New York: The big āporo

Ok, so this is going to be a long one, because while we were only in NYC for five nights, we packed a lot in, and loved the joint so have to share all the details. We haven't even ranted about the bagels or the service! You ready?
We've split this into areas of the City for ease of reading.

Lou and the famous bull near Wall St

Walking the highline on a magnificent day

Take me out to the ball game

First up, Midtown.
Since our accommodation (Candlewood Suites) was located in mid town, just near Times Square, we spent the bulk of our time in this area. We spent the better part of one day walking around visiting Times Square (didn’t find the free museum and nice clean loos until our final day), the Empire State building, the Chrysler building, Public Library, St Patrick’s Cathedral, the Rockerfeller Centre, FAO Schwarz (yep we jumped around on the big piano), Grand Central Station, and an excellent tour of the UN.
We also popped into Justin Timberlake's restaurant Southern Hospitality in Hell's kitchen and stuffed ourselves silly.

Top tip: When you get to the Empire State building there’s a huge queue of people wanting to head to the observation deck and touts selling tickets to queue jump. From the 5th Ave entrance, it looks like you can’t get in without a ticket. You can though – just walk around the corner to 33rd St and use one of those entrances to have a good look around the lobby. Of course if you want the view, you'll have to queue!

The view from the top of the Met, central park

Uptown

Plenty to do and see here, and a really different feel to the rest of the city (might be all that money rolling around?) We spent a fab afternoon mooching around Central Park and having a wee nap in the sunshine before heading to the excellent

Metropolitan Museum and taking in the American wing and the view from the roof top bar, before wandering home past Park Ave.

Top tip: the price at museums (usually around $20-25) is in fact the ‘recommended’ price. You can just pay what you want – but you do have to pay something. At the ticket desk, just say you’d like to pay $10 or whatever, and that’s just fine - no snooty looks or anything!

Downtown

Downtown also has plenty to offer, including Wall Street, Southport (great for a drink in the sunshine), China Town, Little Italy (where we had the biggest pizza ever at Lombardi's), and the excellent 'Highline' walk along a disused rail track, which now provides a spot of green in the city and great views.

Around town

Brooklyn

The old girl

One of Lou’s old school friends lives in Brooklyn, so we walked across the bridge one evening to take in views of the city and the Statue of Liberty to have a meal in Brooklyn. As well as seeing a different part of New York, we enjoyed a fantastic meal at a local Mexican, Fonda, with Simone and her husband Geoff.

Top tip: None of the guide books told us how to get onto the bridge, so we had to ask a friendly Policewoman. The pedestrian entrance is right by City Hall.

Ellis Island/Statue of Liberty

We like to think we don’t act like travelling rookies so much these days, but we were the day we decided to get a boat to Ellis Island to visit the Immigration Museum. After 40 minutes in the queue to buy tickets, we did a reccie to see how long the queue through security and to the boat was. We estimated 1000+ people and an hour and a half, so we called that idea quits. Instead, we booked online that night (no extra charge) which meant no queues. In fact, we booked for a 10am sailing and at that time of the day there wasn’t much of a queue at all, so if you don’t want to book online, get there around 9am to minimise time wasted.

Lou rockin' a peace keeper's helmet at the UN

Times Square at night

The boat cruise was great, got up really close to the Statue of Liberty, but we didn’t get off on the island (you can, but there’s not much to see). Instead we continued on to Ellis Island where we spent 3 hours exploring the immigration museum and learning about what immigrants to the US used to go through. Interestingly, the questions they were asked (can you support yourself, can you work, are you a criminal) are much the same as UK immigration ask Dean each time he renews his visa, so things haven’t really changed. Also interesting was that the US really welcomed immigrants from 1892-24, so only 2 percent of those coming into Ellis Island got sent back. They have an excellent search facility so we looked up Yarralls and von Ds to see if any of them had come through, and since found out Lou's Great Grandfather went through there in the 1920s from Scotland.

Yankee Stadium

Whoop, it was free t-shirt day when we visited the Yankees. We do like free stuff! Enjoyed the game and atmosphere, and gorged on the obligatory fried foods, beer and crackerjack.

Some more tips to get the most from your stay

Getting into town from JFK: Very easy and fast on public transport. Take the air train (don’t need a ticket just yet) to Jamaica. Before exiting, purchase a combined airtrain/LIRR ticket (around $13) and exit. Get on the LIRR to Penn Station and you’re there in about 20 minutes.

Metro tickets: If you’re there for 3 or more days, it’s probably worth buying a 3 day pass. We didn’t, and even though we spent most of our time walking, we used the metro enough to warrant it. If you don’t get a pass, you can just buy one metro card and pass it through to the person you’re with – you don’t need one each like you do in London.

Tipping: a good rule of thumb is to just double the tax added to your bill (around 8%) which gives a 16% tip.

Most department stores (and certainly Macy's where we took advantage) have visitor cards, offering a 10% discount for out of towners.

Take your passport, as the kiwi driver's licence might not cut it as ID for alcohol. Dean and our friend Rod spent about 20 minutes arguing with various members of staff at the Yankees who wouldn't accept their NZ drivers' licences as proof of age. They won and we got the beer in the end, but save yourself the trouble!

And to finish, here's the locals at the 9th Ave food festival on while we were there, awesome.

France: The Normandy Express

We took the opportunity of a bank holiday weekend to nip across to Normandy, to visit the D-Day beaches and the town Dean’s ancestors come from (the ones who helped to settle Akaroa, New Zealand in 1840). Unfortunately the dismal grey weather followed us there, but no bother, nothing that French food and Normandy cider didn’t fix.

After an excellent overnight Ferry with Brittany Ferries (our own 4-berth cabin complete with ensuite) we docked in Caen, just in time for a breakfast of cafe au lait and croissants before collecting our car. 

Back streets of Villedieu

Chilling out in style

From our base in Caen for one night, we visited a few sights, starting with the Bayeux Tapestry: arrived right on opening time and could imagine how packed it would get in the high season. We spent about 90 minutes here, first seeing the tapestry with its excellent audio guide (and spotting the images of King Harold who, according to our guide book, could be picked out in each scene due to his shifty eyes), then visiting the museum and watching a video about the tapestry. Highly recommended way to understand the history of the Battle of Hastings in an 942 year old comic strip. Also stopped into the Bayeux Cathedral, for a change we were the only ones looking around.

The view from Pointe du Hoc

A totally preserved German bunker - Longues -sur-mer

From there it was onto the beaches. We had contemplated joining a guided tour but decided in the end to do travel independently and are glad we did. Given the cold, drizzly day, it was nice to set our own agenda and to travel independently, rather than on a tour. It meant we could get back in the car when it got really cold, and stop for croque monsieur and soup l’oignon when we wanted to. We visited Ste-Mere-Eglise church with its statue of a parachutist hanging from its tower to commemorate the real deal on D-Day; Pointe du Hoc, complete with huge shell craters at the top of a cliff; Omaha Beach; Longues Sur Mer – surviving German gun emplacements; the American cemetery and memorial museum; and Arromanches-les-Bains where we did the Arromanches 360 experience (a film depicting Normandy with a combination of WWII and modern footage). Back in Caen exhausted after waking at 0545 UK time to dock in the ferry, so headed straight for a meal at La Poterne – an excellent three course meal with plenty of Normandy cider to wash it down.

Chateau Thury Harcourt

Sunday morning after filling ourselves silly at breakfast we popped to the Sunday market right outside our hotel to pick up supplies for the day, then hit the road on the scenic route to Villedieu les Poeles (literally city of god of the frying pans). The name comes from their association with the Knights of St John (the guys who looked after Malta for a few hundred years who we learnt about in 2008), and their granting of an early tax free haven which encouraged a whole lot of copper work.

The scenic route took us through the back roads of Calvados, passing through some lovely, if wet, countryside. We stopped for a break at Thury Harcourt to check out their ruined moated chateau. Onwards through the rain we passed a number of quaint villages with the final stop being St Cecile just a few miles out of Villedieu, where we spotted some ancestors in the local churchyard.

The Mont

A short pitstop to check-in and onwards to Mont-St-Michel, a UNESCO world heritage site, and one of the most crowded tourist attractions in France. Worth a visit, it was very crowded on a wet May Sunday, so perhaps avoid during peak times!

Our hotel  Le Fruitier  doubled as the best restaurant in town, so after discussing the French election with some locals in a bar we tucked into a cracking €27 menu.

Our little beach picnic with the locals

Monday we explored the cobbled streets and courtyards of Villedieu, popping into Atelier de Cuivre, the local copper workshop, before getting the last supplies of baguette, pate and quiche Lorraine we hit the road. Finally the sun came out, so along the way we stopped for an impromptu picnic on the sand. 542 km in the car ended in the less charming port town of Cherbourg. Au revoir, a bientot France.

The Bell Foundry - Villedieu