Jethro Borsje

After an eight hour flight we landed in Washington at Dulles International Airport. We had to wait two hours for our connecting flight to New York City. This connecting flight turned out to be a small aircraft containing approximately 30 passengers. This small "United Express" airplane took us to New York City in a little over an hour. At 19:30 NYC time (1:30 in The Netherlands) we touched down. After a short bus ride from La Guardia Airport into Manhattan we went to sleep at our hotel.

Our Hotel (Thirty Thirty) is close to Grand Central Station in Manhattan. In the morning we took a subway ride down south. When we exited the subway at Bowling Green we were greeted by a reconstruction of Amsterdam using wooden houses. This stood there because of a visit of our prince Willem Alexander and his wife Maxima to New York City in order to celebrate the foundation of NYC by Dutchmen 400 years ago.

From Bowling Green we took a ferry which passed the Statue of Liberty and brought us to Ellis Island. At Ellis Island 12 million immigrants arrived to the USA by ferries across the ocean. These immigrants were checked at Ellis Island and transported to NYC from where they spread across the country.

After Ellis Island we visited the South Street Seaport from where we had a nice view on the Brooklyn Bridge. From there we walked through the financial district to Wall Street where we visited Trinity Church. It is interesting to see a church completely surrounded by skyscrapers. At the end of the day we went to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame at SoHo which had a great exhibition on the life of John Lennon.

In the evening we went to a Broadway show: the Phantom of the Opera, which was very good. When the show ended we walked out of the theater onto Times Square. Thousands of people were there coming from different shows, together with the magnificent lighting it was an amazing sight to see.

Today we started of by going to see Grand Central Station which is a very nice building (both inside and out). After Grand Central Station we went to visit the MET (Metropolitan Museum of Art). The MET has a huge collection of art from numerous locations and time periods; African, South American, ancient Egyptian, medieval European, modern art, etc. We particularly liked the collection of impressionistic paintings: Monet, Van Gogh, Cézanne, Degas, etc. It was also nice to see the African and South American artifacts. Seeing Egyptian artifacts inside a museum is always a bit of a disappointment after we visited Egypt two years ago.

After the MET it was time for some geocaching. We planned to do a geocache which takes you through Central Park past 32 bridges. This multi-cache is over 16 km long and has won various awards (best themed cache, best hike and cache of the year) given by the metro NY geocaching society. More info on this cache can be found here. Along the way we planned to pick up several traditional caches ("singles"). Today we did the first part of the bridges multi-cache and found a few single caches. The bridges multi-cache is great fun and shows you a lot of beautiful spots in Central Park. During this walk we also went passed the "Imagine" square at the Strawberry Fields in Central Park, which is there in memorial to John Lennon who was murdered a few hundred meters away from there in front of his apartment building (the Dakota building).

After the caching we went for dinner near the Empire State building. After dinner when it was dark we went up to the 86th floor where there is a observatory terrace. The view from there is amazing.

Today we wanted to finish the bridges multi-cache, so after a quick breakfast we headed for Central Park. The geocaching went great and after a few hours we successfully managed to find the hidden destination where we retrieved a nice commemorative coin. Along the way we found several single caches and ran into another geocaching couple.

This is a GPS track log of the entire bridges multi-cache. Due to some inefficient walking and searching for other caches ended up walking 20 km through Central Park. For obvious reasons the end point of the track log is not the real end point :-)

After the geocaching we visited the American Museum of Natural History, which has a huge collection of animals and plants. We also walked passed the Dakota Building which is the place where John Lennon was shot and where Yoko Ono still lives.

We wanted to see the musical Wicked, but tickets to two Broadway shows would be quite expensive so we chose for the Phantom of the Opera. Fenneke thought it might be possible to obtain last-minute Wicked tickets for a low price, but Wicked is very popular in the USA and is always sold out. A guy at Times Square told us there is a Wicked lottery at the Gershwin theater (where Wicked runs) each night where 12 times two front row tickets are given away for $25 each. This is very cheap considering the normal price of approximately $130 per ticket. There were around 300 people hanging out in front of the theater waiting until the free lottery would take place. Once everybody putted their name in a bowl an employee drew 12 names. When it was time for the fourth name he called out "Jethro Borsje"!! For just fifty bucks Fenneke and I obtained two front row seats for Wicked. When they say "front row" they really mean FRONT ROW. We literally had the best seats in the house, exactly in the center at the very first row. The musical was very good, the story line had various layers ranging from a romantic love story to discrimination, good versus bad, selflessness (and the philosophical question on its existence), acceptance, etc. Needles to say we had another fantastic evening in New York City.

Today we picked up our rental car (a Ford Focus) at Newark Airport, New Jersey, and drove to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In Philadelphia we visited the Mutter museum which displays all kinds of human organs, tissue, bones and skulls, and medical equipment.  During the day Fenneke became a bit sick, so when we finally reached the hotel she went straight to bed.

Fenneke is sick and sleeps all day, almost 20 hours in a row. During the day I did some grocery shopping and visited Rittenhouse Square from which our hotel (Radisson Plaza Warwick) is just one minute away. The rest of the day I spend taking care of Fenneke and reading a book.

Luckily Fenneke feels a lot better. Because we couldn't visit Philadelphia yesterday we went to Independence Mall today before driving to Washington D.C. At Independence Mall we saw the Bell of Liberty and visited Independence Hall, which is where the Declaration of Independence has been created. It was at this historic site that the American Colony declared its independence from the United Kingdom. One of the reasons was the taxes without representation.

After the visit to the Independence Mall we drove to Washington where we checked in to the Hilton Hotel. At night we did a "Washington by Night" tour which took us to a dozen of the most important building and monuments of Washington. We had a great guide and I highly recommend doing this tour when you visit Washington. It takes you to the Capitol, White House, Lincoln Memorial, Jefferson Memorial, World War II memorial, Vietnam War memorial, Korean War memorial and many others, all of which are magnificent sights, especially at night when the are illuminated.

Continue reading part two here.

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