Manhattan skyscrapers from Brooklyn
Now that the trip is over it’s time to reflect on the whole experience and draw some conclusions.
First, it was a good trip and I had a great time. The highlights were mainly in NYC, although there were some good experiences upstate. But there were some things I did wrong, or could have done better, so here are my conclusions:-
- I messed around too much in the Hudson Valley – I should have driven straight to Ithaca from Middletown (i.e. on the first full day) instead of having the following day in Poughkeepsie. In fact, that was probably the least satisfying day of the whole trip. Sorry, Poughkeepsie. But – if I’d left Middletown early with a view to getting to Ithaca early I wouldn’t have had the hours at Bear Mountain State Park, and climbing Bear Mountain turned out to be a real highlight;
- I miscalculated the length of time the driving would take. I’ll remember two particular instances for a long time – first, driving around Ithaca in the early evening looking for the Miller Inn at the end of a long drive when I felt tired, hungry and above all needing a ‘rest room’; and secondly, having to call Val at nearly her bedtime to ask her which hotel I was heading for, and where it was it;
- Better communications. (I haven’t mentioned this much.) I bought a cheap Windows phone – MS Lumia 550 – into which I put a Three sim, because of their ‘Feel at Home‘ provision. Readers, it sucked. The only thing that worked reliably was texting. Phone calls home were hit and miss; phone calls to US numbers never worked; data (browsing, Facebook) was either very slow or failed altogether, especially in NYC; and the Windows Mobile Maps app blows chunks. Awful. Some of these problems were down to the phone, and some down to Three’s connectivity in the US;
- The Airbnb experience was excellent and well worthwhile;
- NYC was, as expected, awesome;
- The flights were as good as can be expected – it’s never fun sitting in a tin can for 7 or 8 hours. Newark airport seems a lot more efficient than Dulles at getting people into the USA – I was through US immigration in about 5 minutes, as against 2 hours at Dulles last year – though I suppose that may be due to fewer international arrivals.
Overall, the best experiences were these:-
- visiting the 9/11 Memorial Museum;
- climbing Bear Mountain;
- my encounter with Spiderman, Iron Man and a Starwars Stormtrooper in Times Square!
Here’s a link to the whole archive for this trip.