Washington, DC

The capital! May 29th - June 2nd

As soon as we arrived in Washington on our train we were greeted with the same weather we experienced constantly for the next four days: HOT! It was unbearably hot and humid with no breeze or any relief at all unless you sat inside a coffee shop or spent the day in a museum in the air conditioning, which is exactly what we did!

But before all of that, we checked into our hostel which was pretty close to one of the main metro stations which made it easy to get around the main touristy areas. The hostel turned out to be really good. We were in a dorm room with about 7 other people but that was fine. It was all really clean and had a good common room with a huge TV and they provided toast and coffee in the mornings which was nice. The only problem was the room we were in was the only one without air-conditioning and it was the hottest room I've ever slept in, and we barely slept at all it was sooooo uncomfortable!

Anyways aside from the heat, we managed to enjoy the sites of DC including the National Mall, a big area with lots of museums and monuments including the Washington Monument and the Capital Building. We went to the Air & Space museum, which Shaun really enjoyed andwe spent a whole day at the Holocaust Memorial Museum which was very interesting and we didn't even get to see the entire thing! We also visited the American History Museum which had many different exhibits, but was quite crowded with school groups getting in our way!

On one afternoon we went and saw the White House, both sides, and it was much smaller in real life! But still very grand looking. We also went out to Arlington and saw the Pentagon memorial which was really nicely set up and was very moving and interesting to see.

Washington was different as it was a city, but didn't feel like New York or Boston. The suburban streets where really nice with brownstones and trees. The streets where all either numerical or alphabetical and ran in a grid that was confusing as it was 1st 2nd 3rd streets etc in one direction and then it went the same way the other direction with a main street in between, if you get what I mean? So it made it a bit confusing!

The hostel we stayed at made the trip more enjoyable too because we made friends with one of the guys who worked there and ended up hanging out with him playing wii on one of the night. It felt like we were hanging with friends at home which was really cool.

Overall we really enjoyed Washington as we saw many museums and more 'cultural' things than we did in other cities and saw many of the most famous sights like the White House and the Pentagon.

Check the pics and stay tuned for our next blog

Hayley & Shaun 

 Washington Monument

 National Mall with the Capital at the back

 One side of the White House

 Other side of the White House

 Some of the Pentagon Memorial

Seaside Heights & Atlantic City, NJ

Seaside Heights May 23rd - May 27th
Atlantic City May 27th - May 29th

Hello Jersey Shore!

After packing all of our stuff up in NYC, we headed back to Penn Station to get a train from New York to Seaside Heights. The train we had to get arrived at an area called Bay Head and it actually dropped you off in the middle of the street while cars waited for the train to pass! We then got a taxi from there to our hotel on the beach, the Aztec Hotel. We were staying pretty much right on the boardwalk where many of the amusements and bars and 'carnival' type attractions are in Seaside Heights. The actual town is very small too and you can walk from one side to the other! The weather had also improved greatly from NYC and our time in Seaside was pretty hot and sunny!

We spent most of our time either lying on the beach (water was absolutely freezing! so we couldn't go in!) or wandering the boardwalk and just having some R&R after our crazy NYC adventure. We found many bars that served ridiculously cheap drinks, which we may have had on occasion! And the general cuisine of the area was anything deep fried and HUGE slices of pizza. We also played some mini-golf that was on top of all of the shops!

As the week went on the area started to get more and more busier with more things starting to open (most of the area was closed when we first arrived) as the weekend was Memorial day long weekend so everyone was heading to the beach for a mini-break. By the end of the week, there were heaps of people there and lots going on which was fun to see. On the day we checked out, our hotel finally filled their pool and were gearing up for a big pool party the next day. There were about 100 16 year olds that had just arrived and all I can say is I'm kind of glad we didn't stay there that weekend as we wouldn't have had one wink of sleep!

Now some of you may be aware of the MTV show 'Jersey Shore' and while it is complete trash, it is a guilty pleasure of ours and we did manage to see A LOT of stuff that was on the show. We saw the house, the shore store (where we pretty much got served by the owner who was on the show), we saw their friends in shops and drank at a bar that had a lot to do with the cast of the show. So even though it is a crazy trashy show, it was cool to see those things in real life and be a part of all of it!

After relaxing and taking in the sites of Seaside, we got a bus from a nearby town called Toms River, to Atlantic City. The bus was about a two hour ride and we arrived at about 9pm. We then got a public bus from downtown AC back to our hotel (which was good as we are sick of paying for taxis!). We were staying just out of the downtown area which was good as we could get transport easily back into town.

The next day we went into the town area and looked around some of the shops (big outdoor outlet area) and then spent the afternoon wandering down their much bigger boardwalk. We saw some of the big casinos such as Bally's, Caesars and Trump Casino. There was lots of 'beachy' shops along the boardwalk but the water was still pretty cold at the actual beach! There was a couple really cool bars actually right on the beach that looked really nice but the drinks were about as much as our flight home!

Our hotel had a shuttle running every couple of hours to and from one of the casino's which was free, but if you paid $10 you could have the dinner buffet at the casino, so we did that and had a pretty nice dinner and looked around that hotel/casino for the night. We arrived back at about 12am so we were pretty tired! The next day we had to go back into the bus station to get our Greyhound to Washington DC where we were staying for four nights. We only had a small amount of time in Atlantic City, but unless you are big gamblers, it is a pretty small area and not much else to do. We're saving the big casino activity for Vegas anyways!

Stay tuned for Washington blog coming soon
Hayley & Shaun

 Shaun at the beach

 Some of the boardwalk and amusements

 Beachcomber bar - $1.50 beers all day!

 Inside the bar

 Shore store!

 Jersey Shore House

 Boardwalk at Seaside

 Caesars at Atlantic City

 Some of boardwalk at AC

Beach Bar at Atlantic City

Hayley at the beach at Atlantic City

New York City, NY

The Big Apple!

May 14th - May 23rd

We are finally in NYC! We arrived by train from Hartford at about 4pm in the afternoon and managed to find our way by subway over to Brooklyn to check in to our hostel. And of course, being in NYC for the first time, a place we've both wanted to go for such a long time, things couldn't just go smoothly for us could they? Of course not! When we got to the hostel the guy at the front desk says 'oh yes, i have something to talk to you about. We are closing the hostel on Monday" (2 days time) "You can stay here for two nights but then you need to leave" So when I confirmed our reservation for nine nights last week by email and they said yes everything is fine, what they really meant was yes everything is fine until we close! So we were both very annoyed and very stressed as we were in such a big city with pretty much every hotel booked out because it was graduation week and we thought we'd found a bargain hostel and we now had to spend nearly 3 times the amount we had budgeted for. So we stayed there the first night and managed to book a hotel in the city for the next night and unfortunately due to most hotels being sold out or $500 a night, we ended up having to change hotels 6 times! This was really frustrating as we have quite the amount of bags and we kept having to worry about it every day while trying to enjoy NYC. But we did stay at some nice places in really good locations in the end. 

After all of that debacle, we managed to enjoy our first day of our city tour. This was another hop-on-hop-off tour that did various loops around town and also a night time tour which was cool, except freezing cold! Unfortunately we had really bad weather in New York, only one day out of nine was sunny, the rest were cold and rainy. The city tour was really good as it showed us Brooklyn, Uptown, Downtown, Harlem and the Times Square area.  Being in Times Square was very surreal and really fun as there were so many signs and billboards, but also lots of shopping and restaurants and entertainment. We had some really good tour guides, and some not so good guides as well! We had the city tour for 2 days and we also got a free harbour cruise that we did a few days later that took us all the way around the island and took us very close up to the Statue of Liberty. It was really awesome to see it so close up!

We started to see lots of the things we had seen on TV or movies or heard about from various things and it was an amazing experience to see it all in real life and be a part of the ‘vibe’ of New York. One of the things we wanted to do was see a Broadway show and there is a discount ticket centre in Times Square where you can buy same-day tickets for basically 50% off the normal price which is pretty good! We lined up for what felt like three hours as it was pouring rain to get tickets to Catch Me If You Can (some might know it as it was a movie starring Tom Hanks and Leonardo DiCaprio). We both liked the movie so we thought it would be a good show too. We got really good seats in the front section just off to the right hand side and the show was wonderful. It was a musical so lots of great singing and dancing and it was really funny too. It was a great experience!

We also did a TV and Movie Sites Tour that went for about 3 hours and showed us heaps of places featured in many TV shows and movies which was really cool. We got out at some places and saw the ‘Friends’ building (which is a lot smaller in real life!) We saw Washington Square Park that is in When Harry Met Sally and even the Law and Order courthouse steps, and plenty of places from Seinfeld too! The tour was really good and the tour guide was really funny and also told us where some more famous places where to visit, including Carrie’s house from Sex and the City! We went there and took photos (someone actually lives there) and had a cupcake from the famous cupcake store around the corner.

Now, if I tried to tell you every single thing we did in New York that would take about a month, so you will have to wait for the full story when we get home. But I will tell you just a few more things (in brief) that we saw and experienced in New York.

-          Went to a HUGE M&M World where you could practically buy absolutely anything with M&M’s on it.

-          Walked around SoHo and Bleecker St

-          Visited the Ground Zero site and the memorial in the Church across the road. Also saw the preview for the memorial and new buildings in construction. Very moving experience and hard to believe that’s where it all happened

-          Walked up and down Broadway and 5^th Avenue and saw many famous designer stores

-          Had shakes and burgers at a famous ‘Shake Shack’ in Madison Square Park where people line up for hours just to get a great burger

-          Saw the Flatiron Building and we went to Wall St and saw the Stock Exchange

-          Went to Bloomingdales and Macy’s and had desert and the famous Serendipity

-          Went to the top of Empire State Building and got a great view of New York, Sleepless in Seattle style!

-          Went to Grand Central Station and it is just as grand and beautiful inside as it looks in books and movies!

-          Saw the Brooklyn Bridge and had hot dogs and pretzels from street vendors

-          Went to an awesome bar called 1,2,3 Burger Shot Beer. Yep it’s $1 Burgers, $2 Shots and $3 beers!

-          Spent an afternoon in Central park (the only day it was nice weather) and saw parts of Central park Zoo and the Metropolitan Museum of Art

-          Saw the Public Library and Rockefeller Centre and Trump Tower

-          Had soup from the Soup Nazi!

So that’s just a few of the things and we can’t wait to share many more stories and lots of photos with you when we get home. We had an amazing time in New York seeing all of the things we’ve always wanted to see plus so much more. It’s such a big city though and we definitely need to go back and do more!

Stay tuned for our New Jersey blog coming up soon!

Love Hayley & Shaun

 Times Square!

 Times Square

 Grand Central Station

 Washington Square Park (When Harry Met Sally!)

 Friends Building!

 On top of Empire State Building, City Below

 Carrie's House, Sex & The City

 Central Park

Central Park Zoo - Madagascar!