Six days in New York

We arrived in NY on September 11. Here, just like Washington, D.C., there was no noticeable drama on the street because of the date. We stayed two nights at a friend’s place in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and then moved to Roosevelt Island to spend four nights in an AirBnB place, hosted by a gay couple. Roosevelt island is a quiet oasis between Manhattan and Queens, just one subway stop or a cable car ride from Manhattan.

We bought NY Passes which grants access to dozens of commercial attractions plus discounts on some more items as well as a very useful pocket size guide book. Having paid 150 € makes you want to make the most of the card, so we tried to pack a lot in those six days, still leaving room for relaxation and improvisation. I think it's also psychologically less stressful to use the card at the cash register instead of always paying. There are several other passes on the market such as Citypass (which we had months ago in Toronto).

We made a plan for 4 of the 6 days and  followed it with some improvisation.

We also bought weekly passes for the public transport. Subway is the only right way to move between places in New York. It's fast and safe, if not clean (rats on the stations) nor comfortable. You see the locals in their natural habitat. Sometimes you get to enjoy artistic acts of varied quality on board the trains. A really cool act was couple of guys doing break-dance and acrobatics to loud music.

Below is our actual visit history with my totally subjective ratings on Angry Birds scale (1 to 3 stars, *** being awesome) I have only rated places where you need to pay to get in.

Day one 

Top of the Rock (**) is a scenic view from the roof of the Rockefeller Center. It's a more quiet alternative to Empire State Building and the views are great. Afterwards, we had a tour in NBC studios (*) since it's in the same building, not that we were familiar with the Saturday Night Show that seemed to be the main focus of the tour. At night we went out drinking in Brooklyn.

Central Park from Top of the Rock. The weather was not ideal.

Brooklynites standing in line for discount tattoos at 1 am on the Friday, 13th

Day two

We took a lengthy subway ride to northern Manhattan to see The Cloisters Museum and Gardens (***). This is a huge collection of medieval European artifacts plus there was an awesome audio installation with 40 speakers representing a huge choir. I can very much recommend the place and the installation which is there until Deceber 8, 2013.

The next stop was Museum of Modern Art (**), which we had to run through due to our next appointment with our AirBnB hosts. I was not very impressed by MoMa, but the design section was pretty cool. There was a school desk that can stand half a ton of concrete falling on it, while being made of simple steel and board. On the other end of the wow-scale there was pee and poo with other body fluids on display.

Day three

More of the emperor's new clothes type of "art" experience at Solomon R. Guggenheim (**) museum. After waiting in line for 45 minutes, the "installation" of a rectangle on the wall in a dark room was utterly disappointing. I liked the works of Picasso, though.

Guggenheim is located in a nice, posh neighborhood of Upper East Side

Our passes entitled us for a 3-hour bike rental near Central Park. The bikes of Central Park Bike Tours and Rentals (**) were not of great quality but the park itself is a very refreshing place. There are performances to enjoy, boats to rent and even a zoo and a lake. I think it's a great idea to have a huge park in the heart of a busy city. Be advised, there's only one direction to cycle, which means you can't turn back.

In the evening we ventured to Little Italy where there was a huge festival going on, San Gerrano I think. We had dinner in next-door Chinatown in a popular place Joe's Shanghai which was recommended by the travel book Lonely Planet. Woody Allen was dining in the next table but people pretended to be cool about it.

Huge crowds at the festival in Little Italy.

Day four

It's Sunday and we went to Brooklyn Tabernackle to hear some gospel singing. It's a huge, theater-like church with floor and balcony levels and thousands of seats, silver screen for lyrics and bible verses (and to show the minister) and podcasting capability. Something like 80% of churchgoers were black. After a lot of singing, standing and hands in the air by some, came the bible-thumping part. Some people started to leave after an apparent overdose of Jesus. I'm pretty much an agnostic but I take religious ceremonies as an experience. Shaking hands with and giving hugs to thy neighbour is an interesting community-bonding ritual that I've never witnessed in Lutheran churches in Europe.

Next thing was a ride with New York Water Taxi (**) from Brooklyn to Battery Park, pretty much a transport from a to b, no great adventure there. The havoc wreaked by Hurricane Sandy in the Battery Park had not yet been all fixed. We walked to 9-11 Memorial (***). It's very impressive although not completely finished. The new World Trade Center buildings around the Ground Zero were also just being finished.

Around the two waterfalls, which show the outline of the collapsed buildings, the names of the 3003 victims of both the 1993 and 2001 attacks are carved in stone.

Day five

We got up early to catch a walking tour on Wall Street (**). Our tour guide was a former banker, now trading part time on her on behalf. I think the tour would have benefited from audio equipment as it was hard to hear the lady in the outside, even in our small group of eight people. (Or maybe I need a hearing aid.)

Next we went to 9-11 Tribute Center (***), where you see some of the artifacts, recordings and stories of the attacks. I bought one of my few souvenirs: the 9-11 Commission Report as a comic book! After a healthy lunch at Burger King we took the subway to Pier 83 and took a fun 30 min speedboat ride on The Beast (***) by Circle Line Sightseeing Cruises.

The new WTC tower is 1776 feet tall in honor of year of the independence.

Statue of Liberty, pictured from the speedboat. We did not go on the island or into the statue itself as it's not part of the NY Pass attractions.

After speedboating we split up to see different things. (After spending so much time together during the last months, having just a few hours "holiday" is a healthy thing and good for the relationship.) I made an unplanned quick-visit to Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum (**), featuring a cold war era submarine, carrier, Concorde, lots of military aircraft and a the space shuttle Enterprise (actually an atmospheric test orbiter that didn't go to space). Again, due to our schedule, I had less time than I would have needed to fully explore Intrepid.

We met up to visit Museum of Sex (*). It was a rather short experience as those things tend to be... Joking aside, there were basically only three exhibitions of which one was an uninteresting one about an artist I'd never heard of, another of animal sexual behavior. Third one was keyword analysis about the kind of porn people are looking for on the internet.

Next we rushed to Empire state building (**) before a scheduled dinner with my aunt. The place was extremely crowded at sunset and we were in a hurry but the views are very nice. In the same building there is an outdated NY Skyride show (*) which is pure waste of time. We chose it because it is one of the Pass attractions. Having insufficient time, we luckily had already enjoyed skyscraper views on Rockefeller Center as well as in Toronto and Chicago. After the dinner in Hell's Kitchen district we enjoyed the huge advertisement screens and the hustle and bustle of Times Square.

View to north/northwest from Empire State Building at dusk

Day six 

On our last day we again went to see different thing. I went to Madame Tussaud's (**) wax museum. The figures are very life-like, especially seen in front of their eyes. But again, the other visitors somewhat diminish your own experience just by being there, nothing to do about it. I went to see the hip Greenwich Village district as the last thing before getting our bags from Roosevelt island and heading for the JFK airport and our flight on an Singapore Airlines A380 superjumbo (***).


Final analysis

New York is HUGE as are many of the attractions. The traffic is crazy and people like to honk a lot. Take the subway! It's easy like this city, just remember to take some time off in the more quiet places like Central Park every now and then.

In general, when visiting a museum, you should check on the home page what there is to see and what you want to see; you might find out there's nothing to see. Also be advised, most big-name places are infested with other tourists. The dilemma with multi-choice passes is that you have a financial incentive to go to as many places as possible. That's when you easily allocate too little time for visits. On the other hand, passes give you structure, a guideline, if you feel overwhelmed by options.

If there's two things I recommend to do in New York, go see the 9-11 Memorial (that's the site, not the 9-11 Tribute Center) and Central Park. It's recommended to make a reservation at 9-11 site but you should get in by standing in line as well.

Great Finnish food on Vancouver Island

Guess where we got great Finnish food here in Campbell River?!
We just made it ourselves :)

Sami made delicious finnish salmon soup.

I made a blueberry pie - kesätunturin mustikkapiirakka!
And yesterday we went mushroom picking in the nearby "rainforest".

Visit to Chicago in June

Our beautiful rented Volkswagen

After visiting old friends in Michigan in mid-June, we also went to Chicago and visiting an old highschool friend of mine who lives in the area. Travelling through the US to Calgary is actually cheaper..
These are some impressions:

Slightly intimidating when you drive into a sunday afternoon Chicago traffic

Kiss 'n Ride- brilliant invention

A parking fee system that has maybe come a bit out of fashion

Weekly announcements of the homicide statistics in the Metro magazine in Chicago

We caught Chicago on a beautiful foggy day

Beautiful garden in the Millenium park

In front of the famous Buckingham Memorial Fountain

View from the Shedd Aquarium

Stayed overnight with an old highschool friend

When you bought a ticket on board in cash, you stick the ticket in the designated holders. Couldn't help but feeling that train travel in the US is stuck in the 60's

In the Union station however, you could buy valuable electronics from a vending machine

A German submarine in the Museum of Science and Industry was great and included this tribute to complicated German bureaucracy

The small backpack is Sami's. Also roughly half the weight. But if I want all the stuff I need to carry it around :/

The things Finnish in Canada

At the third place, a lodge I spotted this & other Fiskars tools

Sami was not the only Finnish teammember at our second place. This Valtra tractor does well in Ontarioan winters.
There was also a Tunturi training bike here which made it to Canada when they moved from England...

Iitalla in the shop of the "Design Exchange" in Toronto.

On the Sunshine Coast near Vancouver, these fellars from Fiskars.
 

Working man's day, or how to make a concrete wall

Cutting steel rebars

Stakes I made  with a skilsaw. These stakes are not to be eaten.

Vibrator man's assistant, with my stakes sledgehammered into the ground

My rebars disappearing into the concrete

Unexpected disappointment - Royal Ontario Museum

 A highlight and lowlight of our first week in Toronto were the Royal Ontario Museum- ROM and the Toronto Zoo. Ela did not like the museum at all and Sami found it too big. There were a few sections that were great but otherwise- "boooh" to the curators.
Besides the highlights that I will mention soon, the museum has such an all over the place architecutre that it was very difficult to find sections, the collections seemed very random (allbeit intersting) and so selected that it was not possible to get the big picture if you don't know it. Explanations were poorly placed and seemed without context. The worst part was the highly praised super section with dinosaurs which was very disappointing. The place seemed also very inappropriate/unintersting for kids (if I compare it e.g. to the Museum of Natural History in Helsinki).
A section I was looking for and by the title seemed intersting was "Korea". As this is not a specialized museum, like arts, biology or history I would assume a good overview of how the Korean nations developed, how poeple lived and dressed. But what you get is a MASSIVE exhibition of ceramics. It was pleasant and nice too look at but boy, there is only so and so much ceramics one can take is a day. And conencted to China and Japan with 3921032 more vases, I was underwhelmed!

And worst- they have somebody that is called "Head of Visitor Experience"....?!

To the posivites: Neither me nor Sami have ever seen such an extensive and great to watch minerals selection. really valuable ones, a really big diamond and many good explanations were part of it. (click on one of them to see all pictures in big).

The tallest stake in the world (Marterpfahl) was displayed across several floors in the stairways.

 

Staying and getting around in Toronto

After a really early wake-up at 06:00 (because it was already 13:00 in Finland) we went down to the hotel breakfast room to plan the day. We have not been too well prepared but found out quickly that there is no lack of things to do in the 4th biggest city on the North American continent! We didn't know it was that bit but it became clear when we looked over it from the CN Tower.

Something we learnt on the first day and have to always remember is that the Canadians mark their prices excluding a 13% sales tax and they give 10-15% tips like the Americans. We have experienced only great service but even if it wasn't, it is still expected (not in self-service locations like Starbucks of Tim Horton's). We have to keep that in mind in addition to the currency conversion (one Canadian $ costs ~ 80 € cents).


We took a tour with public transportations a little to get to know the city like the locals. Getting around in Toronto is easy and safe. The Toronto Public transport (TTC) operates the third most heavily used urban mass transit system in North America, after New York City and Mexico City, which means more than 2,6 Mio. users daily (on average). Also, Toronto has one of few streetcar networks still operating on city streets in North America. And especially the line 501 which is ~25 km long was a great way to experience different sights! It's the longest streetcar routes in North America and goes along beaches in the east, through roughneighborhoods, trendy shopping streets (all on Queen St), one of the Chinatowns and along the water through resindetial areas in the west!
After having heard generally unexcited comments about public transportation in North America as a whole, this was a pleasant suprise.


We stayed at the Hotel Strathcona which is located in the heart of the city (see cirlce on the picture), on York Street near the intersection with Front Street. 

This is a great location for sightseeing, connections at the Union station and near a downtown subway station. It was a really basic room and smelled a bit like the steakhouse next door (I guess the ventilation intake was somewhere there..). But overall we were very happy with the service, the great breakfast, the WiFi and the cleanliness.

Toronto: first impression

After a less than (Sami) / really (Ela) enjoyable 6,5-hour flight from Reykjavik we landed in Toronto around 19:00 local time ( = 02:00 Finnish time) last friday. We were rather excited about the border control procedure. After we (rather confusingly) explained our itinerary, the border guard let us in. Sami was slightly nervous about the border control stuff because being a legitimate tourist for ~5 months is one thing and proving it is another.

Having collected our luggage, we started looking for a cheap transport solution to our hotel in the "Financial district" downtown. We are great fans of public transport so that was our choice also now. The problem was that we had not made much research on how to actually use the public transport and North America is not known for great public transportation infrastructure..

Because of a lack of proper signs & unpreparedness we let two of our buses pass while fussing about the right line before a nice local helped us and told us how to change to subway (local metro). This gave us a very positive first impression of the Canadians. The cost of 3 Canadian dollars per head is a bargain compared with the about 50 CAD with a cab.

Funny thing is, the bus drivers don't have change. Our driver laughed at us and joked that there would be a couple of Hell's Angels guys now driving the bus if the bus drivers carried money around. Nevertheless, the subway ride felt very safe, even more so than a ride in Helsinki metro on a Friday evening! (Ela disagrees & feels fine on Friday 8pm in Helsinki). The subway cars are clean, it doesn't smell like urine at the stations and the city seemed to be rather sleepy. (But then again, our hotel + subway stop is in the Financial district which stayed calm all weekend.) When we surfaced at our stop we were a little lost again - which is unusual as we usually take time to prepare but this trip is different! Some young man saw us fumbling around with a map & spontaneously helped with cellphone navigation. As a reason for the nice helped he said on his European trips he was helped a lot.

CHEERFUL HELPFUL people these Torontonians!

Packing for half a year..

Much to pack!

I knew packing for 1/2 year would be difficult, especially as a woman..
Already weeks before the trip I started to collect things to pack in a cardboard box. We decided the luggage would be a big trekking backpack each and maybe one other small bag. This makes travel on trekking paths easier and we will also have our hands free when traveling ;)

Several reasons why collecting things beforehand was a good idea:
- We need clothes for the summer that we didn't wear in Finnish winter anyways
- I bought creams and other potions beforehand on top of the ones I still had/used and stacked them in that box
- I had a good overview of the amount of clothes especially but also hygenic products and smaller equipment

- Then I was able to test-pack already a week before leaving to see if I was still within limits..

In general, those limits were a hard thing for me! Normally we pack for holidays but on this trip we can wash clothes a lot, we will anyways buy things (toiletries,socks,..) and probably not wear all we pack, as usual.. So we actually packed roughly as much as for a 2-week holiday!

I found a really handy washbag (Kulturbeutel) in Intersport store that I can hang, that has a lot of space and most things can be organized standing in there.

Also, to have some room for additional clothes that I eventually wanted to take, I found a really good solution in Stadium store - an ultra light bag for 25 litres that you can fold to a small case (9,90 €).