Firstly may I apologise wholeheartedly for my total lack of blog communications recently, which I partly blame on the fact I spazzed up my netbook, but also partly blame on my (at times) horrific laziness. So, now I have to delve into my memory banks to recall the precise details of what happened on a trip I took over a month ago. Or I would, but luckily I'm just going to slightly plagarise Cam's blog (who came with me and Lev) and I won't even risk getting kicked out of uni (incidentally, I've have a few dreams recently where I have a mound of assignments and revision to do and then I wake up and realise I'll probably never have to do an assignment again). So let's get it on.
Pre-trip, Toronto, Ontario
Early May and I'm free from work for about two weeks, money in the bank, Greyhound pass bought, hostels booked, half-packed and awaiting the arrival of my favourite little man from Carlisle. Luckily, that volcano thing decided not to be a dick and Lev made it over to Toronto as planned, despite nearly missing all of his flights because he's rubbish. That night I took him on a whistle-stop tour of Toronto, which included his first 7-11 slushie, a quick tour around downtown, the annex and the harbour front and demolishing several chicken wings. The next day we popped into the Royal Ontario museum, which was the first time I'd been and wasn't bad, although nothing to write home about, which is ironic, because that's essentially what I'm doing right now. Think dinosaur bones, stuffed animals and a suit of armour and you've essentially got it. The day after that, with Lev just about settling into Toronto, we pulled the carpet under his feet and began our travels, after getting our Benjamins (look it up homeboys) and experiencing another Canadian first for me, smoked meat sandwiches, which are sandwiches with smoked meat in them. Suprise!
We'd all bought a 7-day pass that entitled unlimited travel around the USA on Greyhound coaches for 240ish dollars. None of our tickets were actually booked, you had to present them at each bus station in exchange for a ticket, which I always found slightly nerve-wracking, in case a entire hockey time had booked the coach for a sodding day trip to an aquarium or likewise. But we crossed the first hurdle by boarding our bus to New York on time at around 11pm. The trip itself took close to 12 hours, which involved a slightly scary interrogation by US border guards (who probably "go home and have a wank over how awesome they think they are" - Lev) and the bizarre sight of seeing an Amish family sitting in a service station, right next to a Dunkin' Donuts, somewhere in New York state at 4am in the morning. But I'd finally entered Obama's USA and y'know what? It were reet good like.
New York City, New York
We arrived in New York at around 9-9.30 and were straightaway thrust into a busy, claustrophobic subway station with little idea of where we were or where the hostel was, and just a totally confusing subway map to look at. We walked up the road and headed straight to the first coffee place we found which was run by loud Italian people and shoved food and caffeine down our necks to make up for the piss-poor attempts at sleep we got on the coach. Then we were presented with a sight I've seen many times in movies, on TV and err.. GTA IV - Times Square. After having a mild panic attack at the amount of advertising signs and people and the fact I was actually in scary New York, we took some pictures and then headed up to the hostel on the subway, which wasn't nearly as scary as it sounds.
After dumping our stuff off at the hostel, which was pretty good (and apparently the biggest in one of its kind in North America, which makes sense) we headed straight for the Bronx Zoo, which was free on a Wednesday. The subway journey there was cool as we got to ride on and see the famous overground subway tracks, which again just reminded me of GTA (sorry). The Bronx apparently isn't full of hard bastards like it used to be, which is reflective of a lot of New York nowadays thanks to that Rudolph mayor bloke - it was the same case for Harlem where our hostel was, which seemed safe enough. With the sun already starting to burn the shit out of my face, we wandered around the zoo for most of the day, the highlights probably being a Polar Bear battering a plastic box, a brown bear with a human haircut and some ridiculous sealions.
As the evening approached, we headed back downtown and bought one of those city tour packages which included tours and admission for various attractions for a pretty decent price. Straight away we headed up the big boy himself, the Empire State building, disappointingly just missing the sunset. However, we got the jaw-dropping views of New York at night instead, which blew everyone's faces off, like the wind. Wind makes you hungry, so after fannying about for a bit, we decided to go to Planet Hollywood (Owned by John McClane, Rambo and formerly the Terminator) for a burger, which was packed with movie memorabilia and decent food, which sadly wasn't cooked by Sylvester Stallone. Also, I wasn't sure if the waiter was trying to play a character or not. If he wasn't, he was a prick. After that, we were all totally knackered and retired back to the hostel to reboot for another stupidly busy day.
Up early, stuffed with muffins and ready to go, we found our way to the nearest open-top bus tour stop after a quick look around a big-ass cathedral. We rode all the way from Harlem to the ferry terminal at Battery Park on two separate buses, with two pretty good tour guides. The second guy in particular cracked me up, as he was a crazy old nutter who made jokes straight out of 1975. We then boarded the ferry for the Statue of Liberty, which was kind of smaller than I thought it would be. The views from the ferry were awesome and wandering around on the island was totally surreal. After taking that in, we headed back to the mainland, had a look around the financial district and Wall Street, where oddly there was traders selling knock-off DVDs (they must be hard up; also there was a hell of a lot of African guys selling fake Rolexs from black bin liners in New York, not sure what that shit was).
Waiting for a two-hour night tour of Brooklyn, we had some textbook dinner at sunset at a place called Uno and then hopped back onto another bus which took us back up to Times Square (with a truly awful guide this time), then a fourth of the day which would take us out to David Beckham's son (Brooklyn ya idiot). The tour held ridiculous views of New York, especially from the other side of the river and going across the Brooklyn Bridge was immense - Brooklyn itself wasn't particularly interesting, but we got to eat at a famous ice cream place anyway which you can't really argue with. Sunburnt to hell, we all headed back to the hostel that night, completely destroyed by another stupid-busy day.
The next morning we were a bit late getting down to the bus station for Boston, because (plagirism alert):"It seemed to have slipped our mind, just how big this ruddy apple was."
Boston, Massachusetts
We got to Boston late afternoon after a pretty painless bus ride and after fumbling finding the hostel, wandered around this really quite nice city in the sunshine. We took Boston's subway to and from the hostel and headed back into the centre. The old town and Boston Common in particular were sweet and later on we found the Cheers bar - Lev in particular seemed to have a complete heart attack over this place, I mean, I liked the show, but I think Lev would have stayed in the gift shop for the rest of his life if he could - the douche. We did some more walking around along "The Freedom Trail" which follows a load of the historic sites in the city, and then later in the evening we found a pretty quirky restaurant where we ate clam chowder, stared in amazement at Irish people singing songs around a piano, ignored the hockey, pretended we were from "Baaahston" and generally lived like kings for the evening (except we couldn't get served for booze because Cam was under 21, stupid America).
After another decent sleep in the hostel, me and Lev met a very wet Cam at breakfast, who had gone off exploring at 6am in the sodding rain. We joined in on it and took a look around Harvard University and a bit more of the town, but the rain pissed on our bonfire and sadly later that afternoon we were leaving the place for Montreal. It was a shame we didn't spend more time in Boston and that half of the time it was shitty weather - hopefully I'll get to come back someday. At the bus station, Lev dropped a clanger and lost his bus pass which was a kick in the teeth, and Cam later found out he'd left his jacket, but once we were on the bus we began some intense games of cards and I found out Leeds had been promoted, everyone's spirits quickly lifted (well mine did). For the record, the only thing I lost during the trip was a nine of clubs. So nerr.
The long trip from Boston to Montreal was the best of the bus journeys due to the scenery through Vermont, with it's beautiful rolling hills and a spectacular thunderstorm. This is America at it's finest and it's clear to see why those blokes who landed in New England back in ye olde days wanted to stay here. Once we reached Canada, the difference in border control was hilarious - I've literally had more security checks getting on a rollercoaster. God bless those trusty Canadians.
Montreal, Quebec
We entered French Canada in the evening and were faced with another subway system to get to our third hostel of the trip. The biggest shock at this point was the cold - we'd gone from blazing hot Toronto and New York to rainy Boston and now to a cold Montreal, with the temperatures barely above freezing. That night we checked in late and went to bed, waking up to SNOW in the morning. The first thing we did was to try and get a good view of the city - handily, there's a big fuck off hill called Mont Royal, so we climbed up that, mostly complaining about the cold and looked out at the view. Or at least we would have done, if we could have seen anything past the white fuzz. Nevertheless it was cool being up there. And cold.
We then climbed down from that silliness and had a wander around a dull, grey and pretty much deserted Montreal on a Sunday, a world away from it's "party town" tag. I think we came to Montreal at the wrong time, although through no fault of our own, but we managed to see some nice buildings, get lost in the underground city which was mainly just full of hobos and go to a totally confusing art exhibition - everything else seemed to be closed. Later that day we used my privileges as a Cineplex employee to see Iron Man 2 on the IMAX at "Banque Scotia", a name I find hilarious considering all the films are in English. Montreal is pretty French, but as soon as someone realises you're English (whether you're speaking French or not), they speak it to you, so perhaps I'm taking the wrong attitude, but I don't see the point in speaking French at all. Pardon monsieur. We also visited a few book stores to feed Lev's comic book addiction, which was a long-running theme of the trip. We dropped into a 24-hour arcade on the way back to the hostel, where we gamed the night away for about 20 minutes and ate authentic Montreal poutine... at a burger chain. We did some major league chilling out relaxing at the hostel that night, which would be our last on the road.
The next morning the snow had fucked off and we were leaving, brilliant.
Ottawa, Ontario
So a quick stop off in the nation's capital on the way home and there was only really one place to head for - Parliament Hill. The buildings were impressive and the amount of Canadian flags verged on the insane, but it seemed a nice enough place and we took more than enough photos of buildings, memorials, sculptures and.. flags. We ate in an very strange, empty restaurant and after a few hours of being in Ottawa, got back on the coach to head home to Toronto, where me and Lev spent at least two hours talking utter shite about an idea to introduce snail racing on coaches.
And that was it. The next day we saw another movie at my cinema (look out soon for another movie review blog post, oh man, how excited you must be right now), we had another Toronto walk and then left Lev at Cam's as his house is nearer the subway and he had an early flight to get the next morning.
All in all, the trip was bloody marvellous. My first trip to the States proved to be a memorable one, but most definitely won't be my last and the fact the trip went so smoothly was truly impressive. The travel times were long but didn't ever hinder us, but if I could have changed anything, it would have been nice to spend some more time everywhere. Sadly the restrains of work and Lev's schedule made this not an option - however, I believe we made the most of our time and I'm really glad I did it. And a-thank you for reading. The pictures are all over my facebook mate. Night.
