Leaving Africa....To The Big Apple

Here we are. Back on US soil. Our last days in South Africa were pretty noneventful. Lots of organizing and cleaning of all that great stuff John R. let us use for our Land Rover expedition. And a pretty good cleaning of the Land Rover itself. It was a bittersweet day the day we handed it all back to John. Sorry to see it go, but at the same time excited to be heading back to home.

Here I am trying to figure out where the heck to start.


After getting the Land Rover and gear taken care of, it was on to getting our own stuff packed and organized in such a way that the airlines wouldn't reject us. I left that job mostly to Keith as he is an expert in packing, and even if I had tried to help, you know he would have redone it anyway.

Here's all those trinkets....packed away - how many will break on the plane?


And then we were off on the epic 24 hour trip to NYC. 8 hours from Jo'burg to Dubai, then 14 to NYC. It's a bit of a blur, but to sum up the flight, I think I watched 5 movies and ate 5 meals and slept about 5 minutes. We do have to say that Emirates is an amazing airline. Fantastic service and facilities - they make us lowly economy folks feel almost like first class (minus the leg room).

And then we landed in New York City and after getting past the grumpiest immigration official yet on all our travels, we were happy to see Grace's smiling face waiting for us on the other side. Grace is my mom's best friend from back in their Stonybrook college days, and her and her family still live in Brooklyn and were our very gracious hosts over the last four days. Despite not sleeping for the previous 36 hours, we went ahead and headed out to do a few sights taking a walk over the Brooklyn Bridge and around the waterfront on the Manhatten side of the bridge. After the torrential downpours we landed to, we actually ended up with a beautiful day. At about 4:00 that afternoon we finally gave in to the weariness and slept for the next 16 hours. A relatively quick and painless recovery from the jet lag.

The Brooklyn Bridge.


Day two in the city, navigating our way around via the quite efficient subway system, we took in the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. They don't let you in the Statue of Liberty anymore, but we had a nice walk around it, and the Ellis Island museum is quite powerful, especially to think that several of my grandparents very likely came through there. This was followed by a look at Ground Zero where they have lots of pictures posted, and construction of the new memorial underway. The day ended with a quick jaunt through Times Square.

Lady Liberty.


Times Square.


That night we were treated to a lovely dinner, conversation and reminiscing of the good times Grace and Jim had with my parents before us pesky kids were around, back when they all lived in Albany, Oregon of all places!


The next day was more wandering the city seeing Central Park, Greenwich Village, and more of Times Square trying to get ourselves into see the David Letterman show. We were successful even though it took up most of our day. The show was a good one, and it was a fun experience even though we were two rows from the back. And no, we didn't get any TV time except the one camera pan of the balcony.

Today we left our nice Brooklyn neighborhood, and headed north via subways and trains to Poughkeepsie to stay with my aunt. After lots of sightseeing and walking we are happy to just hang out today visiting, baking bread and catching up on some computer time. Tomorrow we head further north to catch up with some college friends of my own.

The Brooklyn street that was our home for the past four days. We really enjoyed it here - it has a very neighborhoodly(?) feel, and have been pleasantly surprised with New York City. There is an amazing amount of hustle and bustle, yes (people walk VERY fast at all times), but everyone is nice, the streets are clean, and we feel very safe - not on guard like we felt in the big cities of Africa.