New York City.

NEW YORK BABY!!!!!! God was I excited about this leg of the trip. Ever since I came 4 years ago I've wanted to come back, and here we finally are. We booked an extra night here over everywhere else because there is just so much to try and squeeze in. But we did it, and a fair bit more. The only downside is that we were in a really horrible hotel/hostel that I don't even want to begin to explain . We didn't let that ruin things though, I mean hey it's New York, we didn't exactly spend much time in the room there is way too much to see and do!

The first stop of course was every New York tourists destination - Times Square. I could just sit there for hours watching all of the people and looking at the lights and the billboards, it's captivating, if completely crowded and overwhelming. From there we walked over to Rockefeller Center to buy our City Passes which basically give us discount to all of the big tourist destinations and mean we don't have to join all of the ridiculously long queues, so it's money well spent. My Lord Rockefeller looks different to the last time I was there. In December it is an ice rink, full of skaters with over an hour long queue and Father Christmas taking pictures with happy holidayers. In the Summer, the ice is gone and there are tables and chairs and a set up bar and hoards of people eating overpriced and delicious looking food. We also heard a tour guide telling his group that they do weddings there for anything from $350 to $1500! Crazy!

Next was Grand Central Station which I didn't have a chance to visit last time, so I was looking forward to seeing the big clock that the giraffe got his head stuck in in Madagascar. It was pretty cool, a beautiful building and of course, like the rest of New York, absolutely heaving with people! There was also this archway outside of the Oyster bar that is nicknamed 'The Whispering Gallery' that Danny had heard about that we had to check out whilst we were there. Basically you each stand on opposite corners of the archway and whisper into the wall and the other can hear what you're saying, just like magic. It's super weird and I have no idea how it works, but it's a quirky little thing to go and check out whilst you are in NY that a lot of people don't know about.

By this point the evening was already upon us so we decided to go out for a few drinks. We put our name on the waiting list for a rooftop bar that we heard was good, and went round the corner to a sports bar for a couple of beers and to try to figure out the basics of baseball before we were to watch a match the next night. I think we got the gist of it by the time we had to go grab our reservation. Wow. Just wow. This rooftop, in the middle of Manhattan was just spectacular, it's no wonder there was such a long waiting list. It was like being in another world, all the glittery lights, the view, the hustle and bustle of the city, it was something else. A little bit tipsy we headed back to Times Square, ended up on a billboard, ate some pizza and then off to bed. God is this travelling malarkey tiring...

Day Two began with the Statue of Liberty. A pretty standard sight in NY but she is magnificent and we got some great pictures from the side of the boat. Like most people, we didn't spend more than 10 minutes on Staten Island before we got straight back on the boat to the mainland. We then went to Wall Street and passed the New York Stock Exchange and all the men in their funky sales jackets, and then round the corner to the World Trade Center. When Danny last came it was all construction, and when I came the museum was just being built so we had a look at the memorial and spent a long time in the museum, a long long time - it is HUGE. Honestly the size of the place is insane, you could spend an entire day in there easily. There were some really interesting exhibits and some you hear some really emotional stories. It's an incredible museum and I urge anyone to go who has the chance.

Back out in the sunshine we took a walk over the Brooklyn Bridge. Well not quite all the way, maybe halfway, we took some pictures and turned straight back around. My God it was hot, so so incredibly hot. By the time we had done that, again time had escaped us so we got on the subway and began to make our way to Citi Field, the home of the New York Mets! I won't lie I was pretty dubious about how I was going to manage watching baseball for a minimum of three hours, but I actually really enjoyed it, we had a great time! The Mets may not have won, but it was a great game that left us hanging until the last pitch - I'm definitely going to try and keep up with watching it, it's the only sport that I've ever shown a slight interest in, so we shall see how that goes. As the game went into extra innings we weren't back in Manhattan until gone midnight, so it was another late night pizza stop and bed.

And then it was Saturday, already! We started off the day at the American Museum of Natural History. I took a picture of the giant talking head from 'Night at the Museum' and we looked at a load of stuffed animals, and of course the dinosaur exhibit. It was rather cool. Then we began our walk through Central Park which is just beautiful in the sunshine. We arrived at the Rockefeller Center and went to their observation deck 'Top of the Rock' and Danny had a good old time using the binoculars to see all the way to the WTC. It's always cool to see cities from so high up and get a completely different view. After that we made our way to Soho to visit the Patagonia shop, look around Chelsea Market and just have a little wander. We found the most delicious cupcake shop called 'Georgetown Cupcakes' so got some goodies from there and then went down to the driving range on the pier where Danny thoroughly enjoyed himself hitting a load of golf balls over the Hudson River, or trying to anyway. And then it was time for Aladdin!!! I am a huge musical fan, so any opportunity I get I will go and see one, and you can't possibly go to New York without catching a show on Broadway obviously! It was incredible. Amazing props, amazing costumes, amazing dancing/singing and it was so so funny. My sister tells me it is in production in the West End for next year so I will definitely be going to see it with her when it opens to compare the UK and US version. But yeh I loved it, it's definitely made it into my top five!

I've just noticed how long this blog post is getting and I don't want to bore you all, so I'll quickly flit through our fourth and final day and let you get onto the fun part - the pictures! We went to the MET which is the art museum, I was completely bored because I have no appreciation of 'art' I'm sure would be most peoples response. I fail to see how a canvas painted red with one green stripe is art. There was one picture I thought was amazing but that was it. Just one. I'm sure I'm very uncultured and have no idea, but for this reason we went and looked at the Guggenheim as a building for it's funky style and then left for the good stuff. Shopping!!! I finally went to Bloomingdales and got myself some treats and proceeded to skip for the next hour out of pure joy. I swear to God shopping releases endorphins. It makes me so happy. And then as night fell we made our way up the Empire State Building and ogled at New York City in all of it's sparkling beauty. And that was it, another destination done, just like that. Bye bye New York, I have no doubt that we will be back...

Boston.

Our trip to Boston didn’t exactly start off in the best way. Up until this point we have had absolutely no issues with any transportation during our trip, which of course is welcome when you are travelling this much/far in such a short space of time, however that good luck ended on this leg of the journey. Of course doing the Canada/America border crossing takes time, I appreciate that, but when the bus driver is laughing about how this particular bus never makes its arrival time, and you know that even without delays your day of being on a bus is already totalling over 13 hours, it makes it pretty irritating to say the least. So by the time we finally arrived at our airbnb apartment it was almost 1am and we had been travelling for 19hours! Luckily we had the most fabulous hosts who let us in and made us feel welcome even at that ungodly hour - so we rolled into bed for some much needed sleep. The next few days were going to be busy, and hot!

Tuesday morning we were feeling refreshed and ready to explore. We started off the day by doing the Freedom Trail. This is a 2.5 mile walk that leads you to various historic sites throughout Boston. It starts off in Boston Common which is America’s oldest public park, and leads you up to the Massachusetts State House which has a dome covered with 23-karat gold leaf - it’s pretty impressive. We then moved onto the Park Street Church and then the Granary Burying Ground. It is here that Benjamin Franklin’s parents, Samuel Adams and Peter Faneuil are buried - along with around 5,000 other people. It’s pretty old and bashed up and I found it really strange that there were some headstones with an angel on, and others with a skull on - I wonder who got what and why? I never did find the answer. Next was Kings Chapel which is a tiny little church on the corner of the street and is known for being the first non-Puritan church. I wont lie I don’t know what that means, but apparently it’s pretty cool. Then came the Benjamin Franklin Statue, which needs no explanation and the Old State House which is where the Declaration of Independence was first read to the people of Boston, the Boston Massacre Site, Faneuil Hall, and the Bunker Hill Monument. Way way way too many things to go into detail packed into that short walk, but it was super interesting and we actually learnt a few things here!

We then wandered around the market a bit, looking at all of the yummy food stalls and things on sale and Danny spotted a leaflet for the ‘Original Cheers’. Now apparently ‘Cheers’ is some kind of TV show from the 80s that I somehow have absolutely no idea about and don’t realise how cool it is to visit. Well despite that, we went in there and had a beer and it was a really strange little place. The real name of the pub is the Bull and Finch and it’s just like walking back in time when you go in there, it’s pretty odd. But Danny was impressed and my Mum seemed to like that we had been there, so yeah, if you’ve seen ‘Cheers’ then I guess you know what I’m talking about, if not never mind and I shall move on. We wandered around Boston University which was absolutely CRAZY as it was moving in weekend, grabbed something to eat and hit the hay. 

Wednesday was the day. The day of the whale watching. I think I was almost as excited, if not more excited to do this than I was to see Niagara Falls! I pretty much power walked the entire way to the docks and off we went. It was an hour and a half boat ride to the area where whales are most spotted so we just stood out on the deck, watching the shore disappear and trying not to get blown over by the high winds. We had a fair few laughs at some of the poses that people do for photographs whilst on board a boat, and of course the people who get sea sickness (I know, we are mean) - but there was this weird kind of machine that they use to clean up the mess which we named a sick hoover. It was funny, I guess you have to be there. But anyway, back to the whale watching. I was a bit concerned that we weren't going to see any. Now the company guarantees that you will see whales. They do this by issuing you a voucher for another boat tour if you don't see whales on this visit. But we were leaving tomorrow, another visit wasn't an option, so I had all my fingers and toes crossed for a sighting, and boy were we lucky! We saw five whales in total - four humpback whales, and one minke whale. Not only did we see that many, we saw an adult and two baby whales all swimming together which apparently is extremely unheard of, so we were treated with that one! It was such a cool experience and something that I will always remember, I loved it!

By this point, half of the day had already gone, so we headed over the complete opposite end of town to go and do a tour of Fenway Park. Fenway Park is the home ground for the Boston Red Sox baseball team and is supposedly 'America's most beloved ball park'. Constructed in 1912 it is extremely old, in terms of baseball stadiums - i'm pretty sure I'm right in saying the original wooden seating from when it opened is still there today, and it's teeny tiny; the fourth smallest baseball stadium in America. We didn't know much about basketball but it was a cool place to look around and it certainly made us intrigued for the game we are going to watch in New York which just happens to be the Boston Red Sox vs New York Mets. Evening quickly crept in and so we made our way to the Judson B. Coit Observatory at Boston University. Every week they open up the observatory to the public and show them the wonders that are in the sky. Tickets have been sold out for weeks, but we took our chances to see who didn't turn up in the hope that we would get in. This time luck was on our side and we got to peer through the microscopes on the rooftop to see Saturn, the moons surface and a double star. It was sooooooo cool! I had no idea what to expect, but to see Saturn that close and in perfect conditions - it was really something. 

Toronto.

Toronto was one of our visits that I was most looking forward to on this trip. We had a lovely airbnb apartment lined up, and we were going to go and see Niagara Falls. I almost couldn't contain my excitement for that, which was pretty hard as we had organised to see it on the last day of our stay.

So on our first day, we did the next best thing. We visited Ripleys Aquarium of Canada, supposedly the biggest aquarium in Canada. It was pretty damn cool I must say. I bloody love aquariums anyway, I'm a huge 'Finding Nemo' fan and fish are just rather interesting, so I had a great time! It was extremely busy of course, as it is currently the school holidays, but we managed to make our way through the crowds and see everything we wanted to. We even got to stroke a stingray which was awesome. Other than Dory and Nemo, stingrays have got to be my favourite kind of fish - just because they always look like they're smiling and I like that. I'm aware how much of a child I sound right now so I'm going to swiftly move on.

Just across the road from the aquarium is the Steam Whistle Brewery. It's free entry, with a free taster and pretty cheap beer. So as Danny is a little bit obsessed with their pilsner (the only beer they actually brew) we popped in for a swift one and a look around. It's actually a really cool place. It's set up in an old steam train repair facility and there are old steam trains in the grounds, so it makes for an interesting walk around. And you can have a beer, so it's win win. We had dinner at a local pub and headed to bed pretty early on our first night. It had been a really long day of travelling the previous day so we were in desperate need of getting a good nights sleep before continuing our adventures.

The morning came around much too quickly, as it always does, so we got up and headed down to the ferry dock to take a trip over to Toronto Island. We walked from one beautiful end to the other, taking in all the gorgeous scenery, looking at the boats and having a little nap on the beach in the sunshine. We laid in the sun for just a little bit too long and I didn't feel very well so we went back to the mainland and wandered around some shops. Danny always knows how to cheer me up! Shopping. Yay. Although I was very good and just looked, no purchases were made. I'm actually getting pretty good at not shopping now. Danny is a lot worse than I am -  he's certainly got a lot more clothes in the suitcase than I have that's for sure!

We knew the queue for the CN Tower would be ridiculous so we went over there an hour or so before we knew the sun was due to set in the hope that we would be up there to look over Toronto in both daylight and night time. And we were. It was pretty impressive I must say, the skyline and the water looked lovely as the sun was setting and then illuminating one building to the next. It's not quite as well though out as the Space Needle though, in my opinion. It is A LOT more expensive to go up, and the observation deck is all fenced up with really tightly cross hatched wire so you can't actually take a picture from outside, you have to go up a floor and take it through the glass window which is a bit disappointing. I understand it is for safety reasons but when you're paying that much money it would be nice to have a proper, unblocked view. Oh and to top it off, a little girl was sick on my feet too. It was a great day. But I knew the next day was going to be incredible, so nothing was going to put me on a downer. I popped to the washroom, cleaned my feet in the sink and off we went to have some dinner. Day two complete.

DAY THREE IS NIAGARA FALLS DAY!!!!! We were booked onto the first bus leaving at a reasonable hour, so bright eyed and bushy tailed we headed into the city centre and made our way to Niagara. It is about a 90 minute trip from downtown Toronto into Niagara Falls city and then a short bus journey to the falls themselves. For starters, I had no idea it was a city, I naively just thought the falls were in the middle of nowhere, but it's actually a really weird place. The falls are the most captivating thing I think I have ever seen, and then just up the road there's a strip that sort of copies the Las Vegas strip but in a really cheap and tacky but horrendously overpriced way. It's certainly odd. The falls though, well I don't even think I can sum them up in words. They were just incredible, you really don't even have the slightest idea from a photograph as to the pure size of them! We went on the maid of the mist boat which takes you just 100ft from the falls. You get absolutely soaked from all of the mist falling over you, but I can honestly say it is one of the best things I have had the chance to do. I absolutely loved it. It was certainly the best way to end our time in Toronto. I am a very happy traveller.