff going on around you on all the walls and everything. The ride itself is seriously the best ride I’d ever been on anywhere. I... a part of me wants to be super specific but another part just wants everyone to go experience it and to plan your lives around going at some point.
The gift shop that you walk out into after the ride was insanely packed with people fawning over merchandise (Filch’s Emporium) and we fought out way out to head toward The Dragon Challenge which is evidently just a remake of an old rollercoaster – the exact some coaster just with different decorations – but for me it was new. I was annoyed – it was Goblet of Fire based, there were signs and stuff with like Go Krum, Go Fleur, Go Harry and NOTHING for Cedric – HELLO?!?! I mean, Rob Pattinson bias aside, Cedric is SUCH an important part of Goblet of Fire! The rollercoaster itself was really awesome though. The final rollercoaster was like a kiddie coaster, the Hippogriff something or other and you get to go outside of Hagrid’s hut on the way to the coaster. It was fun and cute.
By now, the queues in Hogsmeade to get into stores were absolutely freaking ridiculous. You had to queue for like, at least 25 people, just to get to the drink stall. We got to go into the Weasley twins joke shop and also the lolly shop, both were SO PACKED and half of it was just people loitering around hiding from the heat. This is Orlando on a hot day in an area where there’s little shade and obtaining a cold beverage requires an hour wait in a queue. We decided that we had no choice but to brave the line for The Three Broomsticks for lunch – it’s the only cafe/food place in the Wizarding World and once you left the area, there was no getting back in. At this point, Jess literally went light headed – it was like such a sudden turn from just being like ‘shit it’s hot’ to ‘omg I feel faint.’ We were waiting in a hot sun, no way of getting cold water, no staff members out looking around to check on guests. I was freaking out a little – I knew that we just needed to get indoors and sit down and the only way to do that was to brave the queue. I held our place while Jess sat to the side on the ground in the shade. We did ask one girl whose job was literally to stand on the back door of one of the shops in Hogsmeade and stand there; we were enquiring if she knows anything about the wait time and she knew nothing about it and I pointed out that my friend was light headed and frankly she didn’t seem to care. I should’ve written down her name to make a comment on her.
We made it into the building and she lightened up a bit once the air conditioning hit in but then the queue kept going inside the building for a bit and it got hot and stuffy again and when we were just a few people from the front of the line and THEN they started to hand out cups of cold water (not to the people outside suffocating in the heat) and she’d had no more than a sip of water and she like, had to drop to her knees, that was how light headed she was. With Jess on her knees and me in panic mode, I said to the hostess who was about to send us through ‘MY FRIEND NEEDS A TABLE NOW.’ Luckily someone of importance was walking by at the time and finally we had their attention. Once at this point, the regular procedure is to line up to order your food, then line up to receive your food, then line up to get a table. THE WHOLE DAY WAS JUST LINING UP. Jess was taken to go sit down at a table and I looked after the food process, I went back to check on her after I’d ordered and she was like, practically passed out on the table. She was sooooo white. I’ve never seen anyone that white in my entire life. In line with her special diet I got her the chicken salad, I got fish and chips. The serve was massive and I gave her a bit of my fish because her chicken was gross – and on top of being gross she found a bone in it. Seriously, The Three Broomsticks wanted to kill her, the heat exhaustion didn’t work out so they tried to choke her to death. They were clearly trying to get people out of the restaurant as quickly as they could but we remained planted still for over an hour. The colour returned to Jess’s face with some food, water and air conditioning. The guy who’d helped us came back to check that she was okay; he offered that he could get first aid if necessary but didn’t really push the matter.
On a separate tone I ordered butter beer and it was delicious.
I was wary to be like, going on rides or whatever but Jess really did seem a lot better and she insisted that she was okay. At this point, there were lines of like, two hours each, to get into Ollivanders and the Owl Post. Ollivanders (the wand shop) was an experience I really wanted to have. You get let in in groups of about 25 and then one person from the group gets selected to have their like ‘wand selecting’ experience – to have a wand chosen for them. Realistically they were going to be like, picking kids and people in costumes, so I knew I wasn’t going to get to actually have the experience. I was wary of waiting for either one – as much as I REALLY wanted to, I hadn’t seen the rest of Islands of Adventure and plus the queues were out in the sun and Jess said she was feeling better but I didn’t think that standing for two hours in the sun again would be the way to go about recovery. We went on the Hogwarts ride again – the wait time was about 45 minutes at the time, the longest I’d seen it at all day was 120 minutes – and it was just as awesome the second time, if not better. We looked in the gift shop again (this was a process. It takes five minutes to walk directly across the shop because you have to fight through people) and Jess debated about which shirt she wanted to buy as a souvenir and lamented the lack of Ron specific merch – I agreed that it was a bit ridiculous, in fact on the whole I was not impressed with the merchandising.
Bidding farewell to the Wizarding World was hard. We didn’t know at that point what the line was like outside, we’d only really heard bits and although we hoped to go back in at night there were no guarantees and so we had to prepare for the fact that leaving was probably leaving for the last time.
I really enjoyed all of Islands of Adventure, I didn’t get to do everything but we hit all of the main rides – Spiderman, a couple of water rides (the things that Jess does for me ;)) and so forth. I don’t know what to say? It was fun? Lol. It’s a theme park. Lots of waiting around. Oh, I can comment that as I walked out of the Wizarding World with my Pumpkin Juice (I prefer Butter Beer, as an fyi) I was having people around me asking allll about the park, wanting to know details. I imagine most of them had arrived at human hours, been told ‘it’ll be a 23908328 hour wait’ and decided to just enjoy the regular park. Even late in the afternoon though, there was still a giant queue snaking throughout the park to get into the WWoHP.
We decided to head out to City Walk for dinner – City Walk is like, this strip of restaurants and bars that line a massive area between the parking lot and the Islands of Adventure. We tossed up a couple of options and I’m not ashamed to say that I wanted to go to NBA City because that’s where Troy Bolton would pick.
Excellent choice.
As we were being seated, we found out that Dan Radcliffe, Tom Felton and some other Harry Potter cast members had been at that very restaurant just hours earlier, watching a soccer game on the TV.
Just. Hours. Earlier. Dan. In. Same. Restaurant.
THUD.
OH MY GOD.
We were being served by a err... friendly... man named Shawn. Who took it upon himself to put his number into my phone and flirt incessantly and blatantly and lewdly. As a result of this we got free drinks so hey, no complaints there! Anyway because he was distracted he didn’t seem to care much when Jess was enquiring about the presence of the Harry Potter gang and if I’ve learnt one thing about Jess it is that she has no shame and she like, flagged down another waitress to ask if she knew anything about it. She wound up going to get the guy who’d served them – and he talked to us for ages about it, up until when our food arrived and he said he’d come back to talk to us again after we’d finished eating, which we did. This lucky guy, he’s the biggest HP fan and he got called into work and then found out that he was going to get to serve them – it was like it was ment to be or something. He was a lovely guy and so I really felt like it was kharma coming around. He told some cute stories – my favourite was that Dan tried to order a drink and he had to say no ‘I know you’re not 21 buddy’ and Dan had forgotten that you have to be 21 in the US. He’d found out that they were going to see The Blue Man group and giving them details of where they all go to drink after work and the cast was all, yeah we might come by. So Jess and I were contemplating what level of stalking effort we could possibly go to. We were talking about hanging around the back door of the Blue Man Group but Michael (the guy who’d served them) said that it’s actually fenced off.
Anyway we wound up going back into IoA briefly – by the time we finished up dinner (which was longer than originally planned with all the chatting/flirting going on) it was nearly park closing time but we did manage to walk back through to the Wizarding World again. We tried to enter in through the place we’d entered through the first time and we were told that the park was closed. And then we went in through the other way and there was no security or anything. So we were able to have a look around at night (very pretty) and attempted to get into one of the queues we’d skipped out on earlier but they had them cut off so no one else could join the queue at the end. Anyway so a few more photos later and we bid farewell to the Wizarding World – this time for good.
We did go and check out Cigarz, the bar where Michael had told us he’d tried to convince the cast to come along to and we went in and it was this TINY bar. Even if they had contemplated going, I can imagine that they would’ve had some sort of security with them go and suss it out and realise that it was not the environment for them to be in – no way to have a secluded private table or to attempt to have any sort of anonymity at all. We’d looked into Blue Man and figured that it would end at a particular time and logically if they were going to come, they’d probably come straight over.
Michael had Jess’s number and he’d said he would text if they turned up or whatever and we never heard from him so we can only assume that, as suspected, that didn’t happen. We went for a drive then and found the hotel that they’re staying at – Jess seemed up for going in but I was like, seriously? We’ve been up for like sixteen hours, they’ve been up early, EVEN IF we managed to get into this fancy hotel it’s not like they’re going to be wandering around in the lobby or in the hotel bar – it’s more likely that they’re in bed, or if they’re up then they’d be hanging out in one of their rooms or something. There’s a line between nothing ventured nothing gained, and complete insanity.
I didn’t even check my e-mail before going to bed which speaks highly of just how exhausted I was; because I constantly check my e-mail. We decided to not set an alarm and to just allow our bodies to wake up when they desired – which was about twelve hours later, at midday.
Saturday’s agenda was to chill, relax, and to go to the Florida Mall. What was the statistic I read? One of the world’s largest single story malls? Yes. To add to the things that I’d already bought on Thursday, I bought a cute top from Forever 21 and I couldn’t resist MnM World. Pretzel MnM’s – best thing ever, so I’ve learnt. Of course it started raining right before we left and Jess was wearing slippery shoes so she had to like, cling to me as we went back out to the car haha. We stopped to grab food from Pita Pit and headed back home where we watched HSM2 and HSM3 :)
On Sunday, I visited a place where dreams come true, the happiest place on Earth – the Magic Kingdom at Disneyworld. Now I went to Disneyland Paris back in 2008 but Magic Kingdom – totally kicks its butt! Jess has been to these theme parks a lot and Magic Kingdom she’s been to very recently a few times so she’s very familiar with the best way to navigate around, the most efficient things to do. I was and still am highly astounded by this whole fast pass thing – we don’t have such a thing – and it really does save you a lot of time. For those who aren’t familiar, the more popular rides have a Fast Pass ticket booth thing. It has advertised that you can return, say, in 1.5 hours time between 12:30 – 1:30 with your fast pass. Fast Pass ticket holders then have about a ten minute wait. So, for example, we would get a fast pass for one popular ride, go on another popular ride and stand in the 1 hour line, and then it would be perfect time to go back to the other ride and have only that short wait. Perfect. By I guess maybe 1pm, we’d done what Jess labelled as the ‘best’ rides in the park – like the main roller coasters, Thunder Mountain, Splash Mountain, Spiderman. I didn’t go on every single ride but I pretty much got to visit the majority of the park. Jess put up with me insisting that there HAD to be HSM merchandise SOMEWHERE (only crappy kiddy sunglasses) and going into all the shops on a hunt. Yes, I know, it’s all over at Hollywood Studios where the mini HSM2 stage show thingy is on. Blah blah. She also subjected herself to rides that she is scared of/thinks are ‘gay’ (I won’t specify more because people would be MORTIFIED, I certainly was) all for me.
In comparison to our MASSIVE day at Universal, Magic Kingdom was over with early, we left an hour or two before the park closed. I honestly felt rather theme parked out. Instead we were able to grab dinner from a non-theme parkesque eatery (Jimmy Johns which was yummmmy) and continue our Zac Efron movie fest – Hairspray and Me and Orson Welles. I’m ashamed to say that I was drifting off during MaOW; I LOVE the film and I love him in it but I was just utterly exhausted.
I cried at the airport on Monday when I was dropped off.
My final words for Orlando is that Jess is an amazing, sweet, sassy, wonderful woman who is so brave and so strong and anyone who thinks they can get away with talking shit about her anywhere in my vicinity will be on my hate list. Seriously. I’ve had the absolute pleasure of meeting her and I consider that to be the primary means of being able to judge a persons character. No we don’t agree on everything – life would be boring if we did – but that doesn’t prevent us from getting along regardless. Sometimes two mature adults can agree to disagree without needing to resort to pettiness.
I’ll step down off my soap box now.
Hogwarts was absofulutely incredible; Magic Kingdom really is the happiest place on Earth; Orlando is awesome and Jess is the bomb.
Jess has been this endless source of support for the longest time, in ‘the fandom’, in my normal life, in the lead up to my trip in a trip planning capacity. And I was nervous but excited to meet her (and so I started singing a song about being nervous but excited – people just stared at me! There was zero choreography, ZERO!) because for me it’s an even bigger deal meeting the people who I’m close to online. Worst case scenario is taking someone who you adore online, meeting them in real life and not clicking and then it’s all just muddled and not good. With Jess – at least from my perspective – the worries were entirely paranoid and ridiculous. From the moment meeting her outside the Orlando International Airport to the moment of departure I felt nothing but really happy to be in her presence. I landed around 7pm and so by the time that we went to grab dinner (my first experience at Chilli’s) and went back to her place that was pretty much night 1 completed.
We had two very specific days planned out – one being Islands of Adventure at Universal on Friday for the opening of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter; the other being Magic Kingdom which we decided would be best to attend on Sunday, to space out the theme parks. I’d talked about wanting to go to a Floridian beach and we tossed around other ideas but by the time we got going on Thursday (this being June 17) I decided that I’d rather just stick to her local area for a look see – we had a HUGE day planned for Friday, wanting to arrive at the park REALLY early. We went to First Watch for breakfast (yum!) and then I was taken on a tour of UCF (The University of Central Florida) where I was really fascinated by Greek Row and looking at all the sorority/fraternity houses. After the UCF tour we then went and did a little shopping – I’m officially an Old Navy addict, just so you know, especially their sale items. The standard Orlando thunderstorm of the afternoon hit and so we went back to chill at Jess’s for a while, and went back out for dinner later on at an Italian restaurant. We’d had plans to start our movie marathon but it just didn’t happen – we both got online and this is what happens when you get two moderators who are obsessed with a blue eyed man who is in Maui... we got distracted lol. We’d also planned to try to be asleep REALLY early but also, that didn’t happen – we’re both late night people, so even with plans to wake up at 4am, we were awake after midnight.
Yes, you read right, plans to be awake that early. When I was trip planning, I was looking into the Orlando theme parks and I realised that the Harry park was opening when I’d be in the country and when it came to booking my itinerary, it actually worked out pretty nicely. Harry Potter fans are hardcore, we knew that being there early was critical. And so, a brief nap later and we were stumbling out of bed, forcing ourselves to get going. We were aiming to arrive at Islands by 5:30am. We were pretty much on schedule – so was everyone else in the universe. I’m no stranger to the sitting around all day for a fangirl type experience thing, but never before have I seen so many people awake and going at 5:30 in the morning – and we were probably, like, a thousand people back from the front or something like that. It started out just being this MASS of people waiting outside at City Walk. There was no logic, no queueing, no barriers. Basically I was prepared for stampede when they opened things up. The park wasn’t due to open til 10, the ribbon cutting ceremony was at 9am and part of why we had wanted to arrive so early was in the hope that the first however many people would get to attend the ribbon cutting. It wasn’t completely light when they started letting people through to have their tickets checked and what not, and then it was this stampede of people toward the Wizarding World, taking the longest route possible throughout the park. We then wound up stationed in another queue for a few hours. Masses of people on the path sitting around uncomfortably trying to work out what was going on. Between different people around us going to talk to staff members, we deduced that we were in ‘group 3.’ There was a group who was in for the Today Show taping/the ceremony – to this day I’m not quite sure if these were only like VIP guests or if there were general people who were hardcore and arrived at 1am there. They’d get let in, then group 2 (who were somehow queued up from a different direction) and then our mob. I realised only at this point that being the dumbass I was, when I’d taken my memory card out of my camera the night before to check something on my computer, I hadn’t put it back in. Thank freaking God that Jess brought her camera, she’d briefly contemplated not bothering and just relying on mine. We were both on Twitter following things – learning that evidently the queue behind us was snaking throughout the whole park. We were being told that we’d get in around 11am, 11:30am but we were let in a lot earlier than that. We could hear the ceremony going on, with cheers and screaming and stuff. Group 2 started to be let in (we could see them) creating a mosh pit because of course we all stood up and surged forward in anticipation; someone starting to lead a ‘let us in’ chant. Amusingly I heard a guy behind me read a Tweet I’d made out loud haha – I’d been using a #wwohp tag. And then finally, they let us in.
I don’t think I can explain the surreal feeling of first entering The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. You literally feel like you’ve been transported into the series. It is just so... it’s so intricate! Every nook and cranny of the architectural design. We were walking through Hogsmeade in awe heading toward Hogwarts castle – which also happens to be the flagship ride. We got into the queue; it was healthy but not insane – outside people were talking about how they’d heard the queue for Hogwarts was going to be up to 5 hours. The majority of the queue you’re being ‘entertained’ by the walk – you’re walking through Hogwarts castle, literally, there’s stuff going on around you on all the walls and everything. The ride itself is seriously the best ride I’d ever been on anywhere. I... a part of me wants to be super specific but another part just wants everyone to go experience it and to plan your lives around going at some point.
The gift shop that you walk out into after the ride was insanely packed with people fawning over merchandise (Filch’s Emporium) and we fought out way out to head toward The Dragon Challenge which is evidently just a remake of an old rollercoaster – the exact some coaster just with different decorations – but for me it was new. I was annoyed – it was Goblet of Fire based, there were signs and stuff with like Go Krum, Go Fleur, Go Harry and NOTHING for Cedric – HELLO?!?! I mean, Rob Pattinson bias aside, Cedric is SUCH an important part of Goblet of Fire! The rollercoaster itself was really awesome though. The final rollercoaster was like a kiddie coaster, the Hippogriff something or other and you get to go outside of Hagrid’s hut on the way to the coaster. It was fun and cute.
By now, the queues in Hogsmeade to get into stores were absolutely freaking ridiculous. You had to queue for like, at least 25 people, just to get to the drink stall. We got to go into the Weasley twins joke shop and also the lolly shop, both were SO PACKED and half of it was just people loitering around hiding from the heat. This is Orlando on a hot day in an area where there’s little shade and obtaining a cold beverage requires an hour wait in a queue. We decided that we had no choice but to brave the line for The Three Broomsticks for lunch – it’s the only cafe/food place in the Wizarding World and once you left the area, there was no getting back in. At this point, Jess literally went light headed – it was like such a sudden turn from just being like ‘shit it’s hot’ to ‘omg I feel faint.’ We were waiting in a hot sun, no way of getting cold water, no staff members out looking around to check on guests. I was freaking out a little – I knew that we just needed to get indoors and sit down and the only way to do that was to brave the queue. I held our place while Jess sat to the side on the ground in the shade. We did ask one girl whose job was literally to stand on the back door of one of the shops in Hogsmeade and stand there; we were enquiring if she knows anything about the wait time and she knew nothing about it and I pointed out that my friend was light headed and frankly she didn’t seem to care. I should’ve written down her name to make a comment on her.
We made it into the building and she lightened up a bit once the air conditioning hit in but then the queue kept going inside the building for a bit and it got hot and stuffy again and when we were just a few people from the front of the line and THEN they started to hand out cups of cold water (not to the people outside suffocating in the heat) and she’d had no more than a sip of water and she like, had to drop to her knees, that was how light headed she was. With Jess on her knees and me in panic mode, I said to the hostess who was about to send us through ‘MY FRIEND NEEDS A TABLE NOW.’ Luckily someone of importance was walking by at the time and finally we had their attention. Once at this point, the regular procedure is to line up to order your food, then line up to receive your food, then line up to get a table. THE WHOLE DAY WAS JUST LINING UP. Jess was taken to go sit down at a table and I looked after the food process, I went back to check on her after I’d ordered and she was like, practically passed out on the table. She was sooooo white. I’ve never seen anyone that white in my entire life. In line with her special diet I got her the chicken salad, I got fish and chips. The serve was massive and I gave her a bit of my fish because her chicken was gross – and on top of being gross she found a bone in it. Seriously, The Three Broomsticks wanted to kill her, the heat exhaustion didn’t work out so they tried to choke her to death. They were clearly trying to get people out of the restaurant as quickly as they could but we remained planted still for over an hour. The colour returned to Jess’s face with some food, water and air conditioning. The guy who’d helped us came back to check that she was okay; he offered that he could get first aid if necessary but didn’t really push the matter.
On a separate tone I ordered butter beer and it was delicious.
I was wary to be like, going on rides or whatever but Jess really did seem a lot better and she insisted that she was okay. At this point, there were lines of like, two hours each, to get into Ollivanders and the Owl Post. Ollivanders (the wand shop) was an experience I really wanted to have. You get let in in groups of about 25 and then one person from the group gets selected to have their like ‘wand selecting’ experience – to have a wand chosen for them. Realistically they were going to be like, picking kids and people in costumes, so I knew I wasn’t going to get to actually have the experience. I was wary of waiting for either one – as much as I REALLY wanted to, I hadn’t seen the rest of Islands of Adventure and plus the queues were out in the sun and Jess said she was feeling better but I didn’t think that standing for two hours in the sun again would be the way to go about recovery. We went on the Hogwarts ride again – the wait time was about 45 minutes at the time, the longest I’d seen it at all day was 120 minutes – and it was just as awesome the second time, if not better. We looked in the gift shop again (this was a process. It takes five minutes to walk directly across the shop because you have to fight through people) and Jess debated about which shirt she wanted to buy as a souvenir and lamented the lack of Ron specific merch – I agreed that it was a bit ridiculous, in fact on the whole I was not impressed with the merchandising.
Bidding farewell to the Wizarding World was hard. We didn’t know at that point what the line was like outside, we’d only really heard bits and although we hoped to go back in at night there were no guarantees and so we had to prepare for the fact that leaving was probably leaving for the last time.
I really enjoyed all of Islands of Adventure, I didn’t get to do everything but we hit all of the main rides – Spiderman, a couple of water rides (the things that Jess does for me ;)) and so forth. I don’t know what to say? It was fun? Lol. It’s a theme park. Lots of waiting around. Oh, I can comment that as I walked out of the Wizarding World with my Pumpkin Juice (I prefer Butter Beer, as an fyi) I was having people around me asking allll about the park, wanting to know details. I imagine most of them had arrived at human hours, been told ‘it’ll be a 23908328 hour wait’ and decided to just enjoy the regular park. Even late in the afternoon though, there was still a giant queue snaking throughout the park to get into the WWoHP.
We decided to head out to City Walk for dinner – City Walk is like, this strip of restaurants and bars that line a massive area between the parking lot and the Islands of Adventure. We tossed up a couple of options and I’m not ashamed to say that I wanted to go to NBA City because that’s where Troy Bolton would pick.
Excellent choice.
As we were being seated, we found out that Dan Radcliffe, Tom Felton and some other Harry Potter cast members had been at that very restaurant just hours earlier, watching a soccer game on the TV.
Just. Hours. Earlier. Dan. In. Same. Restaurant.
THUD.
OH MY GOD.
We were being served by a err... friendly... man named Shawn. Who took it upon himself to put his number into my phone and flirt incessantly and blatantly and lewdly. As a result of this we got free drinks so hey, no complaints there! Anyway because he was distracted he didn’t seem to care much when Jess was enquiring about the presence of the Harry Potter gang and if I’ve learnt one thing about Jess it is that she has no shame and she like, flagged down another waitress to ask if she knew anything about it. She wound up going to get the guy who’d served them – and he talked to us for ages about it, up until when our food arrived and he said he’d come back to talk to us again after we’d finished eating, which we did. This lucky guy, he’s the biggest HP fan and he got called into work and then found out that he was going to get to serve them – it was like it was ment to be or something. He was a lovely guy and so I really felt like it was kharma coming around. He told some cute stories – my favourite was that Dan tried to order a drink and he had to say no ‘I know you’re not 21 buddy’ and Dan had forgotten that you have to be 21 in the US. He’d found out that they were going to see The Blue Man group and giving them details of where they all go to drink after work and the cast was all, yeah we might come by. So Jess and I were contemplating what level of stalking effort we could possibly go to. We were talking about hanging around the back door of the Blue Man Group but Michael (the guy who’d served them) said that it’s actually fenced off.
Anyway we wound up going back into IoA briefly – by the time we finished up dinner (which was longer than originally planned with all the chatting/flirting going on) it was nearly park closing time but we did manage to walk back through to the Wizarding World again. We tried to enter in through the place we’d entered through the first time and we were told that the park was closed. And then we went in through the other way and there was no security or anything. So we were able to have a look around at night (very pretty) and attempted to get into one of the queues we’d skipped out on earlier but they had them cut off so no one else could join the queue at the end. Anyway so a few more photos later and we bid farewell to the Wizarding World – this time for good.
We did go and check out Cigarz, the bar where Michael had told us he’d tried to convince the cast to come along to and we went in and it was this TINY bar. Even if they had contemplated going, I can imagine that they would’ve had some sort of security with them go and suss it out and realise that it was not the environment for them to be in – no way to have a secluded private table or to attempt to have any sort of anonymity at all. We’d looked into Blue Man and figured that it would end at a particular time and logically if they were going to come, they’d probably come straight over.
Michael had Jess’s number and he’d said he would text if they turned up or whatever and we never heard from him so we can only assume that, as suspected, that didn’t happen. We went for a drive then and found the hotel that they’re staying at – Jess seemed up for going in but I was like, seriously? We’ve been up for like sixteen hours, they’ve been up early, EVEN IF we managed to get into this fancy hotel it’s not like they’re going to be wandering around in the lobby or in the hotel bar – it’s more likely that they’re in bed, or if they’re up then they’d be hanging out in one of their rooms or something. There’s a line between nothing ventured nothing gained, and complete insanity.
I didn’t even check my e-mail before going to bed which speaks highly of just how exhausted I was; because I constantly check my e-mail. We decided to not set an alarm and to just allow our bodies to wake up when they desired – which was about twelve hours later, at midday.
Saturday’s agenda was to chill, relax, and to go to the Florida Mall. What was the statistic I read? One of the world’s largest single story malls? Yes. To add to the things that I’d already bought on Thursday, I bought a cute top from Forever 21 and I couldn’t resist MnM World. Pretzel MnM’s – best thing ever, so I’ve learnt. Of course it started raining right before we left and Jess was wearing slippery shoes so she had to like, cling to me as we went back out to the car haha. We stopped to grab food from Pita Pit and headed back home where we watched HSM2 and HSM3 :)
On Sunday, I visited a place where dreams come true, the happiest place on Earth – the Magic Kingdom at Disneyworld. Now I went to Disneyland Paris back in 2008 but Magic Kingdom – totally kicks its butt! Jess has been to these theme parks a lot and Magic Kingdom she’s been to very recently a few times so she’s very familiar with the best way to navigate around, the most efficient things to do. I was and still am highly astounded by this whole fast pass thing – we don’t have such a thing – and it really does save you a lot of time. For those who aren’t familiar, the more popular rides have a Fast Pass ticket booth thing. It has advertised that you can return, say, in 1.5 hours time between 12:30 – 1:30 with your fast pass. Fast Pass ticket holders then have about a ten minute wait. So, for example, we would get a fast pass for one popular ride, go on another popular ride and stand in the 1 hour line, and then it would be perfect time to go back to the other ride and have only that short wait. Perfect. By I guess maybe 1pm, we’d done what Jess labelled as the ‘best’ rides in the park – like the main roller coasters, Thunder Mountain, Splash Mountain, Spiderman. I didn’t go on every single ride but I pretty much got to visit the majority of the park. Jess put up with me insisting that there HAD to be HSM merchandise SOMEWHERE (only crappy kiddy sunglasses) and going into all the shops on a hunt. Yes, I know, it’s all over at Hollywood Studios where the mini HSM2 stage show thingy is on. Blah blah. She also subjected herself to rides that she is scared of/thinks are ‘gay’ (I won’t specify more because people would be MORTIFIED, I certainly was) all for me.
In comparison to our MASSIVE day at Universal, Magic Kingdom was over with early, we left an hour or two before the park closed. I honestly felt rather theme parked out. Instead we were able to grab dinner from a non-theme parkesque eatery (Jimmy Johns which was yummmmy) and continue our Zac Efron movie fest – Hairspray and Me and Orson Welles. I’m ashamed to say that I was drifting off during MaOW; I LOVE the film and I love him in it but I was just utterly exhausted.
I cried at the airport on Monday when I was dropped off.
My final words for Orlando is that Jess is an amazing, sweet, sassy, wonderful woman who is so brave and so strong and anyone who thinks they can get away with talking shit about her anywhere in my vicinity will be on my hate list. Seriously. I’ve had the absolute pleasure of meeting her and I consider that to be the primary means of being able to judge a persons character. No we don’t agree on everything – life would be boring if we did – but that doesn’t prevent us from getting along regardless. Sometimes two mature adults can agree to disagree without needing to resort to pettiness.
I’ll step down off my soap box now.
Hogwarts was absofulutely incredible; Magic Kingdom really is the happiest place on Earth; Orlando is awesome and Jess is the bomb.
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