BOSTON, NEW YORK & NASCAR

We left home on September 16 after a too-short visit with Jacques, Isabelle and Lucie.  What a cutie she is!  We drove to Bangor on Sunday and settled in for the night.  The next morning, we drove to our hotel in Newton, which happens to be where my mother’s first cousin, Sadye, and her husband, Charles Galloway, lived.  I have fond memories of them both.  They visited Wellington on at least one occasion and, more importantly, they sent me $1 for Christmas every year!

We bought our five-day subway passes and followed the map from the Boston Common to Faneuil Hall and the Quincy Market the first day, also strolling along the city’s impressive waterfront.  The Market is a great place to eat, with an abundance of culinary choices, all at reasonable prices. 

The second day in Boston, we went to Harvard University where we took a guided tour and visited the natural history museum.  It was impressive to imagine how many world leaders had passed that way, and how many spoiled brats! 

We then walked from downtown to the USS Constitution historic site and took a tour of the ship and the interpretive museum.  Unfortunately, my feet were blistered already, and the damn things would plague me the whole trip.

After a hectic first day, we slowed our pace, going into the city at lunch time and taking in one attraction.  

On Wednesday, we drove to Weymouth to visit my cousin, Steve Demaggio.  Steve and I met through a genealogical forum.  I was looking for descendants of Germain Gaudet, my grandfather's brother, and he responded to my post.  It was our first meeting and, hopefully, it won't be our last.  He drove us around his hometown of Quincy, and took us to meet his mother.  It was a special day for me.

Our last evening in Boston, we went to see a play, Paris Commune, the story of a peasant uprising in Paris in 1871 which was brought to a violent end by the French authorities.  The play was just OK, but I found the story interesting.

We left Boston on Saturday morning and drove northward to Gloucester.  I wanted to see the town as it had once been home to the main US East Coast fishing fleet.  I knew the challengers to the Bluenose sailed out of the port and that the movie The Perfect Storm had been set there.  We had a pleasant walk along the seawall and boardwalk and ducked into a restaurant which turned out to be the eatery of choice on a Saturday morning, Sugar Magnolia’s. 

After a delicious brunch, we continued our drive around Cape May, arriving at a charming village called Rockport.  We stopped there just long enough for Elva to do a bit of shopping and to take in the sights.  It’s a place we’d like to visit again.

We continued our drive along the coast, crossed into New Hampshire and passed through the ugly beachside towns of Salisbury Beach and Hampton Beach.  As with past trips, it made us appreciate what we have on our island even more.  At our Days Inn in Kittery, ME, we were immediately struck by what we saw: the shittiest room I’ve stayed in in a long time!  It was gross, and I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there.  We hit the road as early as we could on Sunday morning for the drive to Loudon.

The New Hampshire International Speedway is located in the middle of nowhere.  Traffic going to the track was heavy, and it took us at least an hour to get into the parking lot.  The wait was worth it, however, as we saw a very interesting race.  My driver, Jeff Gordon, finished third; the race was won by Denny Hamlin.  Leaving Loudon, I thought I had the route to our next stop, Stamford, CT, memorized.  But I didn’t.  So, we took out the GPS and punched in the address.  After driving through heavy race traffic for an hour or so, we stopped at one of our favorite restaurant chains, Cracker Barrel, for a late supper.  We hoped to get to the La Quinta in Stamford by 11:00, but we hit a couple of traffic jams, thanks to paving crews working on a Sunday evening.

The next morning, we drove to Port Chester, NY, parked the car and took the train into the Big Apple.  Arriving at the massive underground terminal at Grand Central Station, we found our way to 45th Street and walked a few blocks to our hotel, the St. James.  Our room was not the greatest, but $200 a night doesn’t get you much in downtown New York City!  Finding ourselves less than a block from Times Square, we went for a stroll, found Broadway and walked up to 59th Street where we crossed into Central Park.  It was everything I’d seen in movies and on TV and more; an 850 acre oasis in a world-class city.

The next morning, we took the subway to Battery Park and boarded the ferry for a visit to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.  We found the audio tours impressive and were moved by the stories of immigrants arriving in the US at Ellis Island.  Next, we walked to Ground Zero and toured the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, shedding more than a few tears at the stories told there.

We got in line at the TKTS site at Times Square and bought tickets for that evening’s performance of War Horse at the Lincoln Centre for $145, less than half the regular price.  The Centre is a huge complex featuring the finest entertainment New York has to offer: opera, ballet, symphony orchestra, theatre, and cinema.  It’s across the street from the famed Juilliard School.  The play was incredible.  Elva had seen the movie; not the type of story that appeals to me.  However, the colt and full-grown horse puppets were unbelievable.  They’re a challenge to describe because of their uniqueness.  It’s hard to imagine that a structure could be designed to resemble a full-grown horse, and be manipulated by three operators, two underneath and one holding and moving the head.  The legs move naturally and in sync, and the structure is strong enough to hold a rider!  I was in awe.

The next day we took the subway to Coney Island, New York’s original beach and amusement park.  It was a cloudy day and not too many people were there, the high season being past.  The place has obviously fallen on hard times as people’s entertainment preferences changed, but one could imagine how it must have been at the height of its popularity.  We had lunch at Nathan’s Famous Frankfurters and took a stroll on the expansive boardwalk.  Along the way, we encountered many well-dressed people who I thought were speaking Russian.  We asked a group of ladies what the occasion was, and it turned out they were celebrating Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish religious calendar.  The celebrants were speaking in Hebrew and killing time after attending a service at the local temple.  The day calls for fasting from sunrise to sunset.

Thursday was our day to visit the American Museum of Natural History, located on the western edge of Central Park.  We’d decided that Elva would take a guided tour and that I would go off on my own.  Elva is not particularly fond of museums but, since they figure among New York’s major attractions, she agreed to accompany me.  After her tour, we met for lunch, and I listened as she excitedly related her many discoveries.  She took me to the displays that had most impressed her, especially the dinosaurs and the undersea hot sulphur springs.  We parted again and I rushed through a number of anthropological displays featuring indigenous peoples from around the world.  It is a fascinating place, but would require several days to see properly.

On our last day in the big city, we walked to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the eastern edge of Central Park and joined the hoard of people visiting that incredible place.  We rented an audio device and took the Director’s tour which provided a fascinating glimpse of the immense collection.  There are dozens of individual galleries in the Museum, each one containing a collection worthy of its own museum.  The history of the building is fascinating, as are the collections themselves, not to mention the lengths to which the Museum has gone to collect and display items. 

For example, Egypt donated a temple to the Museum when it built a dam on the Nile River, flooding the valley where the temple was located.  The Museum dismantled the temple on the spot, transported it piece-by-piece to New York, built a new section onto its building at a cost of many millions, and set up an incredible display featuring the reassembled temple.  The things that impressed us at the Metropolitan Museum of Art are too numerous to mention, and it deserves a visit lasting several days. 

We’d definitely go back to New York.  It’s a crazy, chaotic and exciting place, and with so many attractions, it’s hard to resist.  There’s lots of good food to be had for a reasonable price in small cafés and delis, and getting around is cheap and easy by subway.

Saturday morning, we took the train back to Port Chester, picked up our car, and headed towards Newark, DE; not to be confused with Newark, NJ.  Next morning, it was off to Dover International Speedway.  The site is easy to get into and out of, compared to Loudon, and we parked at the nearby mall.  The track is impressive, simple but effective is how I’d put it.  The banking is higher than Loudon’s, making for much higher speeds in the corners, and the surface is concrete.  But the noise level is deafening, so much so that we had to buy earplugs halfway through the race. 

The only negative comment from my corner is that I couldn’t find a smoked turkey drumstick for love nor money!  The race was good, if rather uneventful, and we left with about fifty laps remaining in order to get ahead of the traffic.  At that point, it looked like Denny Hamlin was headed for his second victory in a row.  Gordon was in fifth but running well; he’d short-pitted and had enough gas to make it to the end.  As it turned out, Gordon finished second behind Keselowski when three of the leaders had to stop for fuel.  It moved him up to sixth in the Cup chase, but still too far back in points to contend for the championship.

We made good time and stopped for a bite along the New Jersey Turnpike.  It being a Sunday evening, we thought we might make it through New York unscathed.  Wrong!!  It took us over an hour to navigate a monumental traffic jam caused by the Washington Bridge toll booths.  Getting through the Bronx wasn’t too bad, but then we hit another big one in, of all places, Stamford, CT.  We stewed for an hour there and, by the time we got to our hotel in East Hartford, it was almost one o’clock in the morning.  Needless to say, we were zonked. 

But, we had a good breakfast and got on the road by eight.  Things went well until we hit yet another jam just outside Boston but, mercifully, this one wasn’t too bad.  I was finally able to turn the wheel over to Elva when we reached the calmer confines of the I-95 in Maine, and the rest of the 1,300 km. trip to Halifax went well.

So, once again, a busy, interesting vacation.  Lots to remember and some places and attractions we’d like to see again.  However, note to selves, we need better navigating technology to avoid the major traffic tie-ups.  I just don’t have the patience for that anymore!