Nadines Travel Blog

NYC is relatively quiet for one of the most populated places on planet earth. While I was here I found out that it is illegal to honk unless there is an emergency. Without horns honking it calms the city right down. If you compare it to Cairo or Delhi for example where it is a free-for-all with car horns and it adds so much extra unnecessary chaos. NYC does seem fairly calm and civilized and 99% of the people are very helpful and will help you out without even being asked. If you are struggling with the map or arguing about directions with your husband, people will come up and offer to help you. This happened many times to us so we found the New Yorkers to be quite nice, which was the opposite of what we were expecting. I found Manhattan extremely easy to get around and easy to figure out. Darren is more abstract in his thinking and was turned around the whole time and never knew where he was, which was quite unusual for him. We walked down to the discount ticket booth on 47th on...

We wanted to see the Statue of Liberty while we were in NYC and see what the new immigrants to the United States saw when they sailed up into the harbour. So we caught the express subway downtown to the Staten Island Ferry terminal. The Staten Island Ferry is free and you don’t even need a ticket. It leaves every half hour on the hour. It is a quick 20 or so-minute ferry ride to the island. We wanted to go out to Staten Island which is considered one of the 5 Burroughs of NYC; so that we could sail past the statue. You know she is not as big as one would imagine, she sure is pretty but really not that large. It was cloudy again so the pictures are going to seem gloomy. The weather has really sucked here in NYC. Out of the 39 countries that we have visited in the last 8 months, this would be the worst weather that we have encountered; we have been relatively lucky up till now. This was actually the one day that it did not rain but it was really gloomy. Staten Island was one ...

We arrived at Newark International Airport, collected our luggage and caught a taxi. We needed a minivan taxi to take all of our luggage and newly acquired purchases from Phoenix. We ended up getting an Egyptian taxi cab driver who was very interesting. We left Egypt 3 weeks before that country imploded and so we had lots to talk about. He immigrated to the United States through the Lottery system which I did not even know existed here in America because we do not have this in Canada. The taxi ride was expensive but we knew it would be, it was 72 dollars with our entire luggage and we got a VISA slip from the taxi operating lady before we got in the cab, which enabled us to pay with VISA. We ended up tipping him 10 bucks as well so $82.00 for the ride into Manhattan. It was about ½ hour ride because the traffic was not too terrible and it was about 8 pm at night. We checked into our hotel which was The Manhattan Club at 200 West 56th street. We quickly realized what a valuable ...

We woke up late again and got up and walked down to the ticket discount booth in Times Square on 47th. We were on a mission to buy discounted Lion King Tickets for a matinee. Well first of all this place is closed on Mondays so don’t bother and there are no matinees on Mondays or Tuesdays. Also there are no discounted Lion King tickets to buy, because it is still fairly new. It would have cost my family over 400 bucks to see this show, so we decided to wait until we come back to NYC sometime in the future. We enjoyed Billy Elliott so much that we wanted to experience another Broadway play here in NYC. We had to quickly change our plans and pick something else to do instead of going to another matinee. We decided to walk to Dylan’s Candy Store that touts itself as the largest candy store in the world. It is very large but I would have my doubts that it is the largest. It is located at 1011, 3rd ave and 60th street. It does have 3 floors and 15,000 square feet of candy and it d...

We are still adapting to time changes and woke up late again. The whole week that we were in NYC we did not make it out of the hotel once before noon. I thought that this was pretty pathetic but Darren and Dax did not have a problem with it. Darren would be happy living in a dark cave, no lies and Daxtin takes forever to get ready to leave the house. I could have used a cattle prod and a firecracker to rouse the troops. Dax was pretty excited to take the subway; we had not been on one since Singapore. The NYC subway is pretty grouse and tight. The platforms are very tiny and dirty and ancient looking. The Asian subways are so much nicer to look at and ride. We grabbed the subway and went downtown to Wall Street. We saw the New York Stock Exchange building and in my naiveté, I thought that we could actually go in and I was wrong, you can’t. Wall Street is closed down to cars probably to accommodate all of the tourists that visit there. At the end of Wall Street is Trinity Ch...

I was very excited to get to Phoenix, Arizona to see all of my girlfriends that were meeting us there. Leaving St. Thomas was sad because that meant that the Caribbean portion of our trip had come to an end and I absolutely love spending time in the Caribbean with all of the warm tropical breezes, the beautiful colour water and all of the beauty that surrounds you with the flowers and trees. It is pure relaxation. But I was ecstatic to see all my buds that had flown all the way from Saskatoon. It has been a long and dry 8 months without them. All of us flew in late on Friday, May 6th. We were close to the Arizona Mills Outlet Mall and they had a hotel close to the Phoenix International Airport. Our plan was to meet up the next morning at the mall. It was so good to see them that I was getting a bit verklempt with all of the solid hugs and I had missed them so much. Good, trustworthy friends are ultra important to me. Not to mention that these chicks are bags of fun. We said our hellos...

We flew in with Liat Airlines and they were 1.5 hours late getting in. Liat is an interesting little airline with rush seating which is a concern with a child. The lady at the gate had a good head on her shoulders and she had the people with children let on first to the aircraft. We arrived at St. Thomas and collected our car from Budget. The drive to the Marriott is normally a short 10-minute drive but Carnival began on Friday and there was lots of traffic. We had to drive right through Charlotte Amalie the capital city and then up into the hills to the Marriott Frenchman’s Cove which is situated high up on different terraces overlooking the Caribbean Sea. We finally lucked out and got a great view of the water and beach. We are in the Virgin Gorda building on the top floor directly looking over the middle of the beach and water. We also have a great view of Charlotte Amalie and all of the cruise ships as they enter and exit the port or terminal, they sail right by our balconi...

Magens Bay Beach is managed by the government so there is a cost of 4 dollars per adult to get in but there are public washrooms etc. Magens Bay is in the North of the island and it is a one-mile-long beach which is quite a narrow sand beach. Magens Bay is usually always on the list of the top ten beaches of the world by Conde Nast travel magazine and others. Personally, I would say that it is a very nice pretty beach but not in the top ten beaches in the world. I found 3 beaches that were better than Magens Bay in Eleuthera Island, Bahamas and then there is always Jolly Harbour Beach in Antigua as well. I am not sure if Conde Nast focuses more on beaches in the US or what but they need to get a new judge for best beaches. As I said Magens Bay is pretty but not anywhere close to the top ten in the world. We laid around on the beach and came up with a new game where we throw our wave runner bouncy ball out into the water and see how many skips we can get and then Dax takes his...