Day 19 - Going Home

Leaving New York

 Our flight was at 11pm and with the time difference and flight time we landed at Gatwick airport at 10.30am.

I didn't sleep at all well on the plane, it was cold and quite noisy and when I did finally get to sleep I had the most horrendous nightmare about the plane crashing.

Well, we're back home now and what a trip it has been.  It feels like it's all been the most wonderful dream..........

Altogether on our road trip we covered 2500 miles from door to door, we've met so many lovely people and visited some amazing places.

We visited 15 US states and 1 Canadian Province - including New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Ontario, Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, Washington DC, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey!

We completed the Jasmer Challenge.
The Jasmer Challenge requires finding a cache placed in each of the months since Geocaching started in May 2000. To give you an idea of how tough this is, there are only 115 caches remaining which were hidden in 2000  - only 7 in Europe. It's not even possible to complete the months for 2001 without leaving  the UK!

This is a trip I will never forget, we had so much fun making memories together.

Thanks for reading, hope you've enjoyed it......... now where shall we go next year.......

Day 18 - New York

We hadn't pre-booked anything for today and had no firm plans as we thought it best to keep a day free to do anything we hadn't had time for on the other days.  Originally, I thought it might be nice to do a bit of shopping on the last day but I managed to get that done in the evenings as the shops I wanted to go to stayed open quite late and as I'm not a massive fan of shopping, going around the shops in the daytime seemed like poor use of time.

We decided to head to Central Park first thing as we had made more progress on the Bridge and Arches multi than we thought we would.  We were almost a third of the way through so we felt sure we had time to complete it– our flight wasn’t until 11pm so plenty of time left of the day.

We took the subway and then picked up a couple of citi-bikes to get us to the point we had reached last night.  Cycling isn’t allowed in a lot of areas in Central Park and the main routes through it seem to be one-way which is heavily enforced – you can get a $100 on the spot fine if you are caught – so we decided it was easier to do it on foot.

John Lennon Memorial - 75th birthday flowers

Ghostbusters Building

The bridges in this park are simply amazing

We thoroughly enjoyed our day spent walking in Central Park, the multi took us to some really interesting places and we feel now that we know the park really well after spending so much time here.  This has to be the best multi we’ve done and we’d highly recommend it - it has had 439 favourite points since 2008 and has also been Geocache of the Week so a lot of others must agree.

WAHoooo we made it to the end - fab prize!

Grand Central Terminal

We just had time to visit Grand Central Terminal before heading back to our hotel.  Grand Central Terminal covers 48 acres and has 44 platforms, more than any other railroad station in the world. Its platforms, all below ground, serve 41 tracks on the upper level and 26 on the lower, though the total number of tracks along platforms and in rail yards exceeds 100.

Then it was back to our hotel to collect our bags and hail a yellow cab to the airport.

Noooo I really don't want to go home yet, we've had so much fun.

Day 17 - New York

This morning we were up early again as we needed to take the subway to the 9/11 Memorial Museum.  We had pre-booked tickets for 9am entry to avoid the queues.  It was about half an hour on the subway and we just managed to get there on time.

At 1,776 feet tall, One World Trade Center is the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere

There was just a very short queue to wait in to get through security and into the building.  I had pre-downloaded the museum app which was really interesting to listen to as we walked around and meant that we didn't need to read all of the information boards - of which there were many, there really was a lot to look at, most of it deeply moving and quite upsetting in places.

8.30am September 11, 2001

The Last Column was the final steel beam ceremonially removed from Ground Zero, marking the formal end of a nine-month recovery effort

The Survivors' Staircase was the last visible remaining original structure above ground level at the World Trade Center site

Dream Bike

Construction

Donated Thermos flasks from Mohawk Indian Ironworkers

19.8 ft fragment of the 360ft transmission tower - North Tower

Damaged fire truck

This column once stood in the core of the south tower - probably between floors 30 and 33 - extreme stresses during the tower's collapse caused this multi-ton piece of steel to fold over

I stupidly forgot my tissues and thought it was a nice touch how they provided built-in tissue boxes near the most intense exhibits.  We spent 5 hours at the museum, it was emotionally tiring, it really brought it home to us, the sheer senseless loss of innocent lives.  I am so glad we visited, it's something I am always going to remember.

Tasty chopped salad

First course was far too healthy

One of the caches on the 'to-do list' was a 32-stage multi – we weren’t sure we would have time to do it and only pencilled it in as a 'maybe' if we had enough time time.  After visiting the 9/11 museum we were ready for a walk in a park so decided to head to Central Park and see how far we could get with the multi – the listing said not to attempt it after dark as some areas of the park, particularly the North weren't safe in the hours of darkness.

Stage 1 of 32

We spent a couple of hours walking from stage to stage, we had so much fun and it took us on a really great walk in the park going from bridge to bridge.

About 5pm the sky went black – this was after it being gloriously sunny all day – and there was an almighty thunder and lightening storm.

We sheltered under a bridge and then when it seemed to give over we continued around the park for another half an hour or so until the heavens opened again and we had to admit defeat and headed to the subway to shelter, getting absolutely drenched through on the way, it was literally like running through a washing machine, we’ve never experienced rain and wind like it all at the same time. 

We decided to dry off in Macy's, enjoyed going up and down the escalators and elevators and having a bite to eat before heading back to the hotel on the citi bikes.

Had to have a quick peek in the Christmas Dept of Macy's

Love the old wooden escalator

Empire state building lit up in pink

Click here to see the explanation for the Tower Lights

Day 16 - New York, NY

Flatiron Building

Another early start this morning as we needed to get the subway to Battery Park to catch the ferry to Liberty Island – once again timed tickets and the first of the day.

Waiting for the subway

Where is she?

On board the ferry

There she is!

We were on Liberty Island nice and early before the crowds.  I booked the tickets quite some time ago and I was very lucky to be able to secure tickets to climb up to the crown.  Out of the 10,000+ visitors each day only a couple of 100 crown tickets are released – it was only a couple of dollars extra on top of the ticket price so was well worth it.  This morning lots of people were trying to find out how they could get up to the crown as they hadn’t known about the pre-booking so I was really pleased (rather smug ) that I’d noticed this on the website.

Steps up to the Crown

Inside the crown!

There are 377 steps from the main lobby right up into the crown, so you know you’ve done it by the time you reach the top – once at the top the space is quite cramped and only room for about 4 or 5 people.  This week has been full of amazing experiences.

Once at the bottom of the statue we visited the museum which was extremely informative with the audio guide but we were starting to flag and had information overload so went off to find food before catching the ferry to Ellis Island and the Immigration Museum - another very interesting and informative visit.

Once we were back on dry land it was time to grab a couple of Citi bikes and pedal off to Brooklyn Bridge as I was really keen to cycle across it – brilliant fun.

Wall Street

Cycling across Brooklyn Bridge

NYPD scooters