Thread: My Vacation Adventure

Well we hit the road from AC and stopped off in Historic Smithville NJ where there is this cool punk shop called Underground. They are selling some of my girlfriends art prints and since they were right on our route it was cool to we had to stop by. It was cool to walk into a shop 1600 miles from home and see her prints hanging on the wall for sale! On to Weehawken NJ to catch the ferry into Manhattan, 39th st. pier. We took the free shuttle to 57th st. and grabed two hot dogs as soon as we hit the street. Walked a few blocks then snared a cab to our hotel. We are staying at this cool little hotel at 103rd and Broadway called Hotel Marrakech. It is a Morrocan themed place, five stories, no elevators, but really nice and a great value! We took the 3 train to Times Square and all I can say is WWWOOOOWWWWW! Going to go for a nightcap at the hotel bar...........

There was a small electrical fire in the basement of our hotel last night that took out power in all of the rooms around 2 AM last night. It was a warm night and I only got 4 hours sleep The power Co. was on it bright and early. Luckily, there is a Starbucks on the bottom floor of the hotel....30 oz of black coffee later my girlfriend came down for tea and we got going to the Empire State Building and $40 and about 45 minutes of lines later, we were at the top of NYC's number one tourist attraction. It was pretty amazing! After that we got on the train to China Town. We randomly stopped into probably the third little restaurant that had ducks hanging in the window, I got the duck and it was amazing!! After my lady filled a couple bags with goodies we sat for drinks al-fresca in Little Italy then went back to the room(where the power was back) to drop off the booty and rest our booties. This evening we took the train to Greenwich Village and SoHo where we strolled, shopped and had more coffee. We stopped at Times Square again on our way back uptown to the hotel. There was this Indian joint we walked past in the neighborhood where are staying but it was closed As we headed towards our hotel we spotted a Turkish restaurant across the street and it turned out to be one of the meals I have ever had

Bed time............

Sounds like fun. My brother used to live on 57th street in Weehawken, and I have been on that free shuttle a few times. It's fun hearing about your adventures -- an out-of-towner marching through some of my old stomping grounds.


Where did you come from originally?

EDIT: never mind I saw your location... Austin TX... very cool!

Ok, so I mapped the whole trip on yahoo maps. You enter your starting location then plug in your next destination and it gives you the map, written directions, mileage and time tally's. It has worked out very well up until now. The problem was not with yahoo however, it was with the yahoo entering the directions! I entered the exact address of every location, hotels and B&B's and the written directions have taken us right to the door. For our Savannah GA to Weehawken NJ leg however, I did not enter the address for the NY Waterway Ferry, just the name Weehawken NJ. and neither of us actually read to the end of this leg. As we got close we hit some major traffic, 4ish on a Friday, and the last 3/4 mile on the highway took us a half hour. Once we got off, we were only a couple miles from the end of the written directions which we thought was the ferry but realized was the town center of Weehawken After a couple of stops for direction, we made it to the ferry and on to NYC

Well we got off the ferry back in Weehawken yesterday around 4:30 and got on the road and the dirrections there were as you might guess from the center of town. I thought I would be able to get us on the right track by memory and the map I had but boy was I wrong!! I ended up wandering north through Weehawken and then the next couple of towns to the north and I finally thought I was on the way. Boy was I wrong! I was navigating by the sun at this point and going north, good, got on the turnpike....going south, wrong.....Long story short, I finally realized I was totaly off my written directions I pulled over, got out the maps and figured out an alternate route to Salem MA. 11:15, almost seven hours later, we pulled up in front of The Inn on Washington Square in Salem. Today we got up and went straight to the Salem Witch Museum and it was pretty cool. I won't go into it now but if you don't know the history of the Salem witch trials you should check it out, very facinating and highly disturbing! We had lunch at a nice little Tahi resturaunt and then went to another witch museum. The last tour we did was The House of Seven Gables and Nathaniel Hawthornes birth home. Some of the oldest houses and buildings in the country are here in Salem. We just had dinner at a small Italian resturaunt that was great and we are hanging out in our room now. Tomorrow we take the ferry into Boston for the day. Sam Adams brewery tour, Bull & Finch Pub for lunch and the Barking Crab for dinner.............

Just woke up on our last day here in Salem, yesterday we missed the 10 AM ferry and took the noon to Boston. We walked through the city to the Bull and Finch Pub, the bar the used for the street scenes on Cheers. We ate lunch there and got some Cheers swag, the food was really good! Next we walked to Chinatown, not anywhere near as cool as Chinatown NYC but Leila still managed to find a couple little trinkets. From there we got on the orange line subway to the Stony Brook stop and walked a couple blocks to the Sam Adams Brewery to find it closed it was 5:00 and I swore I read on the website tours ran through 5:30 so we went into this restaurant in the same complex and sat at the bar. I ordered a Sam Adams and asked the bartender about the tours, he had no idea so I said "so I guess you guys get your kegs from upstairs?" and he said no. The brewery here is like their test kitchen if you will and the beer for distribution is brewed elsewhere but I am still super bummed we missed the tour. As it turns out, when we got back to the room and checked the site, tour times are mon-thurs 10-3, fri 10-5:30, typical behavior for me to not carefully read or remember important information such as tour times and dates. We took the train back to the warf and found out where the Barking Crab restaurant was, a short ten minute walk away or for a couple of tired tourist, a cab ride. The Barking Crab was great, we saw it on the Travel Chanel's Man vs Food. Leila had the clam chowdah and a 1.25 lb lobster, I got the 2lb stuffed baked lobster... WOW. We sat down around seven and figured we had plenty of time to catch the nine o'clock ferry back to Salem. As we were strolling across the bridge back to the warf, I asked a passer by for the time, ten of nine he replied.......****!! We looked at each other and started running, we got across the bridge and got another cab for five blocks(two of the rudest cab drivers I have ever encountered btw) and ran up to the landing whew... luckily we made it with about five minutes to spare. If you ever eat at the Barking Crab, try not to run right after your meal, it won't help speed the digestion process.

Well today we are going to check out of our room here at The Inn on Washington Square in Salem, do the Pirate Museum tour, a little more shopping then hit the road back to Texas. The trip home is about thirty hours and we will probably take three days to do it.

All of our sight seeing is done and if I don't update this post on the road home, I hope you guys have enjoyed my vacation adventure blog thread and I will, as I said, post some pictures when we get home!

Cheers!

Originally Posted by davisbonanza

Nope, we were just walking the street looking for a place to eat. We had turned around to hit a spot we saw a couple blocks back and we spotted Adolpho's across the street!

Well, as you already know, you really lucked out with Adolpho's. Sorry for the late response. Sounds like you have had a wonderful trip!

Brings back fond memories of a month long motorcycle trip I took the summer after I graduated high-school. Texas to GA. All the way up the east coast to Maine. Back down to Niagra Falls. Over to Chicago and then home! Camped out most of the time except Atlantic City, NYC (long Island actually), Chicago and a couple of other nights along the way with friends.

Safe Driving!

Drove a hard 450 miles from Salem today, we left around one and are about 20 miles from the PA MD border. We hit a lot of traffic coming through various cities in the late afternoon but made pretty good time otherwise. I checked us into a Roadway Inn then popped over to the convenience store next door to get a six pack only to find out Pennsylvania is a DRY STATE I just wanted a couple of beers to wind down the long day on the road but oh well. Longer day tomorrow, I want to try and make Nashville.

Originally Posted by davisbonanza

Drove a hard 450 miles from Salem today, we left around one and are about 20 miles from the PA MD border. We hit a lot of traffic coming through various cities in the late afternoon but made pretty good time otherwise. I checked us into a Roadway Inn then popped over to the convenience store next door to get a six pack only to find out Pennsylvania is a DRY STATE I just wanted a couple of beers to wind down the long day on the road but oh well. Longer day tomorrow, I want to try and make Nashville.

It's not a dry state, but sale of alcohol/liquor is regulated by the state. This means that you can only get beer at "distributors" and liquor from liquor stores (I think the Philadelphia municipality is the exception as you can get package goods from a pizza joint). You can't get them in the same place. In Jersey, you can. In Maryland and New York you can also get beer from convenience stores.

I went to school in PA for 3 years and it was very frustrating trying to get beer at certain times. For example, on Sundays, we had to drive to Binghamton to get kegs.

Good luck on the rest of the trip.

Yesterday we left Pennsylvania and I at 9:30 and rolled into Hurricane Mills Tennessee at 8:00 with the time change that was ten and a half hours on the road and 760 miles. Hurricane Mills is the birthplace of The Loretta Lynn and we ate dinner at Loretta's Kitchen!

Today we did 650 miles or so into Richardson TX just north of Dallas. We are staying at Leila's Aunt and Uncles house for the night. Her cousin just had a baby so we met him and gave him the little baby clothes we picked up along the way. tomorrow we will drive three hours home to Austin! We have had a great time on the road for the last two weeks but we are both VERY ready to be home!

What a great trip glad to hear you guys are almost home safe and sound. Get so rest to much fun can be bad for your health!