New York Part I: the trip begins

New York part one went by real quick. No time to write a story (Not a good sign if this already happens after the first few days of the big trip). I’m writing this while I’m in the bus to Boston with snow on the side of the roads (camping is going to be fun next week!). It’s clearly still early spring here and so far I had two sunny but windy days and one warmer but very rainy day. The rainy day was spend at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which has art from all over the world. Some of which is less interesting (sorry Americans, but furniture doesn’t count as art) and some were really good (Pacific masks and a deer made out of bubbles). The sunny days were spend walking through Brooklyn, Manhattan and Staten Island. The problem with the windy/sunny weather is that everything looks very pretty but it’s too cold to sit down somewhere. My solution to this is to just keep walking… 30km per day later I can’t feel my feet anymore. The best parts of the walking were: Highline park (park on top of an abandoned elevated train line, the only spot where I could sit out of the wind); the view from the top of the freedom tower (this also has the coolest elevator rides ever: on the way up you see NYC being build around you through time; on the way down it looks like you’re going outside/around the building); crossing bridges (Brooklyn Bridge and Williamsburg Bridge); watching some students play a lacorsse match; deciding to which food truck to go next and just good old people watching.

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The last days were also good for meeting up with friends. Katie Sue helped me stay awake from my jetlag on Sunday night and took me to a very nice beer bar in Greenwich Village. Monday evening was the evening of the finals of college basketball. The finals were between the North Carolina Tar Heels and the Villanova Wildcats. The Tar heels are from Katie Sue’s (and Lizzie’s) home college so we went to a sports bar where a room was filled with a large amount very avid Tar Heels fans. It was a intense game where the Tar Heels were behind but managed to get equal with only 4 seconds left, but the Wildcats managed to score on the buzzer. So the bar first exploded with excitement followed with even more sadness. Fun US fact: they don’t only have boatloads of advertisement during normal TV, but also during sports matches, even live sports… This means that the game is actually stopped every few minutes (not the half time break) to show some ads while the players just wait around I guess. On Wednesday morning I went to Katie Sue’s house to drop of my big(ish) bag so I only have to carry a small one to Boston (Thanks!).This meant that I had to take a morning rush hour subway with literally everything I own (minus a van, which obviously wouldn’t fit in the subway train). The cool thing about visiting friends in a city is that I always wonder what the houses you walk by look like and now you can have a look inside. Wednesday evening Christopher and Rachel invited me to their place in Brooklyn for dinner (Beer chicken, jam jam). Afterwards we went to a nice dark classy cocktail bar to finish the day.

Watching the Tar Heels game with Katie Sue

My Airbnb in New York was pretty good and nicely next to a subway stop. The supermarkets around it had loads of Hispanic food. The only drawback was that there was no warm water in the shower. But I decided this was good practise for when I have to use my van shower somewhere in the wild. Foodwise, New York is very good too. Surprisingly I haven’t been to a restaurant yet. I managed to either have food at a friend’s place, the kitchen in my Airbnb or get some food from one of the many food trucks (Thanks for the tip Pauline!). You just have to pick the right one, but a long queue of Indian people at an Indian food stand is always a good sign. I also made another score on “your-travel-plans-are-so-awesome-I’ll-give-you-stuff-for-free”: I was getting a local SIM card for my phone and when I explained the guy my plans (and yes Alaska is part of the US, not of Canada), he decided to not charge me for the sign up fees. Score!

Bonus funny picture:

I wonder when I can park here…

Song

I know I already had the Foo Fighters but this was quite fitting: Cold Day in the Sun.