We’re planning a trip through Italy, topped off with a Biggish Train Adventure (I refuse to call it a Great Train Adventure however - I have one of those planned, and it’s truly a behemoth. Ask me if you’re curious). Colm’s gotten the time off work, which makes the dates relatively set at this point, and we’ll start booking stuff Real Soon Now.

Those of you who’ve noticed the new theme for the blog may (not?) be surprised to hear that it’s actually done by the same guy who did last year’s theme :) I was quite impressed anyway - it wasn’t intentional, and in fact, I only noticed after I’d installed the theme! Consistency in a world gone mad, huh? :D

So far, the itinerary is almost two weeks long, whirling up through Italy from Naples, finishing with a sleeper-train from Rome to Paris, and then the Eurostar through the Channel Tunnel to London, before a much less exciting flight home.

On our list for Italy are Naples, Pompeii, Pisa, Florence, Venice and Rome. The inital research is well underway - we’ve chosen accommodation for all the Italian stops, but have yet to book it. The only hiccup is, that we’ll have two or three nights in Paris at the end of it all, and have thus far been unable to find somewhere nice - mainly due to not really knowing Paris - so if you have any suggestions on a place to stay there, we’d be most grateful!

Look out for more life in this blog, coming soon :)

Afterwards, we decided to see the Flatiron Building before we left - wow, it was getting hot! We didn’t take any pictures, as there was scaffolding & black netting all over it. Headed into Wendy’s for a long, cold drink (much needed!), then uptown to Tiffany’s.

Tiffany’s was fabulous once again - sparkly, shiny things. I didn’t get to see as much as I’d have liked to, but the things I did see were just gorgeous =) Unfortunately, there wasn’t so much as a teaspoon I could afford!

We dropped by the Sony Experience, took photos of the huge Spiderman in there, but had to get out pretty quickly, as it was closing up for a private event. Now we’re back at the hotel, cooling off!

After lunch there, we headed to Macy’s for a brief (fruitless) shopping trip, and then on to the American Museum of Natural History. That was fun indeed, but tiring! Plenty of dinosaur skeletons, and exhibits of anthropology of most of the continents (Europe was noticeable by its absence, but what can you do? =))

Central Park was a nice cool wander, although we were definitely flagging by then, and we were glad to get to our final destination, the Guggenheim Museum. It really does look like the old multistory carpark in Dublin Airport! A bus from there brought us back to the hotel, to freshen up - now it’s time to head out to Carnegie Hall =) Yay!

More movie inconsistencies today. The federal reserve vault looks nothing like it was depicted in Die Hard With a Vengeance, and it’s a good deal lower than subways run, but still a very cool place.

The Producers was definitely worth going to see, much better than I expected it to be. Tomorrow I think we’re going to try and find the Flatiron building, and we have an evening in Carnegie Hall of course.

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We got back to the Fed in plenty time for our tour, which was only ok - but the vaults of bullion were fairly impressive! The security around the whole place is unbelievable! They don’t hold private accounts - only with other banks - and it doesn’t cost anything to store gold there. It has the largest stock of free gold in the world, 98% of which belongs to foreign central banks, most of which was deposited just after WWII. The transaction charge (to move gold into, out of, or between vaults) is 1.75USD/bar, and has been since 1924.

After the tour, we headed down to the South Street Seaport Museum, and wandered around for a bit. It was getting seriously warm, when we headed back uptown. Colm thought he knew where the theatre was, so we spent fifteen minutes walking uptown until he finally looked at the tickets (for the address), and another fifteen walking back - by then, a queue was forming, and we waited for the doors to open.

The show was fantastic - go see it! The accents were ridiculous, the humour definitely not something that would translate to Germany! One of the main characters was Leopold Bloom, but no one else seemed to get it when he asked “When will there ever be a ‘Bloomsday’?” =) Oh well…

After a stop off at the NYPL again, this time to see inside (it’s beautiful), we’re back in the hotel, feet up, taking it easy for a bit. We’re getting through our itinerary at a good rate, so hopefully we’ll have a chance to sleep in tomorrow morning =) Yay!

We’ve covered a lot in the last two days, and the weather has been seriously hot. It’s hard to believe how much energy it can take to walk even just a block or two.

I’ve been finding that New York isn’t portrayed very accurately in the Marvel movies. Liberty Island, and the statue are nothing like how they are portrayed in X-Men. For a start the flame is much smaller, and there’s no wall at the edge of the Island, it’s a fence. Though the visitors center does have the pieces of Iron that Magneto is fond of.

Time’s Square doesn’t have a huge, pompous, upper-class turn-of-the-century residential building with a neo-classical balcony where Spiderman’s arch-enemy (and best friend’s dad of course) might live. Nor does Manhattan have an L-track which inconvienently terminates in mid-air. Can’t say I’m suprised.

It was Colm’s first time on a rollercoaster, and I suspect he’ll never go again! Coney Island was fairly run-down overall, and the rollercoaster (wooden) seemed rather rickety indeed!

Eventually, we got back to Manhattan, and crashed briefly in the hotel, before heading out again to the Empire State Building. The online-tickets saved us *ages* of queuing, but we didn’t stay on top too long; between the ferry this morning, and the rollercoaster in the afternoon, Colm’s inner ear was convinced the building was swaying by several feet, side to side! In any case, it was fantastic, and beautiful up there - amazing to see how buildings that seemed huge from the street seemed so small from above!

A slow wander down 5th Ave, and a stop at the NYPL for photos, brought us back to the hotel, and it’s now time to crash - we need it by now! Tomorrow we’re going to the Federal Reserve Bank, and then to see “The Producers” - should be an exciting day!

Up bright & early this morning, and took the subway downtown. Unfortunately, we only discovered when we got onto the train that anything behind the first five cars wouldn’t reach the platform, at our stop. So after a few stations of getting out & running to the next carriage, the conductor called out to us, and told us which carriage to get into =) Made life a little easier!

Once we got off, Colm followed everyone else off the train & out of the station… I went back to look for directions, and we finally got headed in the right direction for the ferry to Liberty Island! After that, it was hurry-up-and-wait time, first for the tickets (which we’d ordered in advance), then for the security check - which was *weird*. You walked into a machine, stood on the right spot, it puffed air up your shirt half a dozen times, then you waited for the green light… Apparently, the air is meant to dislodge any explosives particles you might have on you - then the air gets analysed, to check. There was also the by-now-usual x-ray and metal detector.

The Statue of Liberty was fairly un-impressive, but I got some nice pictures. We had some fun taking photos, as Colm had forgotten the memory card from his camera (having taken it out last night, to put pictures online). So we both shared mine, swapping it from camera to camera (mine doesn’t have the features he likes, and his is too complicated for me!) - but we got all the pictures we wanted in the end.

Then, it was onto the ferry again, and over to Ellis Island. This was much more interesting, although throughout the whole museum there were only two mentions of Ireland - a picture of an Irish washerwoman/housemaid, and one of a Cavan family. Seemed a little scant, considering the proportion of US immigrants that came from our shores. But the museum definitely made the whole trip worthwhile. Just as we were finished, the ferry was pulling up, so we ran out and made it. By the time we got back to Battery Park, it was about one o’clock, and unbearably hot.

We made it back to Times Square for a Planet Hollywood dinner (it was *yummy*!), and now we’re back at the hotel, digesting for a bit before we head off to Coney Island, and the Cyclone rollercoaster! Yay!

Just about made it to the subway, with aching feet, and ended up going considerably further north than we’d planned! So back on to a subway going the other direction, and we dropped in to Central Park. We wandered around the reservoir for a while, then across to Central Park East and the Museum Mile… We didn’t get far along there (only saw MoMA, and didn’t go in), before we gave up, and spotted a bus (while we were en route to the subway station), which brought us back to Times Square.

One look at the admission prices in Madame Tussauds made us certain we weren’t that interested in waxworks really, and we went back to the hotel, for Colm to change shoes… Now we’re off again, for yet more food =)

The next thing was the tour of the UN headquarters - we went through the metal detectors, passed our bags through the x-ray machine, and headed on in to the building. It was an interesting tour - we saw the EcoSoc chamber, and the GA - the Security Council was in session, so we couldn’t go in there. We also saw a statue from Hiroshima, and landmines from all around the world. And on a lighter note, there were a number of gifts, from member countries, that were well worth a peek =) By then, it was roasting, and sunny - although the humidity seems to have dropped to much more bearable levels.

Bloomingdales was rather a let-down, but Tiffany’s made up for it with sparkle! By then, our feet were nearly walked off us, so we dropped by the tourist information place to find somewhere to eat, grabbed a bite, and now we’re back at the hotel, cooling off. Photos will be at the usual place soon =)