Jambalaya

US Travel Blog - Overview

Well I finally got round to blogging my trip to the US. It took a while and it’s a lot of words but I hope you’ll want to read some or all of it. There are several ways to do that. Firstly you can go to my Tumblr page and scroll down until you see the ‘US Travel Blog 1 - Introduction’ and ‘read up’ from there. Or you can go straight to US Travel Blog 1 - Introduction and click on the link at the bottom of each post to go to the next section or you can use the handy links below to visit the section of your choice:

1. Introduction
2. Travel
3. Food & Drink
4. Entertainment
5. Sightseeing
6. Shopping

I won’t be offended if you don’t want to read it all. If you DO read it all, and I hope you do, then I sincerely hope you enjoy it almost as much as I enjoyed the trip.

Thanks for reading :)

USA Travel Blog 6 - Shopping

For a while, a couple of years ago, shopping was probably the primary reason why non-business people visited the US from the UK. With the pound riding high at almost two dollars and with prices in the US generally being at or close to $=£ then virtually half-price bargains were there for the taking. Every item you buy makes your suitcase heavier and, if it was something you needed anyway, your trip a little bit cheaper! (in a perverse way of looking at things). New York City is an amazing place to do shopping. You could spend months there and still not have time to visit even the majority of retail outlets. The choice is staggering, the offering is of a high quality and the experience is generally superb. But what a lot of people don’t realise is that if you’re buying a decent amount of stuff, especially clothes, then you can save a small fortune just by popping over to New Jersey.

The state of New Jersey doesn’t charge sales tax on clothing and the overall rate is lower on everything. So, right off the bat, you avoid that typical tourists’ annoyance of choosing something for $100 and getting to the till to be charged closer to $110 because prices shown exclude sales tax which, in New York City, is the oh-so-easy 8.875%. New Jersey has an abundance of malls, several of which are located nice and close to where my sister lives. The best of these, in terms of savings, is the Premium Outlet Mall at Tinton Falls which, as you can see by clicking on that link, has a vast array of designer outlets offering premium products at discount prices. I spent a small fortune there and walked away with a large fortune worth of clothing.

The second mall we visited was the Monmouth Mall which again boasts a vast array of stores including J.C. Penney and Macy’s. For overseas visitors Macy’s is a particularly good place to shop because if you visit customer services with your passport they will give you an Overseas Discount Card which garners an 11% discount on purchases. If you’re shopping in New York that more than negates the sales tax and if you’re shopping in New Jersey it’s simply an added bonus.

Shopping in New York was, this time, limited to window shopping. Having bought up half of New Jersey, and with a bulging suitcase, I couldn’t really manage any more but that didn’t stop me taking an wander round Tiffany and Co. and the Apple Store, with its iconic glass cube entrance.

On the day we left New York to return home a Farmers market sprung up at the Rockefeller Center. Sadly it was too late to be able to enjoy any of their produce, most of which would have been illegal to bring back to the UK, but we wandered up and down and took a few pictures which would have to suffice.

So whilst the exchange rate is no longer as good as it was, it’s still good enough to be able to grab a great many bargains…if you know where to go.

And that really is all I have to say about my trip. Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed :)

USA Travel Blog 5 - Sightseeing

I’m not normally a fan of ‘sight-seeing’ in the usual sense. Few things in the flesh ever live up to the anticipation of seeing them that builds up from having seen them on TV or in the movies. So far, the only truly amazing thing that I have seen that was even better than I could ever have imagined was the Grand Canyon. It is simply breathtaking and I don’t believe, as long as I live, that I will see anything to top it in terms of sheer natural magnificence.

That said, however, there are gems, both famous and non-famous, that are waiting to be discovered throughout the world. The Twin Lights of Navesink would, I venture, fall into this category. Not only do you have a lighthouse, majestically standing ashore aiding navigation in the pre-GPS days but you have TWO of them. Together. Double bonus! But this site is notable for more than being a pair of matching lighthouses that are difficult to find if you follow the official map. It is highly important in the world of global communication, tied as it is to Marconi’s development and demonstration of wireless telegraphy. He covered the America’s Cup Yacht Races for the New York Herald from a boat offshore transmitting messages to his receiver at Twin Lights. Prior to that it had been used as a semaphore station for The Mechants Exchange where it would pass messages to ships heading to Manhattan.

Sightseeing in New York is a different story. We all become so accustomed to seeing New York depicted in movies and on television that any time spent wandering around the city is a sightseeing experience in itself. From iconic retail outlets such as Macy’s and Tiffany & Co. to the bright lights of Broadway and Times Square the city really is one large sightseeing extravaganza.

The one sight of New York which must never be overlooked is Central Park. A staggering 25 million people visit Central Park each year and it’s easy to see why. Set right in the centre of the hustle and bustle of the world’s best known metropolis it’s an oasis of calm and tranquility. Comprising an incredible 843 acres of what would undoubtedly be prime real estate, Central Park is a delightful mixture of walks, roads, water features, statues, bridges, zoos and flora & fauna which runs from midtown Manhattan right up to Harlem. It can be enjoyed all year round and there is something for everyone. I make a point to visit Central Park every time I’m in New York and the contrast is always sublime.

There are many other sights to see around New York, New Jersey and, indeed, the entire United States. Maybe one day I’ll see them all…if I live to be a few thousand years old!

Now, surely it’s time for shopping?

USA Travel Blog 4 - Entertainment

Entertainment comes in many forms and this trip had most of them. With my nephew I sampled the delights of The Wiggles, a troupe of Australian idiots in bright costumes that sing silly songs that children enjoy, and re-acquainted myself with the world of Thomas the Tank Engine, most notably through the excellent CGI-animated Hero of the Rails about an old engine called Hiro who Thomas finds rusting in the woods and, with the help of his friends, restores to his former glory of ‘Master of the Rails’. I watched the start about a million times, because young children have no attention span, but it wasn’t until the last day, with Ryan safely at daycare, I finally managed to see the conclusion.

One of the evenings I went, along with Judith and Adam, to the Count Basie Theater in Red Bank to see notable director and Red Bank son Kevin Smith give a Q&A evening in honour of his 40th birthday. The event was filmed for TV and DVD and if you get a chance to see it then do. Kevin Smith is well known for giving entertaining evenings in this manner where literally anything goes. It’s not for children and it’s not for the faint-hearted - five hours is a short show - and whilst it’s not ‘stand-up comedy’ per se, it’s a frank and hilarious look into the normal life of a somewhat-famous person. The first half - the bit being filmed - started with a question along the lines of ‘how did it feel to finally get to direct Bruce Willis?’. As the questioner stood at the microphone awaiting his answer Kevin started with the words ‘This is going to be a long one; you might want to sit down’ much to the delight of the audience. And a long one it was because it took up the whole of the recording which, as he admitted in the second half, was something he’d always wanted to try. The story took us up and down seemingly-irrelevant alleys and through many rabbit holes until we finally knew every tiny aspect of exactly how he came to direct Cop Out, and thus Bruce Willis, via the means of marijuana. Wayne Gretsky and a prom bus. The second half consisted of much more concise answers to, frankly, more mundane questions but it was never boring and we each got a free towel out of it!

No trip to America would be complete without a few movies. As I mentioned in my Travel post, I managed three on the journey there and one on the journey home thanks to the V-Port entertainment system. These were, in order, Shutter Island, Kick Ass, Cemetery Junction and Cop Out. All four were well worth my time although Kick Ass was far and away the best of the lot. It is, in fact, one of the best movies I’ve seen for a long time. Cop Out - the Kevin Smith movie with Bruce Willis - was enjoyable but nothing to write home about. Shutter Island was deliciously conceived and realised and gave much to think about whilst Cemetery Junction was a welcome slice of England to keep me in mind of home.

I saw nothing on TV that bears much mention other than a reasonably entertaining MLS game between the New York Red Bulls and Chicago Fire. It ended 0-0 but, those of you who know association football know that that doesn’t necessarily mean it was a dull game.

Just as no visit to America would be complete without a few movies, so no visit to New York would be complete without seeing a play either on or off Broadway. Thanks to my friend Jack (@JackAaron on twitter) I knew exactly what I wanted to see and, fortunately, the TKTS booth had half-price tickets available. And so it was, with much anticipation, that Mother and I headed to the St James Theater on 44th street and saw American Idiot. Over recent years there have been many attempts to shoe-horn ‘popular music’ into a ‘musical theatre’ format - some successful and some not so. American Idiot is the same idea using the music of Green Day with which some of you will no doubt be familiar. The musical tells the story of a group of teenagers growing up in a post-9/11 world in small-town American. They make plans to leave for something better but it doesn’t quite all go to plan. The story is excellently told and the music, mostly from the American Idiot album, tells the story well. That may be to do with the fact that the American Idiot album is already telling the story to the extent where it often feels like it’s the soundtrack to a musical anyway. The combination of the music and visuals however, with an excellently versatile ‘single set’ stage peppered with televisions and an on-stage ‘orchestra’, makes what has to be the most enjoyable show I’ve seen at the theatre in a long time. I’d almost go so far as to say it’s worth the trip to New York in itself.

After the show the cast take to the stage with acoustic guitars to sing Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) which is probably the best way to end a show ever!

There were many others, but those were the entertainment highlights of my trip.

Fancy a bit of sightseeing?

USA Travel Blog 2 - Travel

Very few things in this life are more inevitable than the fact that if you’re somewhere and you want to be somewhere else you have to travel. In the past I’ve travelled to and around various parts of America via myriad means including big planes, small planes, overground trains, underground trains, trams, buses, big cars, small cars and, the first time I went, pushchairs.

We left from Heathrow on a warm Saturday morning aboard a nice Virgin Atlantic Airbus A340-600 called Lady Luck (G-VWIN). I watched three films on the flight, all of which were excellent. We arrived at Newark on a hot Saturday evening and boarded my sister’s Jeep, a first-generation Liberty, to drive to Red Bank, NJ, our home for the following 9 nights.

On Wednesday, having spent the weekend and first part of the week using the Jeep, we hired a 2010 Hyundai Accent which had neither central locking nor electric windows…but it did have satellite radio. I tuned this to BBC Radio 1 for a few minutes, for novelty value, and quickly realised why I stopped listening to it in the first place. ‘Who is this twat?’ mum asked of a young Welsh fellow who seemed to think that ‘gregorious’ was a word meaning sociable. ‘No idea’ I replied rapidly reaching for the knob and retuning to a classic rock station as such egregious miseducation was too much to bear. You can’t go wrong with classic rock. We used the car mainly to go shopping and to find the Twin Lights of Navesink. We returned it on Friday.

On the Monday afternoon we caught an NJ Transit train from Red Bank into New York Penn Station and once there we grabbed a cab from the rank outside Madison Square Garden to take us to our hotel. We used a similar journey in reverse, as well as the Newark AirTrain monorail, to get to the airport on the Wednesday.

Sadly we didn’t take the Metro while we were there. I’ve done it before and it’s always fun. It’s kinda like the Tube but hotter and with an increased risk of death. Maybe.

Whilst in New York our primary method of transport was foot. In fact I was proud of the fact that we didn’t resort to motorised transport once, apart from the train station to and fro. Granted we didn’t actually go all that far from our hotel - with a hotel located by Radio City Music Hall you really don’t need to if you’re only there for a day or two - but still we covered a fair few miles on those poor feet of ours.

An Airbus A340-600, this time called Scarlet Lady (G-VRED), brought us back to Heathrow in good time and without incident. I only watched one film but it was an enjoyable one.

And that really concludes the transport section of my US vacation. I hope it has whet your appetite for what’s to come. More?

USA Travel Blog 1 - Introduction

I’ve been wondering for a few days how to blog my trip to the US. That may sound strange but you have to get these things right, otherwise people die…of boredom…whilst reading. Or worse, they don’t bother reading it at all…and that makes kittens sad. So, I’m splitting it up into a handful of various small(-ish) posts, each on a theme. As I’ve been to the US a great many times in the past I’ll be attempting to bring my previous experiences to bear in an orgy of comparative delight. It’ll be fun, trust me!

Before we march onwards into deepest darkest bloggery, however, I should introduce your main protagonists. Firstly we have myself, a 33 year old male of laid back countenance and chameleonic character. Next up comes Mother, a 64 year old woman with an ability to enjoy virtually anything…but with knitting and sudoku enjoying special regard. Thirdly there’s my sister, Judith, a young woman of a mere 37 years whose job in the pharmaceutical industry keeps us all safe from harm. Married to her is my brother-in-law, Adam, who holds a similar job and who hails from Sutton Coldfield. Last, and very much by no means least, the newest addition to the family is my nephew, Ryan, a mere blink in the history of life at 2 years and 4 months old. The eagle-eyed amongst you may notice the absense of my father who decided that this trip was not for him and so stayed at home alone. It may well have been the best 11 days of his recent life.

Anyway…onwards?