Friday, August 11, 2017

The Big New York Summary Post

(Note: I have decided to just write a big summary post for the rest of my time in New York and another for all my time in Washington D.C)

After my last post we did a few things but I don't remember what order they were in.

One day we went to see a very funny off-Broadway play called The Government Inspector which is about a man who is mistaken for a government inspector in a pre-Soviet Russian village.

Another day I went to the amusement park at Coney Island and had hotdogs at Nathan's. I had a lot of fun going on the rides and got very dizzy because of them. In the evening I went to see a baseball game at Yankee Stadium with my uncle. It was the Yankees vs. the Rays.  

One day I went and walked across the Brooklyn Bridge. It was very windy and there were a lot of padlocks and tumbler locks attached to it. Afterwards we went to the same burger place we went to before and had lunch. After lunch I went back to the apartment and that was the end of the day.

The next day I went to a flea market. As I expected it was filled with other people's trash and I didn't find it very interesting. Afterwards we went to a small cafe for a snack and went for a walk by the sea. There was a lot of wind and it was warm and sunny. I then went to a Hot Topic and brought some shirts.

Tuesday, August 1, 2017

The Intrepid Museum and Wax Statues

26th July. Today we went to go visit the Intrepid Museum. The first thing that we saw was a submarine called the Growler which launched nukes and was one of two ever made. It was used during the Cold War against the Soviet Union and was designed to attack cities from out at sea.

We saw a Concorde and multiple American planes. They also had two Soviet planes, the Mig 17 and the Mig 21. In another room they had a Lego scale model of the aircraft carrier that was the museum. In another room they had a space shuttle which was really big.

My favourite things were the space shuttle and some safety cartoons that had a character called Dilbert the pilot and another one called Spoiler the mechanic. I liked these because they were very funny.

After the Intrepid Museum we went to Madame Tussaud’s to look at the waxwork collection. I didn’t understand who quite a bit of the people were but I liked it. They even had one of Donald Trump that you could take a photo with.


For dinner we had moules frites at a nearby restaurant which was very good.

Some Museums and Cheesecake

27th July. Today we went to the Brooklyn Children’s Museum. It didn’t have a lot of things but I liked it. One room had a giant iguana in it. They also had boa constrictors, some different types of fish, and an orange parrot that was very pretty to look at but didn’t talk.

Next we went to the Brooklyn museum which had a lot of Egyptian artefacts. An interesting thing I learned was the reason why many of the statues didn’t have noses. It was because the Egyptians believed that spirits could enter through the eyes and noses of the statues so in order to prevent this from happening they knocked off the noses. Another reason it happened was because the Christian minority who lived in Egypt defaced the statues because they belonged to a pagan religion.

We then took a ferry that went round Ellis Island so we could go look at the Statue of Liberty. We had seen it a few times before but this was the first time we had got to see it close up. I liked the boat ride because there was a nice breeze and we got some good views of the cityscape and the statue.

Afterwards we went to Juniors for dinner and had some of the best cheesecake ever. It came in very large quantities, too. My piece was as big as my own face.


When dinner was over we went home and went to bed. 

The Met

25th July. Today we went to the Metropolitan Museum. There we saw many interesting things including lots of Egyptian artefacts, suits of knight armour, and ornate pistols that were made by Samuel Colt. The pistols and the knight amour were the best things that I saw.

One interesting section of the museum had many different things from Japan made of bamboo.   

Afterwards my Dad went to go and meet a friend so my Mum, my sister, and I all went to the top of the Empire State Building together. We had a really good view from the top and could see the whole city.

For dinner we had bagels at home.   

Saturday, July 29, 2017

Dinosaurs!

Six days ago my uncle finally arrived. The next day we took the train to the Museum of Natural History.

When we got there we saw a lot of amazing things. We started by looking at the African animals where they had preserved lions, tigers, and other animals. The coolest of all of these was a whole elephant that was mounted on a pedestal in the middle of the room. 

The next thing we saw was the Asian items. They had samurai amour, various weapons, and uniforms of different peoples. 

The next and best things we saw were the dinosaurs. They had the galleries arranged chronologically so you could see how the dinosaurs evolved over time. They had many whole skeletons and one of a brontosaurus poking through the doorway at the entrance to greet you.

After the dinosaurs we went to the see the sea creatures and the wall of biodiversity. The wall of biodiversity was a wall entirely covered in models and pictures of creatures from every single animal family on earth. The sea creatures section had a giant whale floating in the middle of it. They had many different types of fish on display as well as sea lions, otters, and some types of sea birds.
Then we walked across Central Park and went to the Guggenheim museum. While we were walking we passed the obelisk there. 
After the Guggenheim museum we went to a ramen place near the house for dinner and had some really good ramen.










Wednesday, July 26, 2017

Arrival and First Day in New York

Yesterday I got up very early to go to the airport at around 5am. First we flew from Vancouver to Toronto. The plane flight was boring but it had movies so it wasn't all bad. Luckily we were not flying with United Airlines so we got where we wanted to go without being thrown off the plane part way. In Toronto we had sandwiches for lunch and then got on our flight to New York. The New York flight was shorter than the one to Toronto and I ended up watching more movies on it.

When we got to New York we tried to get an Uber car to take us to our apartment but something went wrong and we had to settle for a taxi instead. When we finally got to the apartment my Dad and I went to go find some dinner. We went to a pizza place with a wood-fired oven which had the best pizza ever. It had puffy crust and the toppings were good as well. After that I went to bed. 

Today I went on a bus tour of some of the famous buildings in New York. We went out to a nice restaurant for breakfast where I had a big plate of eggs, toast, and sausage. We then boarded the subway to go to the bus tour starting place. On the first train we were on (we had to change twice) there was a black Trump supporter who was yelling some sort of hate speech with religion mixed in. 

When we got to our destination we saw a lot of ads as we were in Times Square. I also saw a large two story shop that was just filled with M&M products. 

While we were on the tour we saw the Empire State, the Chrysler Building, and The Flat Iron Building as well as 5th Avenue. The most interesting thing I learned was about the church which had not been damaged in 9/11 because the large old tree behind it had taken all the damage instead of the church.

Eventually we got off the bus because it was too hot. We saw the Statue of Liberty from afar and had lunch at a small place in Greenwich Village afterwards that had homemade lemonade.

We took the subway back to the apartment and I had a nap. 

When I woke up we went for dinner at a burger place. We had to take a bus there and for some reason the driver went completely off route. We got there eventually there though and had really good burgers. The fries were good too but my mouth went on fire due to the pepper. While we were going there it started raining. It stopped for a brief period but on the way back it started again. It wasn't very heavy rain but it was still enough to make you significantly wet.    

Friday, July 17, 2015

Two Days of News

This is the day before yesterday's post. Sorry about missing it. I was very tired once we got to the hotel. [He was too lazy—Ed.] Anyway here it is.

Yesterday after starting out from our old rented house we drove to a nearby farmers' market before continuing to the hotel. Personally I wasn't very sad about leaving the rented house because I knew we were going to be in a nice comfy hotel.

At the market there I saw there was lots of fresh fruit and vegetables. The nice thing about being in the tropics is that the fruit can be brought as fresh as you can get it, right off the tree. Once we had finished looking at the market (which was, by the way, a lot smaller than I expected it to be) we went to a little place nearby and had smoothies. There were also some weird decorations in there including a row of white-plastic hands and coat hangers bent into strange shapes.

Parliament Buildings of local limestone
We left for the hotel after that and found our room was not ready. So we left our luggage at the hotel and drove into Bridgetown to find some lunch. We came to a nice place that served pizza called Mamma Mia's. We looked through the menu and found a nice deal where you could get an eight-inch pizza and a glass of home-made lemonade. The pizza was nice and warm with delicious pieces of Italian sausage, pepperoni, and cheese that stretched from the pizza to your mouth when you took a bite.

Lord Nelson (erected 30 years before the one
in London's Trafalgar Sq.)
Next we went to The Barbados Museum. There we saw some interesting artifacts including a drip stone which is a device that was used to remove solid contaminants from water.

Then we went to the hotel and found the room was ready. Me and my dad went to look at the executive lounge while my mom and my sister went to the pool. The executive lounge had chandeliers.

Then we had dinner and went to bed.

Yesterday we woke up and had breakfast at the hotel's buffet which I liked it very much.  We spent most of the morning after that swimming. There were three pools at the hotel a baby pool, a regular pool, and an infinity pool which was deeper and had a waterfall that went over the edge.

Then we went to look at Bridgetown, which is the capital city of Barbados. The place was a bit ragged and in a state of disrepair. There wasn't much that was interesting either the only two things that we did see were a statue of Lord Nelson and the Parliament Building.

Then we drove to a small restaurant called Blakeleys that was on a beach. We got a table on the balcony and ate lamb chops with BBQ sauce and fries. Then we went home.