Where Are We Sleeping Tonight: Paramount Hotel, New York City, New York We headed into the centre of Philadelphia this morning to visit the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall, which was sadly covered in scaffolding as they were conducting renovations. The Liberty Bell is something I have been fascinated by purely because of how revered this faulty piece of equipment is. Even though it is in a roped area, I couldn't help but touch it. I mean, what's it going to do - crack more?
After enjoying a chilli dog at Dairy Queen for lunch, we drove over to the iconic "LOVE" artwork/statue (which is in the middle of a roundabout with no vehicular access) before heading to the Art Museum with the famous steps seen in the movie 'Rocky'. Again, with no real place to stop the car, I continually drove around and around the museum until Clare got a good photo - it felt like the scene from European Vacation! "Look kids, Museum of Art!"
Next up we drove to a place I had been dying to visit - Grovers Mill in New Jersey. While it clearly isn't a place regularly visited by tourists, it is the site where Martians landed in Orson Welles infamous radio drama of "War Of The Worlds"... yes, I am a geek!
From there, we went out of our way to Red Bank to visit Jay & Silent Bob's Secret Stash. Sadly it was a lot smaller than I was expecting (we have bigger ones in Perth) and felt just like any other comic book store. The one thing it did have was a cabinet of props from various films of Kevin Smith.
Our next stop was the stop that just about every tourist visits - New York City! Our TomTom navigator said we could avoid toll roads and take 9 hours to get there! We decided, in the interest of sanity, we would take the toll roads and save 7 hours :) We encountered our first toll station in New Jersey - the fee was a huge 35 cents! We couldn't believe how cheap it was. Continuing on into New York state, driving on a ridiculously wide freeway (at one stage I counted 12 lanes in each direction!), we found another toll station. With our 35 cents in hand, we were surprised to find the toll here was $8! Ouch! We drove over to Brooklyn and from the bridge, through the smog, we could see the NYC skyline and the Statue of Liberty!
We continued on to JFK Airport where we parked the car in the long term carpark because I aint driving through New York City! We caught the sky train to the nearest subway station where we rode the subway to 46th Street in Manhattan. We walked the couple of blocks to our very funky hotel - there was cool funky music playing in the swish looking lobby. Unfortunately, even though it is 8pm, house keeping is still making up the rooms! As we had to wait for a room, we checked our bags in and walked up to Time Square, half a block away! It is just as flashy as it is in the movies!
Back at the hotel, we could check in at 10pm but only into a small room (the only room available) as our proper room still isn't ready! So tomorrow we will have to check out of this room so we can check into our real room - I will be having words with the manager tomorrow!
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