Liz n Mat Love USA

By May we made our way out of Florida to see New York. We met up with Warwick and Luca there, who were living in Pasadena, CA at the time. After a heart-in-your-throat shuttle bus trip through the city (yes - NYC taxi drivers drive like maniacs, but know exactly what they are doing) we arrived at our hotel in the business district, near the World Trade Centre site (our hotel was 2 buildings away from the humungous excavation where the towers used to be).  We mostly did a walking and subway tour of Manhattan.  Also ate our way around the place - China Town, Little Italy, West Village, etc.

 Here’s Liz with Warwick and Luca at Battery Park. That’s some statue of a woman in the background, can’t remember what they call it….

Battery Park is a really nice part of New York, with some kick ass views.  And right next to the Staten Island Ferry terminal where you can get a free ride there and back again with some great views of the south end of Manhatten and the Statue of Liberty. 

 From the Statten Island ferry…. lots of good views of that statue. Apparently it was a gift from France.
 

 Here’s another picture of that wacky statue. I know it looks like we spent a whole lot of time looking at it, but it just happened that they were nice photos. Don’t really care all that much for the statue itself.  It’s nowhere near as big as you’d expect.

So we finally dragged ourselves away from the statue. Next to Battery Park (the trees give it away) was just a typical little run-around car, perfect for zipping around the busy streets of New York - the stretch Hummer.  Gets about 3 feet to the gallon.  

 And Times Square…..  All the craziness you expect from NY - lots of people, cars, buildings, massive signs that cover entire buildings…. you MUST see it at night as it is quite spectacular.  Not spectacular in a beautiful mountain vista kind of way, but more of a momument to human construction and energy consumption through neon lighting.  Pretty damn cool.

Manhatten from the top of the Empire State Building. It pretty much sums up NYC - a shiteload of buildings n stuff.  Great place for a sunset, watching the smog clouds turn a dusky orange and the lights of the city turn on…

We also checked out Central Park and chucked a frisbee around - always been a goal of mine.  Saw some guys kicking a footy (that’s AFL football for the non-Aussies) around, which was cool cos it was the first footy I’d seen in ages.  After a few days on Manhatten, Central Park is a great place to visit to remind you that trees exist!

The strangest thing about NYC is the number of times you say "Wow - I saw that on TV or in that Tom Hanks movie!"  Everywhere you look has been a backdrop to so many movies that you already know what you are seeing.

And then it was back to G’ville… 

After 2 months here we still had no car, which meant we hadn’t yet ventured outside of Gainesville.  Party central though G’ville is (locals note the sarcasm!) it was good to see a bit more of Florida.  A lovely Scottish lass called Karen lent us her car over the break while she  was up north for Christmas. We went south to Blue Spring State Park, which we thought was going to be an experience with wild nature….  There were some trees….  Inbetween the bus-sized RVs with satellite dishes. I kid you not - these people getting away from it all with their 2000 channels.

Here, we learned something about Florida.  When you cram so many people (about 18 million) into a such small space, there is very little room left for nature, and no big wild places.  No Namadgi, Koziosko or Budawang National Parks here, just small bits of land where the sounds of trains passing by in the night covers up the hooting of owls. 

Despite all the development, the spring is absolutely stunning and the manatees somehow manage to thrive in the spring. Here’s the spring first thing in the morning.

A few hundred million litres of 23 deg water pour out of the ground every day. Much warmer than the adjacent St Johns river. The local manatees come down to the spring in winter to keep warm. For the aussies reading this, a manatee is a dugong with a round tail. Here they are after we were swimming with them!

See the little baby manatee!!  So very cute!  Swimming with them was the highlight of our trip.  These things were huge, and just spent their time snoozing in the spring, munching on seagrass, rolling around and looking at you with cute, little beady eyes. 

The locals sure love their Christmas lights - sorry, in local parlance, "Holiday" lights. They had a big broohaha about everyone calling Christmas "the Holidays" - back home, it’s fine to just say Xmas.

Anyway, our apartment complex went absolutely nuts with the lights… 

 The covered bridges of Alachua County - damn they’re shiny!

After having the hole in the wall fixed and getting a tiny bit of furniture our apartment started to look a little bit more liveable….  Oh yeah, and the living areas and bedrooms didn’t have any lights, we have to use floor lamps - crazy!

 So within days of being in the US we got to experience thanks giving with a real American family….  Actually it was more of a gathering of either non-American or lacking in family refugees (so to speak). Just an excuse to eat as much as humanly possible, really. We got to eat roast turkey, American style stuffing, mashed potato and of course pumpkin and pecan pies.

Hello world! This is our blog about our adventures and journeys throughout the US. We’re an Australian couple living in Florida and we hope you’ll enjoy hearing our stories - the good, the bad, the ugly….

We’re a bit late in getting started so we go back to November 2004 when we landed in Orlando and found ourselves arriving at our new apartment after a long drive on the wrong (i.e. right hand) side of the road in the middle of the night, to find a big hole in the front wall.