times sqare, the bridges & the mirror

Every New Yorker must think we are mad (& a few even told us so), but I wouldn’t put it that way – I would say adventurous... but more on that later. We had to drive back to the the New Jersey ferry terminal to collect dads pocket knife - they said we couldn't take it on the ferry yesterday so Dad stashed it then forgot to retrieve it. Luckily, it was just around the corner.

Then came the mad part - we had also left our camera at the Intrepid so drove back to Manhatten to retrieve it - back over the George Washington Bridge again. Getting there involved driving about 100 blocks straight down Broadway! In fact we ended up going through Times Square twice - Deanna hopped out to take pics, of course she was pretty much walking faster than we could drive. We weren't the only one to take photos – a few wandering citizens thought it worth a photo, and a few others exclaimed loudly that they felt Times Square wasn't the most appropriate spot for an RV. Don't think we cared do you!! Lots of the time I would stick my head out and have my photo taken to as well. Time Square is just as amazing in day as it is at night. We didn’t get honked at but a few cars around us did - they never seem to stop honking! Dad got a few pics out the window of the RV as we were driving too.

Driving down 49th St on our way to Intrepid we had stopped in some traffic when through the window of his bread shop a man gave us thumbs up and held up some bread as if to say "want some?". So off went Deanna and Emma to get the bread and they came back with a whole sack of it including two loaves of chocolate bread. (yum & doubel yum) then we parked up on the side of the road whole the others raced over to the intrepid to get the camera. They took ages to find it but in the end they got it and when they came back the bread was sliced and ready to go.

We wanted to go over the Brooklyn Bridge but we were too tall and too heavy. But that didn’t mater because you can get a good view of it from the Manhattan Bridge as you cross, as well as the Williamsburg on the other side. Now I can say I’ve seen the BMW (Brooklyn, Manhattan and Williamsburg) from the M of BMW.

From there we drove all the way to Philadelphia, on the way passing over the double decker Verrazano Narrows Bridge which was the largest of its' type in the world at the time of construction in 1964. We went over just as the sun was beginning to set and it was really beautiful although there was a bit much haze to see too much of the city of Statue of Liberty. There was a huge fort that was placed underneath the bridge. So, that was 3 pretty awesome bridges for the day.

A bit of bad luck on our drive through Staten island. There were 2 big trucks in lane 1, we were in lane 2. The back one pulled out in front of us to pass the other - no problem, we just let him go but it meant we didn't have a great view of the road ahead. Then the road narrowed as the 2 trucks ahead of us were parallel meaning we weren't all going to fit. In a split second the one on the right braked heavily to let the other through and bang went our right hand wing mirror on the back of the truck. Unfortunately it was broken so we had to drive the rest of the way with only 1 mirror. This, I can tell you, is not good for Dad's stress levels however we got there OK, even if us kids end up spotting the right when Dad needs to change lane.

We parked up at a Walmart for dinner, then went off in search of a hotspot so Deanna could graduate on line. What a pain in the you-know-what, however we finally found somewhere quite late in the evening, just in time for Deanna to graduate from Intermediate School by skype. Cool technology eh!

Lots of love Amy

Hi its Deanna, Graduation was so amazing seeing all my friends again and graduating on the other side of the world. I felt so special that day, my teacher did a great job getting it set up and it was so cool!