Our First Blog

San Francisco is great!

2004-06-03T01:38:00.000+09:30

When Gret & I initially got to San Francisco (SF) on Monday evening, we were both of high expectations, as many people have spoken well of this town. Personally, the past 3 days have been the high light of our trip. Whilst NYC is big, brash, bold, always on and running at a warp speed at any given point of the day, SF is so much more relaxed, friendly and dare I say it culturally aware. We really like it alot. Shopping is fantastic and the diversity of the culture is such that the food and restaurants that are around remind us of Melbourne's excellent mix of cafes, ala carte dining and everything in between. Also, SF has been the only place in the US where we have been able to get a decent cup of coffee, omni present Star Bucks Enterprise not withstanding. Right across from our hotel (Hotel Cosmo, about 3 blocks from Union Square) there is a great little cafe which does breakfasts, great coffee and has a really cool vibe too it. The amount of people stopping thru on their way to work for coffee/snacks every morning is tribute to their popularity.

People in SF are uniformly the most polite across the cities we have visited too, in all aspects - shopping, eating out, tour guides, groceries/convenience store shopping and the like. Union Square is the central shopping district in SF, boarded by NikeTown, Neiman Marcus (Upmarket David Jones/Georges Equivalent), Macy's, Levis Home, DKNY, Nordstroms 1 block across, than the boutique outfitters like Guess, Diesel, Armani etc. One Store I've been proud I haven't spent any money yet (not thru lack of wanting too) is CompUSA - a HUGE computer/peripherals business with PDA's, Computers, Laptops, Sound, Hi Fi and all the accesories you could ever want.

Yesterday we hired an electric car to jet about SF for a couple of hours - got some nice pics of the Golden Gate bridge and got to drive around some of the Presidio, Mills Valley and uptown SF where all the residences/cafes are. I had a great time driving, although our little sled wasn't exactly made for swiftness - 25 MPH (about 40km/h) was it's top speed. Traffic was very cordial indicating the wide use and acceptance of such little Jetson like blimps. Gret wasn't a true fan of such a machine, but she said it was worth the experience (read: she'll never get into one again!) All in all, it was a really great way to commute around and something I would recommend to anyone who is comfortable driving around on their own time and schedule.

We caught an old tram, up to Fisherman's Wharf on the North Side of SF which is a high tourist district and wandered around for a few hours. Had fresh Prawns & Oysters for lunch and did a bit of window shopping. Bought myself a great The North Face Ski Jacket, as my trusty One Planet Goretex is starting to show it's age - got 9 years out of it so am very happy with that!

This morning we have a Grey Line City tour, than we'll be getting on a ferry to go have a look at the Prison Island Alcatraz. Looking forward to this.

CY & GF
9:30 2/6/04

Washington DC via Rattler from NYC

2004-06-01T13:03:00.000+09:30

Wow!
Skipped a city in this missive - we've been and gone to Washington DC in the past 3 days and I'm sitting here, courtesy of a time shift thinking its 1:30pm (NY Time) but local time (San Fran) it's 9:45am in this groovy internet Cafe. Picking up from where we left off last Tuesday in NYC....

The Boy from Oz - Tremendous! Hugh Jackman deserves to win everything he can get at the Tony's (not sure if they have been presented as of yet, we've been ignoring the TV of late) - his performance was outstanding, along with the rest of the cast members in the play. The theatre we went too was packed, for a Tuesday night, and the audience was fantastic - really cheerful, interactive and ready to clap, stamp, applaud and cheer as needed (and oftimes when not). Gret & I had a lovely dinner "out" at a sensational Japanese restaurant just off times square - for a Tuesday night, it was booked out and then headed over to the show. Afterwards, after some checking of the various stations, we caught the subway home (at 11PM) - I can say clearly that all stories of the subway being dangerous at night are rot - there were families and people everywhere - seriously it was as busy as peak hour in Melbourne traffic - amazing.

The next day, we jumped on a roofless double decker bus for $37 USD (ouch!) which gave us an unlimited ticket all day (hop on/hop off) which toured around the whole of lower Manhattan. Anyone coming to NYC, Gret & I both recommend you do this bus FIRST, the downtown route, as it takes you thru Greenich Village, SOHO, Tribecha, Chinatown, Little Italy, via Rockefeller Plaza and than thru all of Times Square, past Madisson Square Gardens. Stops are at all these places and you can jump on, jump off as many times as you like across the 24 hours your ticket is valid for. If nothing else, it gives you a good snapshot of the scope of Lower Manhattan and allows you to really gauge how much time you need to spend in each part.

Bucket loads of galleries, art studios (open to view off the street), amataur theatre (too many to visit - WAY too many) are dotted thru out SOHO and Greenich, interspersed with the true SOHO style apartment/warehouse conversions - I went snap happy with my camera here and got down heaps of pics. Shopping here is sensational too.

Thursday morning, we got up at a very unkind 5:30am and headed in too.... NBC Today! Gret and I even got on TV a few times, got plenty of shots of Katie Couric (she's great!), Matt Lauer & Al the Weatherman up close. Al's a short, rotund, Jolly sort of fellow - some artistic licence is definitely taken with the camera angles in use!

We then did a Rockerfeller Buildings Tour and a tour of NBC Studios. The NBC tour was dissapointing/lame - don't waste the money ($14 USD)- when I get back, if anyones interested I'll organise an on the set filming of GTV 9 News (I know the NEWS programe director).

Friday was an early morning cab to Penn Station, which is an AMTRAK terminus where we boarded the Acela Express to Washington DC for a short 3 hour trip. Apart from the sting of the $147 USD EACH ticket, (Airticket would have been $160 had we known), the trip was pleasant and allowed some quiet time to catch up on some magazine reading. Our landing point was Union Station, right on the edge of Downtown DC - whilst not as impressive as Grand Central Station in NYC, it was still a beautiful building.

Our thoughts on Washington DC?...... Coming straight from New York, it was like another planet. Very clean, very straight, HUGE buildings (lots of photos), wide streets, particular attention to detail and pride in surroundings. The Hotel Crown Plaza where we stayed was a 5 star hotel, very plush and centrally located 3 blocks from the Whitehouse. DC is essentially a Government agency based city (as can be expected) so as a consequence, us arriving on the heels of a huge national public holiday long weekend it was deathly quiet in terms of the normal working/business populace.

Saturday, visited the Smithosonian Air and Space Museum - loved it! Awesome displays of space ships, air vehicles, birth of flight, future of flight, Einstein Planetarium and every thing and anything that flew, tried to fly and would fly. There was a really cool engine display room that showed things like a USA Saturn V Rocket next to a Soviet Union Soyuz rocket. Walked around the White House, Executive Buildings & the West Wing (aka for TV series).

And then there were all the Harley Davidsons motor cycles everywhere. Thousands of them. Being on holiday, I misread the import of this weekend, thinking it was a War Memorial for recent conflicts, but in actual fact it's far more significant. All the hoopla and commotion was based upon the fact that the World War II War Memorial was being inaugurated, with the opening dedicated to the 16 MILLION US service men/woman who were involved in World War II. As a consequence, some 600,000 people apparently descended on DC this weekend, including about 30,000 Harley Davidson's.

Never a huge fan of such noisy contraptions (Sorry Mick! I prefer sport bikes) Gret & I watched on Sunday a motorcade of the these machines ride by the Lincoln Memorial on thru Arlington War Cemetary and along Constitution Avenue (in front of 3 of the Smithsonian Museums). We stood there for about 2 hours and they still kept on flowing by, rumbling by, roaring by - it was awesome. Along with our trip to the Lincoln Memorial, we walked along the Great Mall up to the new World War II Memorial and then as close as we could get to the Washington Monument (closed for renovations). After this we did a quick tour thru the Museam of Art West & East wings. To be honest, we have visited so many museums and galleries that the artwork tends to take second rank behind the building that its presented in - they tend to be more interesting at this point in time.

Onwards we walked around The Capital, being prepared for the Memorial Day Washington Symphony Orchestra concert (Monday). VERY impressive building. The edict that presides of not building anything taller in DC than the Capital need not be enforced I feel - the Capital is definitively a building that could stand on its own, surrounded by skyscrapers or not. We then spent some time in Union Station where we window shopped, before returning back to our hotel for a Mexican dinner. Gret has really taken on to Mexican, which is no mean feat considering she is not a fan of spicy food. There is hope for her yet!

We packed our gear and jumped onto a plane next morning and have arrived in San Francisco. First impressions are that it's a fantastic city, very similar to Melbourne, but different in it's vibrancy because of the all the unfamiliar things like different shops and the interactivity of the people. Everyone has been uniformly friendly and we stuffed ourselves with some truly excellent Thai food last night. Over the next few days we've got booked tickets to Alcatraz and a tour of the city by bus.

We've got some shopping to do!

CY & GF
10:02 1/6/04

Shopping, Architecture & Walking

2004-05-21T00:11:00.000+09:30

Two things about New York that we've found incredible is the lack of Internet Cafes and the lack of places to process your digital pics onto CD/Get them printed out. It's taken us four days to find this place where we are at now - and believe me we're taking advantage of it, forward booking our accomodation in Washington DC & San Francisco. Our hotels internet terminal is busted, and it appears everyone is walking around with a laptop to plug into the hotels complimentary T1 (10Mb-24Mb/Sec!!!) Line in each room. Laptops are REALLY cheap over here, I've toyed with the idea of purchasing a Sony Vaio 1.6kg 1.4GHz Intel Centrino Mobile M/40Gb HDD/512Mb Ram/9600 Radeon Graphics - all for $599 US! Same machine costs about $3200 in $AU.

We're currently staying in a "Comfort Inn" which would be the equivalent of Flag Inn's or Best Western. It's pretty comfy, located right in the heart of Long Island City. We're on the 8th Floor, so we don't hear the subway station which is about 150 meters up the street and a quick 10 min ride into Manhattan. Most days we get up about 6am, have breakfast than jump straight onto the train and get off at either Times Square or Grand Central Station.

Grand Central Station - is a fabulous building - it would have been an architectural achievement in its day and is impressive in it's scale and beauty. Actually, thinking about it, it still is an achievement for it's scope and attention to detail. Gret & I actually spent a while there wandering around the promenades, the shops and the huge food hall which is underneath. It's also the first place we spotted soldiers as opposed to private security firms guarding various entrances/exits. One thing irrespective of patriotic fervour and political persuasion the US does no compromise is its military presentation - they don't stuff around with little pea shooters. These guys could have waged a small war, if the situation arose.

Because I'm making up for a few days lost in transit, I'll jot down the highlights - suffice to say, I've got a swag of photo's already - a 256mb card in my camera allows me to take about 90 hi res pics, so suffice to say, I've taken lots and and lots of photos!

Park Avenue - location of the wealthy, extortionately wealthy and the ridiculously wealthy! Gret and I wandered around the big apartments around the Upper East side admiring the architecture and motorcade of big expensive vehicles everywhere. Predmoninantly 7 Series BMW's, lots of Mercedes Benz's, Lexus (I can see why Lexus is so successful in the United States) and.... Subaru's! They are everywhere - seen lots of my own little XT Forester, although somewhat tarted up. All the cars around seem to have every accessory under the sun attached to them - bit tacky!

Central Park - Lovely! Who ever thought of building a big park smack in the centre of Manhattan was pretty clever - Central Park is a fantastic place to just wander around and check things out. Walking around, you are reminded of every movie your've ever seen shot with a park scene - Wall Street, Seinfeld, Taxi Driver. On that note, we've been watching back to back episodes of Law & Order SVU and Law & Order Criminal Intent and Seinfeld here on cable. It takes on a totally new meaning when you see "Crime Scene: 45 West 126th Street, Harlem" or "NYPD 29th Precinct, Crescent Avenue, 42-96 Queens" and realise it's only a few blocks from you. "

Guggenheim Museum - an extraordinary dissapointment, sorry to say. The building itself is magnificent to look at, but in dire need of major repaint/renovations/repairs. Unfortunately compounded on that, the first time we went (Thursday) it was shut! We rolled up a couple of days later and found that 3 of the 5 galleries were closed due to an upgrade of the displays. What was on display was sundry at best. Much as I like modern art, I find it hard to swallow the net worth of a piece of minimalist art that is solely represented by a large canvas painted black and is "worth" $2 million USD. Not my cup of tea. Gret was even more scathing on it.

MoMA QNS - Museam of Modern Art, Queens. The temporary relocation of this particular museum - very cool. Nice museum site, bit small (as it's temp until September 2004), saw a bit of Andy Warhol, Roy Lichenstein (my fave) and a Dieter Roth exhibition (very cool).

American Museum of Natural History - Enormous - spent most of Saturday, battling it out with all the tour groups. Must see is the Hayden Planitarium - absolutely spectacular - it was an awesome display of our solar system etc. Gret & I really enjoyed the 40 min show - the trip alone to this made this visit worthwhile. Excellent collections of Aztec, Mayan, Mohican, Ancient Babylonian, Ancient Egyption artifacts made all the more interesting because of my interest in Age of Empires.

Empire State Building - didn't have to queue for too long thankfully - that was really good - views were spectacular. We had been putting off this visit for a few days as the weather has been unseasonably humid and as a consequence overcast, but we made the trek upwards and we got lots of photos.

Loewe Cinemas - Van Helsing - Great movie! Hugh Jackman was suitably Indiana Jones like in his heroism and toting the appropriate weaponry with flair against the warewolves, vampires and the like. Very emotive classical soundtrack - US Cinema's stomp all over Aussie ones for sound presentation - they are really an event to go too - when there is an explosion, the whole room shakes. Looking forward to seeing Hugh Jackman tonight in the Boy from Oz. We managed to get balcony seats which will allow a much better view over the masses.

5th Avenue - strolled along here, checked out some of the stores. One thing, money TALKS in the US of A. The economy is incredible, there are so many brand label stores around, and right outside their front door, they'll be some enterprising person with knock off products right there on a trestle tables. Irrespective, people everywhere are walking around with the requisite big bags and displaying the various labels around the place. We've been to Macy's a few times - it's lauded as the largest department store in the world, and Gret went weak at the knees when she saw all the handbags - it was hilarious! I really like Macy's myself - I've bought a few tops and some pairs of jeans and so forth - so I have a nice new wardrobe. Visited Bloomingdales yesterday - Gret and I didn't like this at all. Who ever the range buyers are headed up by should be shot, they are experts at getting in incomplete ranges that don't align with the merchandising presented. It was very frustrating to see posters and mannequins in particular garments and then be told that they were'nt stocked. Not very logical!

The remainder of the week will be devoted to visiting NBC Studios, Rockefeller Centre, Radio City tommorow, Thursday will be a ferry ride around Manhattan and visiting Little China Town, Greenich Village and SOHO. Friday we'll be jumping onto the Amtrak to go to Washington DC, where we are staying at the Crown Plaza Hotel, about 3 blocks from the Whitehouse. DC's going to be chock-a-block this weekend because it's Memorial Day on Monday and they are opening up a new section of Washington Memorial in memory of the soldiers who've been killed in the recent Afghan & Iraq conflicts. Press coverage of the event has been huge, so we're both looking forward to seeing all the parades and so forth.

3 days in DC, we should be able to sneak a few of the 11 Smithsonian Institute Museum's in. Highest on the list is the Air and Space Museum. After DC, we're flying over to San Francisco, where we have 5 days.

Until then - we'll try and get to a Internet Cafe sometime soon!

Hope you are all well.

CY & GF
12:33 25/5/04

Walking, Subways & Buses

2004-05-18T11:55:00.000+09:30

Metrocard = $21 = 7 days. Very cool way to get around New York City. It's unlimited travel and the Subway system is surprising easy and quick to use. What took us 1 and half hours traipsing by foot and bus to get from 103rd street all the way down to the heart of the financial district to round Zero, took 20 mins on a quick express subway train ride back. Air conditioned too. Adjusting to the jet lag now, the consensus is that McDonalds is total crap, Subway is still the same, Yoshinora Japanese is great (best value for money vs sustainance) and there are far too many different types of icecreams available, hence the obese problem. My God! Fat people everywhere! Greta and I look like refugees from another 3rd world country.

Booked tickets to The Boy from Oz next Tuesday night - A Grade Balcony seats. Hugh Jackmans the flavour of the month at the moment (Tony Nominations last week, Van Helsing realised this week), so as a consequance, his tickets were close to $100 US EACH. He better be good!

Visited the World Trade centre site this afternoon, after a dizzying walk thru Times Square - it's really just a big hole in the ground, with a brand new subway station underneath. I must admit to being a little underwhelmed - I was expecting flags, bunting and floral memorials to be everywhere, but unless you knew the exact location, you'd be hard pressed to pick it from normal building site. The exception is the surrounding buildings - many of them are undergoing intense structural works, which are shielded and bannered with various memorial messages - not many of these though.

Visited the USS Intrepid - even Gret found it interesting! Intrepid class air carrier in service up until 1976 - had much of the gear still on it. Also saw a concorde up close and the USS Growler, a guided missile submarine - toured around all these - was interesting.

Our new location is in Queens, on Long Island, really close to a big shopping centre and looking like its going to be more centrally located to things - nice place, unlike the dive we stayed in. We're here for the next few days.

Over and Out!

CY & GF
22:35 17/5/04

Times Square NYC

2004-05-17T22:14:00.000+09:30

Wow! What a place Times Square is! Greta and I are wandering around at 8am in the morning and the place is absolutely cranking. We spent some time in the ABC studios watching the Good Morning America show and also watched across the way a filming of some Television/movie show with police cars, ambulances etc. Currently standing in the Information Kiosk off 44th Street, using this net connection for free. Very cool. Greta's red hot keen to do the Seinfeld tour, which we are booking for this Saturday and we've decided we're going to see the "Boy from Oz" show at the Imperial theatre on Broadway, starring Hugh Jackman, sometime later this week. Quite brisk this morning, already had our cup of Starbucks, waiting for the stores to open to buy some more clothes. Journey today is to make our way to Ground Zero - The World trade Centre site and try and get up the Empire State Building. Starting to take lots of photos, which are going to be great - can burn 90 of them to CD for $4.50 and get hi-res (2512x 1952) print outs of all 90 for about $6.99. Very cheap. Anyhow, gotta keep going!

CY & GF
17/5/04 8:45

Airports, Planes & Hotels

2004-05-17T11:16:00.000+09:30

Hi All,
I'm sitting in the Jazz at the Park Inn hotel at the moment typing this on an internet terminal. Greta & I are both tired - we were 36 hours in transit, taking in account time shifts, jumping on planes for transfers and than hiking it with crazy New York Cab drivers.

Our plane flights were uneventful - 16 hours from Sydney to San Francisco where I "cruised" thru customs and entered US space. Greta on the other hand got searched, searched and more searched - all under the pretense of a "survey". Cute. I did have my shoes X-Rayed though - that was funny. Greta made comment that it was because they were a nice pair of Timberlands and that people at the airport would be jealous of them.... Yeah right - right next to all the Nike's, Reebok's and other expdnsive shoes.

Our first cab trip was from JFK Airport - unlike its San Francisco counterpart, a real DUMP. We almost got into a Limosine courtesy of a well spoken, all knowing NY type of chaffeur, but missed that and settled for the more standard Yellow Cab. Our hotel is in a word.... crap. We've booked into a much nicer one about over in Long Island which we'll be heading too tommorow. Unlike the nice pictures on the internet, it is a singly bare room - at least its got a lock on the door. It's REAL noisy and there isn't any air con - weather here is quite humid a the moment, so coupled with our jetlag and not knowing the town real well, it's less than salubrious. Oh Well - the next place will be better. The locationg is actually on the edge of Harlem, (about 2km away) which contrary to reports, is actually pretty cool - just don't go out at night!!! If you walk around, it's quite interesting looking at all the nice old buildings - lots of nice cars around (Subaru's too!) parked WAY too close to each other.

Going to be doing the shopping thing tommorow - we visited The Gap tonight and got a few summer style garments - and probably going to have a look around Lower Manhattan, check out Ground Zero and see Little Italy & China Town over the next 2 days.

Anyhow, back to our dinky little room, with a nice big bottle of water - next time we write this, it will be in a PLUSH hotel room, views and all!

Take Care,
CY & GF
16/5/04 22:00

The Big Apple

2004-05-14T13:23:00.000+09:30

Hi All,
This is an exercise in jumping on the trendy bandwagon of documenting your thoughts online. Driven by our impending trip to the United States, Greta & I thought this would be a fun way to keep everyone up to date on what we are doing and where we are going. Also, fortunatley, I have a few friends who are also travelling who we may/may not be able to run into whilst abroad and this was thought to be a good way to keep tabs on where we all were.

We're flying out tommorow morning via United Airlines to Sydney and than onwards to San Francisco. 16 hour flight, layover for 2 hours in San Francisco and than another 5 hour flight to New York - Jetlag here we come. We'll be staying initially in a hotel in Upper Manhattan about 2 blocks from Central Park, which should prove to be a good springboard into the more salubrious hotels, boutique B&B's and Big Apple hospitality in general.

I got a tip last night at my Subaru send off drinks that "Malatonin" from a Chinese herbalist would fend off the jetlag once we got there. I don't even know what that is, so I'll do some research prior. On the "send off note" thankyou to everyone at Subaru for an outstanding 2 years of fun, learning and experiences. Subaru is an excellent business and it can deservably wear its current successes and accolades with pride, due to the product, the culture and most importantly the people. I am all the more enriched for having been able to take part in the growth of the Docklands project and being part of a successful fleet operations growth. Of particular note I would like to acknowledge the roles and efforts of John N, Pete C, Pete H, JD, Roxie, Pricey, Steve R, CD & Mr Sica. All of you have presented the "lead from the front" attitude of an at times tough & demanding business and thus ensuring the successes of Subaru now and for the future.

My new role at Areeba is something that I can't wait to get into and I'm really looking forward to joining the team there and extending the already successful nature of their business.

Anyhow, next time I post, I'll hopefully not be sitting at home, but in some nice airport, or better still an internet cafe. Expectations are high for this trip - Greta & I are really looking forward to it.

A note on the "blog". If you are viewing this, it is because I have specifically emailed yourself with the URL to be able visit the site. As such, I've chosen the private option of not publishing the URL to any web crawlers and the like. Feel free to add comments and give us notes on where to go, places to see etc etc.

Hope you are all well, and we'll see you when we get back.

Regards,
CY & GF
13:50 14/5/04