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4,784 Miles Later

Well, we dropped the car off at Logan and the final mileage total that we put on was 4,784. The odometer started off at a cool 911 and ended up at 5,695. The rental car guy got quite a kick out of it, and I overheard him and his buddies talking about it as we walked away to get on the shuttle. It was probably the biggest mileage total they've seen in a while. ;-)

Sorry I didn't write more while in New England. We camped out pretty much every night and the one night we didn't, we were at my mom's house with no Internet (well, dial-up...) so it was kind of hard. I will try to get photos all uploaded tonight for anyone that is interested though. I probably have about 400 or so that haven't even been transferred off the camera. Which means I will probably end up uploading only about 20 or so good ones out of that 400. Thank goodness for digital SLRs...

Fenway Park

NYC Again

Day 2 in NYC was good. We got some breakfast spaghetti pizza (I'll have to find that pic and upload it) and walked to the Empire State Building with every intention of going in and up to the top. About 20 minutes in we realized the line extended another 1.5 hours and we bailed at that point. Instead we walked up to Rockefeller where we went into 30 Rock and went up to the 86th floor or something like that to their observation deck. Same price but it only took about 10 minutes to go up. This turned out to be good as we got a good view of Central Park and a view of the Empire State Building also.

After some more walking around, we decided to try to take the Subway down towards Battery Park to catch the ferry to Ellis Island. We showed up around 4:15 and the last ferry was leaving in 15 minutes. The guy told us we could get on and we could go buy tickets across the way. So we walked over there and met with the biggest asshole of a park ranger in history. We said how do we get in to buy tickets. "CLOSED FOR THE DAY" was his response. I said, uh, that guy down there said there is still time to get on and we can buy tickets here. His response - "well I'M running this joint and I say CLOSED FOR THE DAY." I say sir, we are out here from California and we are only in town for one day... To this he just stares off into space and tries not to make eye contact. We walked around the building to the other side where the girl was letting people in but just in time to learn they were now sold out. We walked back and Jon asked to get a picture with the asshole himself, to which he said "SURE!" and smiled for the camera like nothing ever happened. You can see that picture in the NYC gallery link to the right. Instead we ended up taking a water taxi out that got close to the Statue of Liberty so we could snap some pics (although only about 2 out of 30 or so came out due to boat movement causing blurriness and over-exposure from the sun behind it). We got off on another stop by Brooklyn and took the subway back up from there.

We counted on about an hour to get out of the city with traffic, but it really took us about 10 minutes tops. We got into Boston ahead of schedule tonight and had time to stop by Jon's brother's place to talk for 20 mins or so before going to his other brother's place to spend the night. That brings us to right now. So now I think I'm going to go to bed for tonight, as it is 1:30am and I'm tired from the walking around all day and then the drive. Will post more tomorrow after the Red Sox game and the rest of Boston.

Times Square

Jon and I took the subway around last night while Harsh sat on his ass in the hotel room. He's gonna regret that later. Well, maybe not. We stopped at Times Square and walked around a bit. We got a couple pics on Jon's phone but at this point I didn't bring my Nikon and my cell phone was completely dead so we didn't get a lot of shots. I will try to upload those later. I finally got some Chicago pics up (there are a couple KC/St. Louis photos mixed in there) and I am uploading the Philadelphia pics right now.

Apparently we just noticed that the Empire State Building is like right outside our window here, so that's cool. I'll get a shot of that before we leave. It's about 11:30 now and we have to check out at noon so gotta get going. Sorry I couldn't write more, I was busy trying to hack the hotel wireless this morning so we'd have better Internet (didn't want to pay $10 for a couple hours), which as you can see was successful. ;-)

Patsy's Pizzeria

This is a pic of the pie at Patsy's Pizzeria. I had heard it had gone downhill since they started franchising. It was still good, but no where near the legend-wait for it-..."ary" status they once had. Would like to try one of the old school coal fired places like Grimaldi's or Lombardi's today if we get a chance but I don't think we're going to be passing by either of those.

NYC

We are in NYC now. We drove down near eBay's shopping.com building, parked and walked around for a while. We went to the WTC site and saw the NYSE and AMEX buildings on Wall Street. We are now sitting in the hotel room trying to relax for a couple minutes before heading out to dinner. The hotel room is great. We got a hotel on Broadway in an OK area... but the room is awesome. It has 2 beds and a pull out sofa-bed and a little sitting area. Best to date and one of the cheaper ones comparatively.

I can't write a whole lot as we forgot the battery charger for the computer in the car (which is in a 24 hour valet lot with no in/out privileges), and I need some juice later to upload the photos. I haven't had a real good chance to upload any since before Kansas City / St. Louis. Sorry about that.