Sunday, March 20, 2011

Holiday hi jinks or how to navigate part 2 and it's freezing!

Well over in LA we got around mainly by shuttle buses and hired a car. New York was another thing altogether. We arrived at 5am and it was freezing! -3C I believe. I had a converter on my iPhone, which I looked at every day after the weather forecast. My husband left us on the footpath (sidewalk) while he wentbqck inside, in the warmth of the airport to find where we waited for the shuttle bus. After we did up all the buttons we could we went inside the doors. Fortunately we had thermal underwear, oh so attractive.
After we slept off the flight we all rugged up: thermals (double layers for miss 7, no thermals her size), a long sleeved top, woolen/fleecy top/jacket, two pairs of socks, scarf, gloves and hat. We went up to central park to see where the snow had fallen the day before. My Brisbane born and raised children wentbeserk. It didn't take long for the snow to start flying and for their shoes to start getting wet. Hmmm.
Miss 7 doesn't like wearing a jacket properly, the hood would keep coming down (mysteriously), along with the hooks at the front undoing themselves (mysteriously) and it would end up with the jacket hanging halfway down her arms in a city with an "ambient" temp of between -3 and 10C! It wasn't until and Italian man in little Italy scolded her that she started to wear her jacket properly. He was used subsequently as a threat: "if you don't put yr jacket on properly, I'll send you back to that man...." "if you keep complaining..." if you don't get straight As at school....", but I digress. I finally snapped over the snow a week later when the remnants of the snow were getting Grey/black and they were still flinging it about, withthheir gloves still on. "if you keep throwing snow around I'll...." just kidding.
On the day we went to the statue of liberty it was so cold and the breeze off the Hudson river was so "fresh" that while we were waiting to go through the airport style security, my toes were starting to feel painfully cold. I had to stamp them to keep the obviously reluctant circulation going and tell the kids too, of course.
Any who, hubby carried one of our maps of NYC about and we bought metro cards. Great idea, you can use them on a bus or train and just swipe them for your fare. They didn't always work at the subway booths though. Sometimes some of us would be looking at someone futilely swiping over and over through a wired wall. In the end one day, I handed my card to hubby. Love the subways. They whole system is very clean and surprisingly graffiti free compared to the 80s (or when I was young). My hubby was continually pulling out the map and checking and re checking it. Way to make us look like tourists! A few times before we got the metro cards however, we had to walk a LONG way. Think the record was 20 blocks. Now the blocks are numbers avenues and crossing those streets, also numbered. The space between the avenues is longer, so even though we walked 20 streets, it was still a long way. Also, you have to get used to the fact that subways have usually about 4 exits all on different streets etc, so while you may get out at a particular stop, you have to pick your exit to get as close as possible to where you want to go. Grrr.
Finally I lost it with hubby and the map when he started pulling it out in Harlem. While still ok, it was starting to get dodgy and we were starting to look a LOT like tourists. We hastily went to a diner and I let him pull out the map to his hearts content.

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