Snoozing in the Sun...

By the Seaside...

After a lazy day in Brooklyn on Monday, we went to the seaside on Tuesday afternoon. It was blummin' BOILING and beautifully sunny, so we got on the N train from Manhattan (we'd been to the Coffee Shop for breakfast and then to Tea & Sympathy to order some food for a work lunch) all the way down to Coney Island.

Coney Island seems to be having a bit of a face lift at the moment, the boardwalk is getting new boards to walk on and the amusement park has had a lick of paint (including the Wonder Wheel) and it looks like there's going to be a new section of park open for the summer (just in time for Tom's arrival and the Hot Dog eating contest!).

I love Coney Island, with all it's characters and run down rides and shops, all the funny food huts along the water front selling hot dogs, clams, beer, corn on the cob and funnel cake. It's so funny to think that it's less than 30 minutes train ride from our apartment, it feels like a completely different country...

After a couple of hot dogs and a couple of beers on the beach we were a little sleepy and I stupidly fell asleep on the beach, so I am now trying incredibly hard not to scratch my incredibly sunburnt tummy as I'm typing this. Luckily Abi's not as sunburnt (she was more sensible with the suncream than I was), and she's letting me use her cocoa butter stuff to sooth the pain (it's working). I have a feeling we'll be going to the beach A LOT this summer, so next time I'm making sure we wear lots and lots of cream.

Here's a big panoramic view of the beach - it was so lovely to be there when it was so hot and to have so few people around... it felt like a perfect end to a perfect little holiday.

At the Capitol Building...

Ollie's Trolley!

On our way back from Thai Tanic the night before Abi spotted a place called Ollie's Trolley, so we made one last stop on the way back to the hotel to take some photos...

Unfortunately we were a wee bit too full to squeeze in an Ollie Burger or any Ollie Fries, but when we go back to Washington (as I'm sure we will) it'll be our first stop...

I want one of these signs for the kitchen... Mmmmmmm

Washington D.C. Day Two...

After an all you can eat breakfast buffet in the hotel we rolled out of the doors and headed to the Washington Smithsonian Zoo. It wasn't too far away from the hotel and the best part was, it's free!

These very grand lions guard the entrance to the zoo. It wasn't the nicest of days weather wise, it was very muggy and overcast, so we were walking around everywhere at a snail's pace but it was nice to be slowly strolling round the zoo on a Sunday morning.

Washington Zoo is famous for, and very proud of it's Pandas. A few years ago they had the new arrival of Tai Shan ('Friendly Mountain' in Chinese) a very cute baby Panda. Tai Shan is now a little bigger and a lot sleepier...

Here's what he was up to - he was sleeping on top of the air conditioning vent with his legs up in the air.

There were lots of beautiful animals in the zoo, but for some reason it didn't feel quite right - I think Jersey Zoo has raised the bar so so high now that all other zoos just feel a bit mean. I expect the weather had something to do with it too, zoos are always feel a bit strange when it's cloudy - especially when there are animals that should be roaming around Africa in a small area of the zoo on an overcast day.

The elephants looked amazing, but it was a bit upsetting seeing on of them swaying backwards and forwards - none of them were really moving much (apart from the chap smiling at the front of the photo who was munching away on some grass). Their house was being renovated, so hopefully they'll have lots of room and lots of toys to play with when it's finished.

We walked all the way to other side of the zoo where there was a little farmyard section. There were some hairy pigs and some cows and some architypal red farmyard buildings. We also saw Abi's long-lost Llama relative...

I think the Llama has stolen Abi's hair style (and leg warmers!).

After the zoo we headed to an area called U Street (or a street called U Street), which Abi had found on her Not For Tourists app on her phone. U Street has a lot of different shops along it, but the reason we went was because there was supposedly a really good cake shop there called Cake Love. Unfortunately it was closed on Sunday, but the Love Cafe was open, so we went there and had ourselves a cupcake...

The cakes were OK, but we thought again that we're in the right city for cakes as Crumbs Cakes are absolutely delicious.

A little further down the road from the Love Cafe was Ben's Chilli Bowl...

We'd both heard about it on t'interweb as being a good place to go, and as you can see from the sign it's a 'Washington Landmark' - it looked like it was heaving inside, so we didn't go in (and we were still really full from breakfast and our cakes). The signage was really similar to some of the places along the boardwalk at Coney Island, that old fashioned hand painted look. It was great. They also had a very friendly looking bear outside...

The buildings around U Street were lovely, infact a lot of the smaller buildings in Washington a really attrative old town looking houses with loads of character. The owners have painted their houses very individual colours which gives them even more character, different areas of Washington seemed to have different coloured houses. Capitol Hill had bright but more subtle colours like blues, reds and greens whereas U Street had brighter, bolder colours like blue and orange and yellow.

After walking along U Street for a bit we hailed a cab and made one last tourist stop before heading back to the hotel, there was one more building that I was dying to see...

The Capitol Building.
It looks so grand and powerful and remarkably like it belongs in London - I think they stole our style for a lot of the buildings in Washington, although they look quite Greek too, so we probably stole their style... anyway. It felt very imposing and important and it was great to see where Congress is held.

Again, it was eerily quiet around the Capitol Building park, we walked around (very slowly) looking at some of the other buildings which admittedly all looked the same, like this very bright white building...

It was boiling hot and at this point really sunny, so it was a bit painful to look at the building as the sun was reflecting off all the white marble. I had a little rest on the steps before being told off because someone (Miss Turner) started lying down on the steps and was asked to sit up. Apparently you're allowed to sit on the steps but not lie back on them...?

After mooching around the Capitol Building it was pretty much time for us to go back to the hotel and get our bags before heading to New York again, but there was one final stop we had to make...

Moody Memorial...

The clouds kept looming over the Lincoln Memorial and the White House all afternoon - it looked very dramatic, I'm just glad it decided to start raining as we were going back to the hotel.

Co-ordinating...

Washington D.C. Day One...

On Saturday morning we made our way to the corner of 33rd and 7th, just by Madison Square Garden and got on the Bolt Bus heading to Washington D.C and 4 hours later, we were there!

The Bolt Bus is a bit like the Megabus (which runs here too), but it's just a bit fancier and less cramped. It was super cheap ($35 return each) and on the way there it was really comfy. The four hour journey went really quickly - there wasn't too much to see on the way, just a lot of freeway and similar looking food chains.

The Bolt Bus, purely by coincidence dropped everyone off right by our hotel. We'd got a good deal at the Grand Hyatt hotel on H Street not too far away from the White House.

The hotel lobby was huge - and at the very bottom was a little pool with a grand piano on an island, no-one was playing it though unfortunately.

Our first stop in Washington was what we'd heard was the best burger place in town - Five Guys Burgers. We walked from the hotel through town to Five Guys, town felt bizarrely quiet, we weren't sure if it was because something else was going on, or if because we're so used to the busyness of New York - but Washington is quiet. (Five Guys by the way was OK - it wasn't as good as Shake Shack or Stand Burger, but it was pretty tasty. We're definitely living in the right city for burgers).

After lunch we headed to the White House...

All the roads, buildings and parks around the White House area are all lined up perfectly, so you can stand near the White House and look down the road at the Capitol Building, and you can stand at the Lincoln Memorial and see down past the Washington Memorial and Capitol Building.

By the entrance to the park surrounding the White House was this fancy looking building, it's the buidling of the Treasury (which some tourists standing near us though was the White House... I have to admit I wondered the same for a second), then just round the corner from here, surrounded by a lovely green park was...

I've had to brighten this picture up a bit because the weather wasn't great - but here it is, Mr. Obama's little house. There were quite a few people about taking photos, not as many as we'd imagined, but there were a fair few tourists. Some people were on a special kind of tour, one that I was very jealous of...

The segway tours looked like a lot of fun - much more fun than using your legs! But we were having our own fun on our own little tour...

Opposite the White House (but quite a way away) was a small camp of very loud (and very angry sounding) Christians, whooping and a hollering and scream about something or other, we couldn't make out anything the man was saying as he was shouting into the microphone so loudly it became distorted. I don't think they were angry about Obama as they later said something about wanted God to watch over the Obama family, but he certainly sounded angry about something.

As you walk away from the White House you walk towards the Washington Memorial (the big pointy stone), which stands on a mound surrounded by (I'm guessing 50) American Flags. When you're by the Memorial, if you look behind you you see the White House, if you look to the left you see the Capitol Building and if you look to your right you see the WWII Memorial, the Relfecting Pool and the Lincoln Memorial all lined up. It's all very neatly planned.

The Reflecting Pool is a very long pool that runs between the WWII Memorial and the Lincoln Memorial. It makes each end feel very grand and very peaceful (which I'm sure was the point). On either side of the pool are different Memorials for different wars. It's strange seeing so many Memorials because on one hand it's incredibly moving to see how many people faught for their country, but it's also quite strange to see how many wars America's got itself involved with in such a short space of time. The main thing is though everyone there was being very respectful and it felt very calm.

This is from the other end of the pool, looking back at the Washington Memorial and the Capitol Building in the distance there.

One of the things I'd been looking forward to the most in Washington was seeing the big statue of Mister Lincoln. As we walked towards the memorial building we could start to see his knees coming out of the shadows and gradually saw more and more of him. At one point he looked a little small, but as we got closer we realised he was just as grand as I'd hoped...

He looked ever so powerful and authoritative sitting in his big throne with his drapey gown and jacket and his expression was a bit like the Mona Lisa, not happy, not sad, not frowning, not smiling. I hadn't realised that he was burried there, which made it an even more powerful place...

I'm so glad we got to see it, it was just a grand and just as moving as I'd thought it would be and as he sits in his chair he over looks the Memorials and directly at the Capitol Building on the horizon.

After we'd sat on the steps for a while and visited the gift shop it started to rain, so we jumped in a cab and went back to the hotel. We'd planned on going for a swim but when we got to the swimming pool we realised that the photo on the website was a little misleading - the pool was tiny and full of little children bombing. So we gave it a miss (I really wanted to do some bombing) and went for a drink instead.

Later in the evening we went out for a meal at a place called Thai Tantic! I have to admit we only really went there because we thought the name was fantastic, but the food was delicious too - the decor and atmosphere was a bit strange in the restaurant though, the tables were like diner tables and there were neon lights behind the bar and Tiki decorations on the walls... it was a very strange mix.

After our super spicy Thai food we were pooped so we headed back to the hotel before another day of exploring...

Hot Rod...

When we were walking out of the park, we crossed the road new the Plaza Hotel and spotted this beauty parked outside the Paris Theatre...


It's a really old Ford, I'm not sure what kind but I LOVE these old Hot Rod cars that you sometimes see about - I wish I had one.

Girls Just Wanna...

have a walk in the park...

There might not have been any zombies in Central Park, but we did see CYNDI LAUPER!
She was just walking through the park with a couple of friends - she didn't look quite like this, but she's still got bright yellow and pink hair! We realised afterwards that it was probably because there was a massive AIDS Walk through the park today and after watching The Celebrity American Apprentice (I'm hooked!) I've realised that Cyndi Lauper does a lot of charity work for gay, lesbian and AIDS charities in New York and America...

Abi's VERY pleased to have finally seen a proper celebrity too!

Park Picnic...

Instead of having a burger surrounded by zombies, we decided to go and have a burger surrounded by beautiful trees and watching people rowing their boats on the lake in the park.

We went to the Boathouse and got some of their burgers and hotdogs and went to sit on the bank near the lake. It was so lovely and hot in the sun, and it was an incredibly relaxing way to spend Sunday afternoon (the burgers were yummy!) and not a zombie in site.

Zombies!

Today we went into Manhattan, we were going to do a bit of shopping after sitting in the park for a bit - we headed up to Shake Shack for a bit of lunch but when we got there we saw something that put us off our food... ZOMBIES!

There were lots of people in various levels of fancy dress, some with eye balls popping out, some with their heads split open, some people were casually sitting on the benches with their throats slit... it was a little disgusting really but it was all in honour of a new film coming out.

From what we could gather, if you turned up dressed as a zombie you received a free ticket to a screening of a new zombie film (I can't remember the name of it though). There were quite a lot of people there of all ages, some had gone to far more effort than others - some of them had obviously had a lot of practice at it (a lot of nights in on their own I think), it was quite impressive. It was a little disturbing seeing little children (and even a dog!) dressed up as zombies though.

(This zombie had clearly been eating her fair share of human flesh!)

The Shake Shack always has a big queue outside, so we were standing surrounded by zombies for quite a while and the longer we stood there, the more zombies turned up and the more queezy we felt so we left the queue and headed up to Central Park instead...

On t'Bridge...

Over The Bridge...

Today was the first time we'd walked over the bridge together and the first time I'd walked over it from Brooklyn to Manhattan, for some strange reason it seemed to take less time walking from Brooklyn to Manhattan than Manhattan to Brooklyn...?

Although you can't tell from this photo, the bridge was jam packed with people walking and cycling to and from Brooklyn. With vendors selling ice cold drinks, tshirts and keyrings dotted along the walk way all the way along the bridge.

Quite close to the beginning of the bridge you get fantastic views of the new park their building (although it looks pretty much finished) in Brooklyn Heights, those long benches at the bottom of the photo are where we sat after lunch. I think we'll head back to the park to have a proper look, I hadn't realised how big it was from where we were on the bench - it looks lovely.

As you walk further along you get great views of the river and a very grand looking Lady Liberty.

Once we got to the other side of the bridge we walked over to South Street Seaport and had a drink by the boats - it was such a beautifully sunny evening - we didn't realise the time at all but by the time we'd finished our drinks and done some mooching around some of the shops at the Seaport it was nearly 7pm, I love how light it is in the evenings now. It makes such a huge difference to the day - it feels like we have so much more time to do stuff now that summer's more or less here!

It was blummin' perfic day.

By The Bridge...

The weather has been absolutely amazing today - it's been so so sunny and hot, but not too hot... so after our amazing lunch we went and sat in the sunshine by the water. The view around Brooklyn Heights is just amazing, and it was really relaxing sitting in the sun, people watching and wedding watching (and the clouds above the bridge looked fantastic).

After we had let our delicious food go down we walked towards the end of the Brooklyn Bridge to make our way over into Manhattan...

A VERY Special Lunch Date...

A while ago Abi worked on a Sunday for a big pitch in Leeds - a group of people ended up working an 11 hour day on that Sunday, so to say thanks Elmwood gave them all meal vouchers so they could go out for a fancy meal. So, this afternoon we decided to finally use that money and Abi and went on a veeeeery special lunch date at the River Café!

The River Café is in Brooklyn Heights and is right under the Brooklyn Bridge. It feels just like being in a restaurant in Jersey, it's a small place that has a cobbled drive way leading up to it which is lined with thick and colourful plants and flowers and there's a beautiful little secluded garden at the front.

(The white building is the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory that's next door)

It's a super fancy place, the dining room bit is on a in on a flotilla so it feels a bit like you're walking onto a boat, looking throught the port-hole windows out onto the river. When you walking into the dining room you're greeted by the most incredible view...

You can see all the skyscrapers and the Brooklyn Bridge, you can see all the water tour boats sailing up the river, and the little speed boats and jetskis whizzing by. I think we had one of the best tables in the whole restaurant, it was along the back wall, so we looked directly out of the windows (this photo was taken from our table). We thought it was lovely that they seat both people at the table on the same side, so we could both enjoy the view.

I know I've posted a lot about food recently - but the food was absolutely DELICIOUS! Abi had Scallops served in the shell on a big bed of ice in a silver bowl to start and I had the Octopus salad, then Abi had the duck which was a crispy breast and a confit leg thingy that looked like a scotch egg, but it was duck confit surrounded by mashed potatoe and fried. I had the steak which came with home made chips, mushroom marmalade and a blue cheese fondue (it was more a sauce but fondue sounds fancier)... it was all so tasty!

We were a little full, but we had room to share a pudding - we had a rather special looking little chocolate cake that looked like the Brooklyn Bridge (it had chocolate gurders!), and we got some rather special little chocolates and biscottis with the bill.

I don't think we'll ever be able to afford to go there for tea, but I'm sure it looks stunning at night time, seeing the skyline being all lit up. It was an incredible special lunch date that we'll never forget - neither of us could quite believe how amazing it was, and we still can't quite believe that we're living in New York - it's very surreal but absolutely incredible at the same time.