Epic Holiday, Pitstop 1, NY

Us being us, we thought moving countries twice in 6 months wasn't challenging enough, so we decided to throw in a holiday in the mix. Of course, this couldn't be a run of the mill holiday... where was the fun in that? we decided what was needed was a holiday of epic proportions where we travel out of a suitcase for more than a month and crisscross about 6 timezones. Yup. That's just how we roll. Well, that and the fact that Child 1 had worked his butt off for the grammar school exams and both of the kids were superstars in handling the move.
Right, so the iten. was as follows: London - NY- Aukland- Queenstown- Auckland- Sydney - Cairns- Sydney- Auckland- LA- Vegas- San Francisco- London. And it pushed the Baa-Lamb's itinerary- making skills to the limit. And boy, did he deliver!
So, moving on, our Epic Holiday (as I'm going to refer to it henceforth. Get used to it. It's never going to happen again for me, so I need to squeeze out the last drop of glory from its epic-ness) took off with our flight to New York.

Flags everywhere. Anywhere you could think of.
Also, those signs take a little getting used to. 

Our first contact with a new Continent, and we could immediately feel the difference. (or maybe, that was just us, a tad over excited). For all that people said about its frantic pace, New Yorkers, seemed to us a rather friendly bunch. From the kind lady who went out of her way (about half a kilometer the other way) just to lead us to the right station platform to the ticket collector who let the bossy baby play with her bunch of tickets, to even the staff at our hotel (who insisted on called her princess, which pleased her no end), on the whole, a completely delightful set of people.

Never losing their sense of fun - even stuck in a traffic jam

Given that we had just a couple of days in the Big Apple (which, by the way, is far too little), we decided to do the most sensible thing and do a hop-on-hop-off. The day was fortunately cold but clear. this afforded us some wonderful views as we decided to walk across Bryant Park and the Brooklyn Bridge.

catching sight of a rare patch of blue between the highrises. 

Did I mention the scale here? This HUGE edifice is just the Post office. Half of it, to be precise.

Walking across the bridge was definitely one of my favourite parts of the trip.

Yes, locks. This isn't Paris, you know. 

The Family. Reluctantly posing for the nth picture

The view from the bridge

In the afternoon, we decided to skip the queues that were snaking around to get to the Statue of Liberty and and Elllis Island. We took the Staten Island ferry, its free, has no queues and provides a fairly decent view of Lady liberty. Yes, we did miss the up-close-and personal 'Darshan' of the original iron lady, but this trip offers up a fabulous view of the Manhattan skyline.

The famed NY skyline. I think it looks better from the sea than from up the top of any of the skyscrapers

And this is the closest we came to the lady. 

Here's a close-up view. From one of the souvenir shops. 

We also though of doing the Top-of-the-rock towards sunset. A though that was apparently shared by the whole tourist population of New York. This meant that the earliest we could get in was at 8pm.
If you ever decide to do the NY trip, people, book your times for the Top-of-the-rock early and then come back for it, after doing the rest of the NY tour. Manhattan is pretty walk-able, even on a cold and windy day (as long s it doesn't rain).
The views from the Top of the Rock at night time is pretty amazing. We climbed up all the 3 floors (yes, there are 3 floors to climb), especially the the topmost floor, which has no glass barriers and offers up a fantastic 360 degree view of the city.

The bottom of the Top. 

Art Deco Glory

Another fabulous, all-lit-up view? Times Square. Despite our jet-lagged selves, we had a pretty fabulous first day.

Times Square

...complete with a wedding. 

Pretty unmistakable, even in  the day. 

Day 2, however was a completely different story. Freezing rain and cold winds made fore pretty miserable sight seeing weather so we tried to spend most of it indoors. We braved the World Trade Centre views, but personally, I still preferred the TOTR.

Grey rainclouds and it turned into the city of gloom.

Being a bit of an FLW fangirl, I wanted to catch the Gugenheim. Little did I know that its shut on Thursdays. And guess what day of the week it was! yup.Thankless Thursday. Oh well, an excuse to visit the Big Apple again, then. That and Central Park. The park - what little we saw of it was the favourite part of the day for the kids and definitely worth spending an entire day at, time and weather permitting. I did love some of the odd and quirky buildings that NY threw up, all of them not quite following the template, but making the cityscape fascinating.

The Flatiron.

An interesting oriel. Also, the flag. Like I said. Everywhere.

To fellow architects: 10 points if you tell me what this reminds you of.

Those Gargoyles. 

This church. 

This...Cannonball?

This, I LOVE!

Is this what the mean by camouflage?

When I look at Mumbai, I'm frequently struck by how different and individualistic our building are, but the major difference I see is the absolute lack in the civic planning that I notice in Mumbai. That and the blatant rule-flouting that is considered par for the course.

A city for all creatures, big and small

Yup. That's exactly how we looked at the sights. 

Hello there, spongebob...Or as my friend just pointed out - is that Homer?

Kitsch central!

I agree. Cool.

Just in case you have a few million lying around.

And that brought our brief flying visit to NY to an end. We needed to catch a pretty long flight to Auckland the following day.The kids were already asking me 'are we there yet?' Lord give me strenght.

Of Volcanoes, Squalls and other Natural Phenomenon

The husband, having spotted a great deal on a low-cost airline had booked us on a spate of holidays, the last of which was to Naples. The idea was to catch the last ferry out to Capri the same evening. 

However the last ferry, this being winter wasn't going out this late anymore. so we ended up having to stay at Naples for the night. I though we were going to catch the first ferry out. But the Husband being the husband, decided to throw in a surprise. We decided to catch an active Volcano before catching the ferry. 

The route to Ercolano (that's where you need to catch the bus to Vesuvius for) was nothing if not colourful. People obviously have a lot to say here.  

They say it with plaques

and Graffiti. yes, Even love poems. 

 

Don't you just love this little car?

The buses to Vesuvius will take you to the bottom of the hill and you have to make a short trek to the top. We met a lovely Canadian family on our way to the top. The kids were so nice, even my little bossy boots forgot to grumble as we walked up the volcano. Vesuvius was smoking gently as we reached the top. Fascinated young Pickwick no end, as I fended off a zillion questions from him. 

The way down was a slightly different story as poor little bossy boots took a slight stumble. And would only cheer up once she was safely perched on daddy's shoulders. Poor daddy. 

But we had not time to lose- after waving a fond goodbye to the Canadians and promising to keep in touch, we raced to catch the ferry out to Capri. There can be just one word to describe Capri - Beautiful. It doesn't matter what you click a picture of or where from. It's all beautiful.

Capri Porta

We were staying at Anacapri- which was a bit higher up than Capri and the only way to get there was by a tiny little bus. And if you though the bus was tiny, I wonder what you'd make of the streets. Lets just say that if I were Van Damme, I'd have no problems doing splits across the breadth. 

Once in Anan Capri, we walked an uphill 10 minutes to reach our lovely B & B. The view would have been lovely if the weather hadn't been so grey. 

The alley may look eerie, but it was perfectly lovely as we made out way up to the B &B. 

The town center of Anacapri is beautiful, even in the nights, with half the shops shut on account of this being off season.

we decided to have dinner at this lovely little Pizzeria - Aumm Aumm which had traditional wood-burning oven resulting in lovely pizzas made from the freshest ingredients. Made up for all the walking we did in the day. That and the Limoncello. :) Ooo...Yumm. 

The next day after a casual stroll around Anancapri to soak in the sights, we made out way to the chair lifts for Monte Solaro, 

Casa Rossa

They do love their ceramics here... and such a lovely selection there was to see.

The view from the top was, needless to say, lovely! 

Yes. that's right. a chair with one rickety bar across your lap. Kids are so thrilled at this complete disregard for safety

The View from Monte Solaro

And since we are an adventurous little lot, we decided to walk it down from Monte Solaro to Capri via the Phoenician Steps. With a brief interlude at the Axel Munthe house. 

The sculptures and the Axel Munthe Museum

The sphinx and the view from Axel Munthe

Only, we got sort of lost  and we ended up walking all the way to the Port. Right. So we need to stock up on the carbs again with another round of pizzas and pastas all around. Not to mention a swig of Lemoncello. 

By this time, the tiny ones were protesting quite vehemently at the the idea of walking it back up, so we took the Funicular to Capri. A quick round of gelato and Coffee (for the eldest moaner) quickly quelled the brewing rebellion and we made our way to more lovely sights around Capri. 

The view from Tragara

Faraglioni. The seas were too rough for boats to take us around, so we could only admire it from afar.

Faro di Punta Carena

The Faro di Punta Carena or the light house at dusk was a lovely place (albeit a tad windy) to end the day and head back to the B& B for a, yes, you know it - Limoncello. 

We wanted to explore Sorreonto and the Amalfi coast the next day, but choppy seas meant no ferries out until 1pm in the afternoon. 

Finding ourselves at loose ends that morning, we decided to visit the gardens of Augustus, and quite miraculously the weather cleared up for some more fabulous views. (I know, more views, but you have to admit, they are fabulous!)

We spotted lots of interesting bits and bobs in the island as well, All adding to the charm of this wonderful island.

yeah, a bit of ghost writing to entertain the kids...

Just randomly. In the middle of nowhere. 

Doesn't he look like he's saying 'whatchoo lookin' at?'

Pickwick and his bugs

 

The rest of the trip I'd much rather forget - lets just say involved a lot of chasing after buses only to get off  because we didn't have tickets - and not being able to purchase said tickets because everything was shut! Also muchly delayed flights,  icy landings in zero viz conditions and very very sleepy babies trying to get into random cabs.  

Still, all part of the fun, eh? Took us only a week to recover from this one :)