That Large Fruit...

"There are only two beds, they made a mistake!" 

Tomasz cried foul when he saw our hotel room, even though I had repeatedly mentioned that every hotel reservation during our trip means 1 room with two queen sized beds. I even told everyone during one of the planning meetings I held for this eclectic group that we will all be sleeping together for a month, literally!
Whether my warnings made a difference or had been futile, we all survived the first night in this Grand country.

We woke up to CNN warning USAnians about a heat wave in the south west at the moment. They even showed scenes from the place I have included in our itinerary just to experience heat - Death Valley Junction! I selected that place because in 1913 they measured a temperature record which still stands as the highest in modern history. That might however change now, and I can't believe we're still over two weeks away!! Hopefully the lethal heat WON'T be gone by the time we leave Las Vegas.

Another smelly and crowded train ride later and we were on our way to reach the surface of Manhattan again, but this time, there was a line to leave the underground. It seemed crazy at first, but made sense as soon as we pushed our way forward. It was pouring down!! We braved the weather only to run out and stand under a ledge on the sidewalk next to the train station entrance. It frustrated us quite a lot. We're on a trip to enjoy warm weather and sunshine, there are reports of a record breaking heat wave on its way and New York is in the middle of a tropical monsoon!

The picture doesn't really capture how wet it really was!

We tried to make the best of our trip by checking out as many tourist places as possible including:
Times square
The Flat iron building
statue of liberty
Rockefeller plaza
Ellis island
Ground zero
Brooklyn bridge  Battery park

Taxi cars

We managed to see so many different parts of NY because we went to Pier 84 and purchased tickets to NY Water Taxi, something all 4 of us greatly appreciated. It's a wonderful service that will take you around Manhattan by boat as well as by bus. You pay a $28 ticket and then you can use their boat/bus all day long if you like. We went on the boat twice, first to listen to the impressive tour guide shower us with interesting facts about New York and then to quickly reach Ground Zero without having to pay anything extra. What was interesting about the second time we went on the boat was that there had been a shift change. There was a new tour guide, and he couldn't care less about babbling facts...he chose to devote his focus to the 4 swedes in the front =D. We had a lot of fun talking about Sweden and differences between our narrow strip of land in the icy north compared to "The Fat Land of the west". I couldn't help to wonder what the other tourists thought about his, to them one-sided discussion. We were sitting opposite the tour guide and would ask questions, and then he would respond over the speaker system. That meant that the other tourists only heard his responses. It was awesome!!

When we took the first water taxi tour, with the very informative tour guide, we were actually moved by his words regarding the 9/11 memorial. We tried to imagine how the New Yorkers that were physically close to the towers must've felt when they saw them tumble down. You can understand that they talk about it often, even 12 years later, since the gap of the twin towers serves as a constant reminder. 

"Lest we forget"

A very wet but exciting visit to New York ended with yet another hunt for shoes, this time I was in dire need for proper footware. I still have issues with me knee, and I (painfully) realized that walking around for a couple of hours with old sneakers isn't exactly all that good for my rehab. More on that later though...because when we were walking, we felt the all familiar pangs of hunger! We took a detour when I realized that we happened to be near a restaurant that the tour guide had mentioned. Lombardi's, the first pizzeria  in the US! We stumbled in, weak from hunger and were quickly seated, which was quite impressive considering how packed the place was.

The pizza was huge, but really good =D

Alright, back to the shopping! Once again, we were hoofing it, desperately trying to find relief for my sore feet. Eeventually we came upon another FootLocker and quickly went in. However, I was not pleased. They didn't have the shoes I wanted in the proper color. Like I told the sales clerk, they were a bit ostentatious. He looked at me for a while and didn't really say anything...I'm not sure what he was thinking, but it couldn't have been all that positive. I ignored his blank stare and asked for the same shoes in other, more neutral colors. He scurried away to the back ever so gently trying to appease the customer as usual, regardless of any crazy demands. He came back emptyhanded and I turned around and started walking for the door. That's when Pontus jumped up from his half slumber on the fitting bench, and told me sternly "I did NOT walk all the way here only so that you can turn away shoes because of the color, BUY THEM!!". I felt compelled  (and a bit afraid) to do as he said, so now I'm the owner of a pair of very comfortable, albeit slightly ostentatious shoes. Pictured below are the recent purchases, with my pair on the right. For those interested, the center pair belongs to Dan and Tomasz bought the Asics. We all saved a buck (or two) since the pricetag had the same number as they would in Sweden, only a 0 less. You'll have to do the rate conversion yourself (look at that, I gave the reader homework. Goldstar to me !)

The receptionist at the hotel whose lobby is currently filled with Swedes gazed at me with great wonder as I took photos of our three pairs of shoes. "Crazy Swedes"...