So the story continues…

We had to be in the Philidelphia hostel by 12am, otherwise we couldn’t check in, so we thought 5 hours should be long enough to get to the hostel. But things never went as smoothly as we liked.

One significant error we made was by catching a greyhound bus instead of a chinatown one which would have been cheaper and got us to Philidelphia much quicker. We arrived about an hour and a bit later than expected, about 11:10pm which still gave us about 50 minutes to get to the hostel. The hostel was quite far from the greyhound station so we got a cab for the quickest and simplest solution. We thought we had a vast amount of time to get to the hostel, but it didn’t look hopeful when we saw the cab driver relying on his GPS.

As time went on, we were still sitting in the cab. We noticed that the cab driver seemed to miss a junction which was not good news as we were already running out of time. I was starring at the GPS system to see if the driver’s error caused us to be further from the hostel when suddenly a strange noise started at the rear right side of the car. Yes, we got a flat tyre! By now it was about 11:40pm and we had lost most hope of getting to the hostel in time until the cab driver raised our hopes again by attempting to change the tyre.

We was very optimistic again that we could make it if he could change it in time. We were even grabbing our torches to provide him with light to change the tyre as it was pretty dark where we was. Then, just when you think things can’t get much worse, the cab driver mumbled “we have a bit of a problem…” We looked down at the wheel and could see the driver pointlessly figuring out how to get the tool which loosen the nuts on the wheel to fit on properly. The tool the driver had was the wrong size and did not fit on the nuts of the wheel which meant he could not get the tyre off the car!! You cannot imagine how frustrated and annoyed we was at the cab driver. It was late at night with the prospect of sleeping rough for the night. It was not a happy moment.

It was about 11:50pm and we was in the middle of nowhere. The cab driver who seemed a little dodgy was going crazy on the phone. Clearly, he was getting nowhere and he coudn’t do anything to get out of this mess. Moments later, we received a gift from the gods! We were saved when Kev saw another cab appear in the distance which was a rare occurance on this road, of which we managed to flag down and get us into the hostel just in time!

Tired as we were, we managed to check in and locate our beds to recover and re-energise for another round of hectic sightseeing the next day.

We left New York for Washington D.C. in the morning by catching the 7:00am Chinatown bus. The bus was absolutely packed are all four of us was lucky to get a seat. The rest of the journey was uneventful as we were all catching up on lost sleep. We arrived in about 3 hours and for a change we booked up to stay in a Comfort Inn Hotel which are similar to the travel lodges back at home. This was luxury compared to the hostel we stayed in previously. We had our own TV, air conditioning, phone and even a microwave. And to top it all off we was entitled to a buffet breakfast!

We didn’t stay long in hotel when we arrived and got stuck right in to the sights. We went and saw the big sights; the Capitol building, Washington Monument and the Lincoln memorial.

CAPITOL BUILDING AND WASHINGTON MONUMENT

This was no easy task as the distance bewteen the Lincoln memorial and the Capitol building is approximately 2.5 miles! There are so many museums, galleries and war memorials in between to see which meant it made more sense to travel on foot visiting each site along the way. In the end we walked from the Captiol building to the Lincoln memorial and back about 6 times which totals about 15 miles! This is because there was no tickets left to get up the Washington memorial causing us to come back the next day, we went back past the capitol building to catch a beer at Capitol city brewery, being indecisive in the museums we wanted to go to and to take some night shots of the city which we got vey few of!

LINCOLN MEMORIAL

We could easily add miles for walking to the president’s household (White house), for the guided tour of the US Bureau of Printing and Engraving where my lifetime’s salary passed through my eyes and for repeatedly visiting Union station many times for baggage reasons.

We have certainly seen a few muesums (Washington has tons if you like them. Most are free) and memorials here of which came the cost of tired feet. We ended up staying in Washington for one day and a half which was more than planned. We left washington at about 7pm for Philadelphia, by then we were shattered and had plently of time to reach the hostel by 12am or so we thought…..

to be continued….

So finally after much has been said, the trip has begin and where better to kick start any trip with a visit to New York City.

We stayed in the Village Inn hostel in the New York’s east village which we chose for its close proximity to the local nightlife. After spending 4 nights there I can certainly say its an awesome place for a good evenings merriment. However upon our arrival to the hostel we were greeted with this sign which says.

PERILOUS TO LIFE!!! OMG!! WTF!!!

Despite the 2 rooms opposite ours being cornered off for our personal safety the place was clean and had a nice vibe despite the place being half full due to 16!! rooms being out of commission.

As far as daytime activities go we managed to cram in a lot in a short time. We marched over the Brooklyn bridge for the fantastic city skyline shots from Brooklyn heights, posed for (multiple) pics atop of the Rockefeller and empire state building plus we meandered though Greenwich village, chinatown and central park.

I love New York (cheesy huh) and it was great to spend some more time here to fully soak up the unique characters of each of Manhattan community. Next stop the USA capital, Washington D.C.!

Goonies highlight:

• Kev: Drinking in McSorleys, the oldest traditional pub in new york
• Mike: ‘Big Piano’ - Childhood fantasy. Done!
• John: Toying with the skyline at the Rockefeller Center
• Chris: The views at the the top of the Empire State Building 30 minutes after an almighty rain downpour.

The day has finally come it’s 8^th August 2008, the day our epic world tour will begin. In true Goonies fashion we decide to should to start ridiculously early at 6:30 AM to catch our first flight to New York at 11:45 AM. Our motive behind this is that as a group we are always notoriously late for everything and as regular as clock work Kev arrives 20 minutes late.

At the airport after saying our farewell to the family and shedding a few tears along the way we checked in with no problem. At the security check desk we all decide to remove items that could set off the metal detector, but on this occasion I was too lazy to remove my belt which I knew always set off the detector. What a big mistake as I have never felt so abused as it was the most rigourous body search I have ever experienced. The security staff took body searches to new extremes as he used his fingers to rimmed the inside of the top of my boxer shorts. I thought I was getting ’special treatment’ but Chris made the same mistake except he was less fortunate as he required 3 body ‘molestering’ searches to get the all clear.

After being molested in board daylight we decide to knock back our first beers. It was about 11 AM and we had to board the plane at 11:45 AM so we had a good 30 minutes to enjoy a pint. As 11:30 came around we neck the rest of our pint and make a move to board on the plane. To our amazement we was so late that we was the 4 last people to board the plane. The staff had already printed a list (which only contained our names) of luggage that had to be removed off the plane. Despite a shaky start to our world tour we arrived safely at JFK Airport with no further set backs.