Solo Stories

Eventually after being screwed around by Delta in Buffalo Airport for the better part of a day I...

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 21:35:04 -0400

Eventually after being screwed around by Delta in Buffalo Airport for the better part of a day I finally made it to New York. I was supposed to arrive the night before but ended up arriving the next morning and it was extremely miserable. I had to walk on the Tarmac at JFK airport because my plane was so small that it didn’t get it’s own gate. As soon as I stepped out it was rainy and windy and cold and foggy but it was nice to finally be in New York.

I ended up getting a shuttle to my hotel because a Taxi would be super expensive and after 2 and a half hours in the shuttle we finally arrived at my hotel. Because I arrived so early in the morning we hit the regular peak hour traffic of everyone going to work on top of the usual New York traffic. As much as I just wanted to get to my hotel it was nice to just sit back and get driven around the city and see everything again.

I went to New York for the first time on my last trip. I just remember it being exhausting. So much walking and so many people and so much traffic and so much to look at. Nothing has changed in that aspect.

The Hotel I was staying with Charlotte at was terrible haha. I knew that to begin with so it didn’t suprise me but if I wasn’t so tired I would have cried at how bad it was. It was actually a hostel and we just got given rooms with two beds in it and that was it. I actually warmed up to it quite quickly. Just like having a shit phone that could only call people and had no only purpose, this room was nice because it was just a bedroom, a room with a bed and that was it. It was just nice to have the bare minimal. Just everything has gotten so complicated and to have nothing was nice in a city that is completely overwhelming.

I ended up staying in New York with Charlotte for five days and they really flew by. I was so excited to finally be able to kind of relax and get comfortable in a place for more than a few days but it ended up passing by so quickly that I never got around to doing that.

The days were exactly the same as I arrived. You couldn’t see any of the buildings because it was so foggy, it was constantly just drizzling rain and it was windy. New York isn’t the easiest city to walk around on a good day but when it is miserable it is even worse. Nothing is undercover and there are tourists standing outside of building to try and get out of the rain, there are puddles absolutely everywhere and it’s just sad but it was nice. Charlotte and I mostly spent our time in Starbucks which was a lot better than trying to navigate around the city. We walked up and down Broadway going into all of the amazing stores and I ended up spending a lot of money.

It was just nice to relax and just watch people pass by. Everyone in New York is amazing. I fell in love with basically everyone who walked past because they were all so beautiful and well dressed and just incredible.

I really do love New York and once again I barely saw any of it but it is very overwhelming. I physically and mentally felt exhausted everyday and found it hard to get out of bed just because I was so tired. But it’s incredible to see. To watch people go about their day like normal but it be completely foreign and crazy to me was entertaining.

I’ll post a few photos I took on the last day after this.

Photo

Fri, 08 Jun 2012 22:26:59 -0400

When I was at Niagara Falls I walked down this really cool...

Fri, 08 Jun 2012 22:22:50 -0400

When I was at Niagara Falls I walked down this really cool staircase into this kind of Jungle. It was so cool. I spent so long there just walking around looking at everything and there was this little creek that was so pretty and I felt the need to try and take a nice photo with a slow shutter speed. It proved difficult because I didn’t have a tri-pod and had never tried to take a photo of running water but i’m proud with how it turned out.

When I was at Buffalo Airport it had just been announced that my...

Fri, 08 Jun 2012 22:19:00 -0400

When I was at Buffalo Airport it had just been announced that my flight after already having been delayed three hours would be delayed even more so I decided I would go get food to try and ease my bad mood. I got some Burger King which was my first Burger King meal in America, walked back to the gate feeling that little bit better and then I saw this.

Talk about false sense of hope. Got all excited thinking that maybe my plane would arrive and everything would be perfect but no, it got delayed and then cancelled last minute so this plane is shit and so is this photo.

So after my annoying last night at Niagara it managed to get worse. I left my hotel to venture off...

Fri, 25 May 2012 12:32:18 -0400

So after my annoying last night at Niagara it managed to get worse. I left my hotel to venture off to the Canadian side of the falls which was quite pleasant. If you want to go to Niagara Falls MAKE SURE you go to the Canadian side because it is just a better view and a more accommodating area. There are more hotels to stay at and most of them overlook the falls so you can see them at all times, there are also more attractions like water parks and big restaurants so it is more kid friendly and because the falls fall off the American side you can only look at them side on when you are in America but when you are on the Canadian side you can see them front on.

When I was there there were a lot of police which I was a bit startled by. They were directing traffic and pedestrians and I just thought it was the usual process. But then when I walked up to the end of the walkway I noticed a lot of fire engines as well, and some ambulances. I thought there must have been a fire in one of the hotels or something but I later found out that an hour before I got to the falls, somebody had jumped into the water upstream with intentions of killing himself, got swept over the falls, fell over the Niagara Falls and somehow managed to land at the bottom where all of the rocks are and survived. So all of the emergency crews that were there were actually trying to get this man out of the water. I had no idea about any of this until I was in the shuttle on the way to the airport talking to my driver.

I then arrived at Buffalo airport and was planning to be in New York an hour later but my flight was delayed. I was okay with this. I sat down and read a magazine and ate a bit but then it just kept getting delayed. Apparently the cloud cover in New York was so bad that planes could neither fly in nor fly out which was completely out of our control. 3 hours later my plane arrived from New York and was going back to New York so I felt a bit better. All of the passengers were also relieved and we were told that as soon as the plane was empty we would be boarding 30 seconds later. A minute later the frail young man in charge of the gate desk then told us that the crew on board the plane had clocked off for the day so the flight was cancelled. I’d tracked the flight earlier and it had nothing about it going back to New York and I thought it was just a fault but it was true, the flight was not going to New York that day.

By this stage I was just over it. I had had no sleep, had a huge day and then had waited for 3 hours not knowing anything about the flight only to find out that I wouldn’t be getting to New York. There was no support for passengers and there was very little control by the Delta Staff which made it even more of a mess. At that moment everyone just started running from gate to gate trying to find a flight but because they had all been delayed most of them were already full. I got pretty annoyed. Everyone was just being so selfish and putting their lives before others just because they NEED to be in New York.

I ended up just sitting down and waiting for it all to pass. There were people using my flight as a connecting flight to go to Europe and Asia and I had decided that they needed a flight more than me so I just waited for it all to sort itself out. Two hours later I go to the front desk only to find timid and frightened staff completely overwhelmed by what had happened and that annoyed me because yes it is a bad thing that happened, but there has to be a bad guy in that situation saying, yes, your flight got cancelled, there is nothing more you can do, find a new flight and deal with it. Instead they were trying to make a joke and lighten the situation and it was making the passengers more annoyed and angry.

My flight was then changed from 3pm that day to 6am the next day so I would miss out on a night in New York but it didn’t bother me. I got put up in a hotel and by this stage it was 10 a’clock and I needed to leave at 4am to make the flight. I went to this little bar to have something to eat as I hadn’t planned to eat until I arrived in New York and ended up sitting next to a man and talking to him about my trip whilst we watched the Ice Hockey.

It was such a shit day. Everything that went wrong had gone wrong but I was proud because it just didn’t bother me. I’m not sure if it’s just because I am so tired from this trip or because I have learnt to not stress out but I handled it so well, better than most of the people on my plane who were middle aged and more experienced than me, I even spent most of my time trying to calm them down.

I managed to rearrange my New York Shuttle, contact my New York Accomodation, Find a new flight, find a place to stay, find transfers from this hotel to the Airport and find all of my luggage without crying or doubting myself in the slightest.

Even though it was a shit day it taught me a lot about how much this trip has changed me.

Holliday Inn Niagara Falls is the biggest joke I have experienced on this trip. First of all they...

Mon, 21 May 2012 11:18:36 -0400

Holliday Inn Niagara Falls is the biggest joke I have experienced on this trip. First of all they manage to let us check in yesterday only to have us lug all of our luggage up to find that the entire level was dirty and had not been cleaned yet. We then go downstairs to sort out the matter only to have them send us to a room that they could have sent us to in the first place. A few hours pass and it isn’t as shitty as we first thought but then at 1am in the morning the entire seven floors of the hotel had to be evacuated due to a fire alarm. This was understandable, fire alarms are something I don’t mind abiding by even if it is 1am in the morning. We then sit outside watching the fire department rock up and not do anything for an hour and at this stage I’m pretty pissed off by the lack of communication and authority within the actual hotel staff. The alarm finally stopped ringing and we were all allowed to go back into our rooms to finally sleep. 20 minutes passes and what happens? Another fucking fire alarm. At this stage I was completely over it. I wanted to sleep and had no idea what was going on and really couldn’t care less. It went on for another ten minutes and a few people started evacuating only to be told that they could go back in for a second time. Ten minutes later another alarm, and another, and another. There was no one telling us what was going on and no one on the floors TO tell us what was happening. I eventually put my ear plugs in and tried to sleep even though I was furious at what was happening and how little was being done about it.

This morning I then wake up to say goodbye to Mark and Kathy only to feel like shit because I missed out on so much sleep and had a restless sleep afterwards so I decided to sleep from 8-10 so I can make it to New York without being asleep or grumpy. I then have people knocking on my door telling me that I have to be out of my room by 11 because that’s when they need to clean it. Every single hotel I have been to so far has been 12 alcock check out but this one. I then rush around trying to back and shower and sort out stuff for my flights and I’m just so annoyed that for 3 hours this morning we were inconvenienced yet we weren’t allowed to take a few extra minutes after check out to sort everything out after hopefully getting some sort of steep.

I just went to go check out to finally get out of the place to see a 15 person line up at the desk to either check in or out. By this stage I am well and truly over it, but whilst I’m listening to the cheery and annoying woman who sent me to wrong rooms yesterday I hear that they are all getting 10,000 points to their Holiday Inn card or a free breakfast due to the mornings disruptions. I think to myself well that’s kind of nice, you admitted that what happened was an inconvenience and found a way to compensate people which I just thought was good. I then walk up, tell them I’m checking out and they say ‘you’re all good now’ and that was it. Because I am a young teenager who doesn’t complain and be a pain, I don’t get compensation. I was so fucked off that I told them that I also got disrupted last night and that I should deserve a breakfast if every other person who is older than me is getting one and of course they put on their cheery voices and apologise and I just want to punch them.

I have stayed at so many hotels over the years, and i’ve stayed at about 11 just on this trip but I have never encountered such terrible consistent service from a hotel company that is quite large. I’ve stayed at a few holiday inns on this trip and they have had their cons about them but they’ve managed to make me happy once I have left. This place however was an absolute joke. I am still so annoyed at how they treated myself and everyone staying there and I am honestly dreading coming back here to pick up my luggage to go to New York this afternoon.

I never, ever, complain. I take everything and just shut up and get over it. I hate it when people yell and demand compensation and are just assholes but for the first time in my life I was that annoyed and fucked off that I would gladly have joined in with those people.

Hopefully going to Canada right now will put me in a better mood. I don’t think I can get in a worse mood though.

I don’t get American Buffets. It’s a great service but I can’t help but feel...

Sun, 20 May 2012 19:30:31 -0400

I don’t get American Buffets. It’s a great service but I can’t help but feel grossed out there. I like them because it means I can eat as many vegetables as I possibly can but watching people tower up their plates with that some colored carb filled food makes me sick. And watching people go plate after plate after plate of food and they are so overweight and are eating the worst or foods and ugh. They just don’t sit well with me. Like I said its a great service that you pay ten dollars to eat as much as you can but some people just take it way too far and obviously way too often as well. I don’t feel comfortable surrounded by it all and watching the habits being passed down to their children. I guess this is the first time that I have really noticed large people in this country and at a buffet you really are overwhelmed by it.

Photo

Sat, 19 May 2012 22:32:04 -0400

I was asked to repost these two photos so here they are!

Sat, 19 May 2012 22:31:23 -0400

I was asked to repost these two photos so here they are!

The woman who runs the car show i’m at took me to her...

Sat, 19 May 2012 16:19:00 -0400

The woman who runs the car show i’m at took me to her house to look at all of her birds. I expected a room full of budgies only to find out that she had Parrots that I desperately wanted when I was a little girl. The most amazing bird I saw was a Macaw and I have always wanted one for so long and it was just sitting there in a cage in front of me! Amazing.

For the car show Mark and Kathy decided to buy some flowers for...

Sat, 19 May 2012 12:12:04 -0400

For the car show Mark and Kathy decided to buy some flowers for a raffle that is happening today. We ended up finding this little local flower shop which was the most amazing flower shop I have ever been to.

You walk in and everything is in little clusters all over the place. Everything is colourful and the trees are green and then there were berry trees and tomato plants and pond plants, there were everything!

There was also this big fluffy dog running around which reminded me of my dogs as well as chickens running around the place. They were all so welcoming and the place just felt like what a garden shop should feel like.

Yesterday on the way to the Car Show i’m currently at we...

Sat, 19 May 2012 12:06:50 -0400

Yesterday on the way to the Car Show i’m currently at we stopped off at Howes Cavern just because it was along the way.

I wasn’t really sure what to expect but I have been to something similar in New Zealand and it had Glow Worms and you can walk around the caves and everything like that. At this one you go into an elevator and pretty much go 15 floors underground and the elevator then opens up to this massive cave.

The tour went for just over an hour and it was just a trail through this caves that was lit up in all different colours. It was about 10 degrees in the cave and that was how it was actually found. About 200 years ago a man was walking on his neighbours land and saw that this cow just kept going to this rock and was there everyday. He had no idea why this cow was doing it so he walked up to the rock only to feel a lovely breeze coming from a kind of hole in the ground. The next day he then climbed down this hole in a ground by tying a rope to a rock and himself and lowering himself in. He then found what is known as Howes Cavern. He kept going back each day to explore these caves and he eventually purchased the land off of the neighbours and began to explore the caves even more.

The caves have been open to the public for the past 70 years and they are actually really cool to look through. It’s cold and there’s water dripping everywhere but it’s unlike anything i’ve ever experienced. At one point you jump in the water on a boat and go through these caves on the water and it comes to a point where there is a massive drop and that’s where all of the bats live. But at that point the tour guide shut off all the lights so you’re sitting in complete darkness, in a boat, on water, in a cave 200 feet below the ground and it is terrifying.

Such a cool place though, and it was in the middle of no where haha.

Another thing.

Fri, 18 May 2012 22:16:08 -0400

When I got here I didn’t worry about learning measurement conversions like Fahrenheit and Miles and Pounds and stuff like that. I’m not sure why I didn’t, I think I just thought to myself why would I need to know that.

So in my head i’ve been trying to make an educated decision on comparisons. I decided that 50 degrees Fahrenheit was about 20 degrees and i’ve just been working off of that each place that I go. I just googled it however to discover that it’s more like ten degrees. Half of the places I have been to have been 50 degrees or a bit higher and I have not complained once about it being cold!

I’m used to 20-30 degree Celsius in Australia and anything lower than that I get a bit cold. But somehow in my stupid and uneducated decisions on temperature i’ve tricked my brain into not being cold. I totally did this on purpose so I wouldn’t get cold.

And it works perfectly because when I go back to Australia it will be going into Winter which will basically be the same temperature or warmer than it is here! Go me!

Look how beautiful my friends Mark and Kathy’s house is!...

Fri, 18 May 2012 19:09:23 -0400

Look how beautiful my friends Mark and Kathy’s house is! The entire neighbourhood is stunning and for the first time on my trip I had a homecooked meal and it was the best meal I have had this far! Zucchini and Broccoli and Chicken and Potato! I just wanted to bathe in it and even just the smell of steamed vegetables made me jump around all excited to have real food!

But Mark and Kathy are so great. My mum made friends with Mark 12 years ago through a car club and we’re all still friends. I’m currently at a car show with them now which is two hours near Niagara falls and it’s so nice to see people I saw three years ago when I was here in America for another one of the Car Shows. Continuing my Car Show traditional for my third visit here. So great.

FENWAY. Fenway is my second Baseball stadium that I have toured...

Fri, 18 May 2012 19:00:37 -0400

FENWAY.

Fenway is my second Baseball stadium that I have toured on this trip. Don’t ask me how this has happened but somehow it has just all fallen into place. I was interested in Baseball before I came here and always whinged about how our Baseball world is so small in Australia and that all I wanted to do was experience American Baseball and here I am having been to two stadiums already and ending my trip with a Yankees game!

The place is old. 100 years old. I’m pretty honoured to be here for it’s 100th year anniversary actually, I even bought a really cool patch and other gear to commemorate it but I guess I should probably talk about the place.

It was a lot smaller than the Houston Astros stadium went to, I got told figures but they obviously went in one ear and out the other. The stadium is obviously a lot older though and it was nice to see how different yet the same they are. In a Baseball stadium there are no bad seats, there are only better seats. Every place in that stadium has a good view and tickets range in price by a lot as well. The tour wasn’t as ‘good’ as the Houston tour but that’s just because Houston is a lot smaller and more new which is completely understandable and the crowds that flock to Fenway are a lot larger and to have them walking on the field every 30 minutes of a day would obviously ruin it but once again to go behind where the game would be played was still amazing enough.

One thing different we got to do was go onto the Monster Wall/Grandstand which is where most of the home runs are hit. They actually managed to put seats on this Wall and they are incredible! Apparently they are super hard to get and everyone wants them and they also attract a lot of the home run balls so you have to have good reaction speeds.

I pretty much got to see the same things that I saw at the previous stadiums, the different levels, the news rooms, the history and the players den. It was cool to see how different yet how similar they both were. It was nice to see that with Baseball they just keep it simple and stick to the stuff that has been around for years. It obviously works so why is there any need to change it.

It was also nice to hear about the history of the place just because it’s so old. Hearing about the fires and the person that bought it and little things that happened in a few games. It was just great to be in a place with so much sport history which we really don’t have in Queensland because everything is so new.

I’d highly recommend everyone to do a tour of a Baseball stadium in their life. It doesn’t matter which one and it doesn’t even matter if you follow the game or not (though you should). It’s just fascinating to see the place, see how it works and more importantly see it empty. They’re only about $10 and they usually go for an hour and it’s just a really great experience that a lot of people wouldn’t think of doing.

So in conclusion, Fenway was awesome. Already i’m feeling the rivalry between being a Red Sox fan or a Yankees fan and I think it’s something i’m going to have to strategically look over for a few weeks before I come to a final decision because it really is that important here.

The weather in Boston has been kind of bad which sucks....

Fri, 18 May 2012 18:47:28 -0400

The weather in Boston has been kind of bad which sucks. It’s the first place that i’ve been to other than New Orleans where it has been overcast and rainy but i’ve come to accept that sometimes places look better with a grey sky. I had booked a hop on hop off bus before I left for America and I thought that I better not waste it so I walked a few blocks through Cambridge and ended up in MIT square which was a pleasant surprise.

I decided to go into a gift shop because my bus would be about 20 minutes and in those 20 minutes I fell in love with MIT. Harvard is very by the book and prestigious, which it definitely should be, but MIT was definitely my cup of tea. All of the shirts were just tacky and nerdy and coffee mugs instead had chemical formulas on them and it was just all so bad that I couldn’t help but laugh at how nerdy it all was. I was flicking through some of the books and study notes for the University and it really appealed to me. Just all of the science and research and it was just all great. It made me feel how I felt back in Grade 11 and 12 with my Chemistry and Biology and Maths and it was just nice to be around that again.

ANYWAY, I eventually, went and got on the bus and I was immediately overwhelmed by how much History is in Boston. I really underestimated how much there is in Boston and I actually was overwhelmed, I was thinking to myself how the hell am I going to knock all of this out in one day? My answer was that I wasn’t. I did a full loop of the city and got a small idea of everything and then I just got off somewhere and took the above photos. And then I somehow ended up in Fenway by chance so that was nice. So instead of being overwhelmed and frantically trying to fit everything in i’ve just decided that when I get back to Australia I am going to start planning a Northern trip of America including Canada this time. Boston I want to stay in for about a week and before I go there I will read a few books just because the place is so god damn old! And then I want to visit Connecticut again and then this time go to places like Chicago and Seattle and then head up to Alaska and end it in Canada. Actually I just thought of all of that just then, i’d only thought about going back to Boston but now that’s an even better plan.

My time in Boston was short but sweet. It’s one of those places where you could easily spend a month there and still not see everything or learn about everything. The people are great, they speak the truth and they speak it strangely (with their accents and loud voices which I enjoy haha) but it’s just a really nice place. It’s old and it’s busy and it’s got traffic but it also has the most trees I have ever seen in a city, it has some of the most amazing old architecture and new architecture in a city i’ve ever been to and to have both was just really cool to look at the contrast and how easily it just works.

So yeah, Boston ruled.

I love it how the only meals I had in Boston were Ham, Cheese and Tomato sandwhiches which I made in...

Fri, 18 May 2012 18:35:00 -0400

I love it how the only meals I had in Boston were Ham, Cheese and Tomato sandwhiches which I made in my little kitchen in my little house just because I am so sick of burgers and take away food and everything like that. To have a sandwhich and have it make me feel that happy concerns me a little haha.

I visited Harvard when I was in Boston and it was absolutely...

Fri, 18 May 2012 18:30:58 -0400

I visited Harvard when I was in Boston and it was absolutely incredible. It’s located in Cambridge which was where I was staying and the location was so beautiful in itself but to walk a few blocks and be in the heart of Harvard square was just the icing on the cake.

Walking in it was just so open and green with amazing brown old buildings surrounded by even larger churches and galleries and labs and it was just mind blowing.

I’ve always been fascinated by American colleges and Universities and this was my first University i’ve ever visited and for it to be Harvard was really cool. I was surprised by two things, one was the amount of asian tourists there. The place was just absolutely full of asian tourists running around getting pictures of everything and it was so nice to see because these people looked like they had dedicated their lives to their studies and were just so in awe of the place. And the second thing I was surprised by was the neighbourhood near the University. It was just a student hub! There were coffee places and ice cream places and teenage type clothing stores and thrift stores and so many book stores. It was like this own little teenage/20 year old village in this amazing suburb.

I may or may not have bought a lot of Harvard merchandise as well. So worth it.

So I had a few changes in my travel plans a few days ago so instead of catching a really long and...

Thu, 17 May 2012 11:38:00 -0400

So I had a few changes in my travel plans a few days ago so instead of catching a really long and deathly bus from Atlanta to Boston mum booked a flight which would take me to Boston via Charlotte and it only took about 5 hours.

Just in that small trip I noticed so many differences. It’s crazy how different the people are from state to state. Like in Australia we’re pretty much all spread out evenly from city to city, there are the Aussie bogans, a few aboriginals, a few asians, a few of everything. I think the reason it’s been such a culture shock for me over here is because i’m used to see all different ethnicities living in the same place and some of the cities I have been to have been predominately black or Mexican. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, I actually think it’s pretty good because it means that there is a lot of culture with regards to food and entertainment and just everything, i’m saying that it’s just strange how two cities which are only down the road can be so completely different when it comes to who lives there are what the place is like.

I noticed that in the Southern parts of America the population is predominately black which I never knew before this trip. It was exciting to go from the busy and stressed out LA region of America to then go down to the Southern states and see completely different people and stores and attractions. It also comes down to the places I visited which were the inner city hub where most people don’t live so that is another mitigating factor as to why it was such a shock.

But the plain ride from Atlanta to Boston was one that was pretty fascinating. In Atlanta there are a lot of homeless people in the city. It’s kind of like Brisbane but times by a lot more. They take shelter in empty buildings in the city and because the city was so quiet in places is just felt like the only people living there were homeless. So to go from that to Boston where people are everywhere and everyone seems to be white and your typical football and baseball loving American was just crazy. Everyone speaks differently and the place is just so overwhelming from where i’ve been.

The buildings are different and there’s greenery everywhere. I honestly forgot how beautiful the north east of America really is.

I’m not saying that either of these places are bad, i’m just saying that it’s insane just how different each state and even city is in America. I suppose if you stayed in Brisbane and then drove to Alice Springs it would be the exact same but the fact that America is so large and with so many people and cities it is just really nice to experience new things everywhere you go.

I’m being so slack with photos. My problem is is that not only am I taking more photos in each...

Wed, 16 May 2012 21:39:24 -0400

I’m being so slack with photos. My problem is is that not only am I taking more photos in each city but because i’ve been taking so many photos, the quality of my images has improved so incredibly much which means that a lot of the photos are great instead of half of them being shitty and needing to be deleted.

Plus i’m just really tired again. I did a lot of walking in Boston today and yesterday just because the place is so amazing and I wanted to see as much of it as possible but now it has left me sore and sleepy but I don’t regret a thing.

I hate leaving Boston but i’m excited to leave just so I can see Mark and Kathy tomorrow. And that also means that New York is soon and Niagara is even sooner!

Going to try and figure out my photos tomorrow before I leave them too long and I have waaaaaaaay to many to edit.