New York

We flew to New York via Chicago where my friend from home, Fraser, popped to the airport to visit us 🙂 We arrived in New York and caught a Lyft to our AirBnB. It was in a rather nothing part of the city and quite far away from anything, but it was right by a subway line and the guy whose place it was was away so we had a whole apartment in New York to ourselves for NZD$50 a night.

By this stage we were pretty tired. It had been about 5 and a bit months on the road, and the pace since we arrived in the US had been much much faster than previous. New York is one of my absolute favourite places but we were just really tired and knowing we had a few days there meant we kept it really chill. We visited the Brooklyn market, walked around Dumbo, met up with Scott’s cousin Rob for lunch, visited the World Trade Memorial (really beautiful), bought stuff for a platter from Wholefoods, and chilled on our little deck. After two days here, we dropped our big bags at Rob’s and caught a bus to Washington D.C. for three nights. (See below)

Once we got back to NY we spent a night at Scott’s cousin’s place in Brooklyn. We visited the Fort Greene Market with some good friends from home, saw the Statue of Liberty and Wall Street, ate some pizza, did some laundry, went to a comedy show and had quite a big night out at a speak-easy. Our last two nights were spent at an awesome AirBnB in Bushwick. The space was so lovely and the host was awesome, let me know if you would like the link. Again, we kept it pretty chill. We went to another comedy show, strolled the Highline, visited the top of The Standard, Central Park, Fifth Avenue, and the Met. I only saw one famous person and that was Christina Ricci #Casperforever.

On our last night in New York we went to Sleep No More. It takes place in an abandoned old hotel and involves everyone putting on a mask and following characters around the hotel for three hours. You just wander into different rooms, rifling through drawers, reading notes left on desks, looking at jars of god-knows-what in hospital rooms, until suddenly a character will run past you or burst into the room that you’re in and a whole scene will play out. It is quite amazing. All these little scenes happening around a massive hotel, making up one big story. I won’t tell you how it ends incase you go, but it is really full on and awesome. The acting is beautiful, the theatre is fantastic. The whole experience, from the moment you enter the smokey bar area before it ‘starts’ until the end, is pretty seamless and totally unique. I was thinking afterwards that my favourite character was actually the audience. Wherever a character went there was a stream of silent audience members in Scream-like white masks running after them. I would be watching the actors but then look around at the full scene in front of me and there are 50-60 strangers all wearing masks, heads tilted like creepy horror movie children, watching on in silence. It made the whole experience a million times more creepy, a million times more effective, a million times more wow. And then you just leave the hotel, all going your separate ways, like you didn’t just have this crazy intense experience together.

On our way home Scott and I stopped into Bathtub Gin. Rob had recommended it to us, but when we turned up, it was just a closed coffee shop. We walked up to a woman that looked like a waitress cleaning up and she said ‘table for two?’ I wasn’t sure what to say as all I could see were chairs on tables and the day’s leftover croissants still in the cabinet. But we nodded, slowly, and she pushed a wooden panel in the wall and the whole freaking wall opened up. There, behind it, was a real speak easy, jazz band and all. It was awesome. This red velvet-walled, secret den. We ordered a delicious cocktail each and spent the whole time just taking it all in. It was a very cool, very New York night.

The next day we explored Bushwick before heading to the airport to catch our plane to London and leave the America’s for the first time since we started.

Washington D.C.

We loved the place. Yes everything to do is touristy, but it’s touristy stuff with actual meaning. Once again we were AirBnb-ing a little bit out of the city, but it was cheap and easy enough to get in. We started the first day with a big brekky and walked around The White House. For some reason I was very giddy with excitement. Obama isn’t really just a president, he’s a celebrity. And I have a weird fascination with celebrities. So we stood in front of The White House taking silly photos like all the other muppets, and got told off by Secret Service for standing on the road. I was quite surprised at how many security guys were standing around, but then as we got to the corner of the building, three massive helicopters took off from The White House and flew right over us. A Secret Service guy pulled up behind us on his bike and I picked up the nerve to ask, ‘Excuse me, was The President in one of those?’ ‘Yeeep’, the man responded. I think I actually squealed. If only Obama had known there were some Kiwis down there he would have said whaddup, surely.

Scott walked while I pretty much skipped our way to The Mall. We hired bikes and rode from the Washington Monument right down to the Lincoln Memorial. It really is a beautiful city, and I loved reading about all the history and seeing places I’d only seen in Simpson’s episodes and Forest Gump. To get out of the sun we the rode to the Natural History Museum where we watched an Imax film about all the National Parks we had just visited. The footage was so spectacular and we felt so grateful and proud that we had just experienced all of it. After walking around the museum we hired bikes again and rode along the waterfront to Georgetown, to a restaurant called Farmers Fishers Bakers that was recommended to me by Ash. Her main reason for going was the cheese dip and holy moly it was worth it. After eating, we went to drop our bikes off at one of those little stations but they were all full, like, every station, everywhere was full. It was verrryy hot and very frustrating, but finally we dropped them and headed home.

The next day we went to see the Capitol Building and had an awesome tour around the old government rooms. Our tour guide was absolutely fantastic and her passion and enthusiasm were contagious. It’s a very cool building steeped in important history and I loved it. Afterwards we headed to the Space Museum where we watched two films in the planetarium one of which was narrated by Neil de Grasse Tyson. We then walked around and saw the actual space suit Neil Armstrong walked on the moon in and THE ACTUAL Wright Brother’s plane. The actual one. Coming from New Zealand, there is never anything ‘actual’ so this was very exciting to us. After the museum we went to get highly recommended ramen from Daikaya and went back to our room to chill.

It was from about New York that the idea of impending admin was dawning on us. Getting a flat, a job, bank account, all that, had started to creep into our conscious despite our valiant attempts to ‘live in the moment.’ Any ‘chill’ time was now spent tweaking CVs and convincing landlords to take us on despite having no income…