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Posts tagged ‘places’

Dec 1

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Paradise for the Rich

Nassau reminded me of Kuta, Bali – touristy, crowded, too many shops, too expensive. There are many branded stores here such as Cartier, Rolex, Gucci and Fendi. There are  close to 250,000 people living in Nassau, excluding the throng of tourists that come to the city every day. I mentioned to Jarmo today that I see too many old, rich tourists (ie. grey hair, wrinkles, rolex, diamond rings, etc). Nothing wrong with that of course. It’s just a tell-tale of what kind of destination Nassau is.

In contrast to the quaint Georgetown in Exuma, Nassau is very busy and rightly so, since it is the capital of Bahamas. Its harbour has several ships that stop by everyday. One shop sales assistant told us that it could be as many as 7 ships, bringing many tourists on board to come and shop in Nassau. Unlike Exuma, where most of the beaches are public, Nassau only has a few public beaches.

Every Bahamian we met suggested us to visit Atlantis in Paradise island. Even my Malaysian friend, SK told me to check it out. And so we did and boy, were we disappointed. The Atlantis is just one big resort targeted at tourists, making them spend lots of money while in the vicinity – there are lots of shops and cafes, as well as an outdoor theme park and beach area (both required entrance fees). The so-called mega aquarium they spoke about was so boring – personally I don’t enjoy watching animals ‘locked’ in some sort of ‘cage’ and honestly, seeing sharks swimming in an inhibited lake is just not the same as watching them in the ocean. Blue eyes says this is probably the only opportunity we have to seeing the animals since we don’t dive – probably this is a good motivation for us to try to learn diving. It’s not a cheap tour as we paid $39 per person for the aquarium entrance – both indoor and outdoor.

We stayed in a relatively cheap hotel ($84 per person for 3 nights!) in downtown Nassau, close to Bay St, which is the shopping area for tourists. Lots of souvenir shops, jewelry and watch shops, as well as restaurants and cafes. The pier is close by and the ferry terminal is within walking distance. We took the taxi to the Atlantis because it was raining and it cost $16 inclusive of $1 toll. On the way back, we decided to take the ferry, which cost $4 per person. On the ferry, there was a navigator who started to give us an overview of Nassau and Bahamas. He was witty and his stories were entertaining. The pity is, his talk wasn’t free as he asked for tips at the end of his session (wish he could have told us in the beginning so we can say No!). That makes our ferry ticket on average $5 per person, which is almost the same as taking the cab but not the same, since we have to walk back to the hotel from the terminal.

Today, we decided to do our laundry and asked at the reception the nearest laundromat. She pointed us to one a few blocks down the road and showed us the location on the map. She suggested we take the bus but we felt it was close enough for walking and so we did. Unaware to us, the laundromat is located in the local ghetto. There we were, with our camera and backpack, walking down the street. One car stopped us mid-way and told us to be careful of the drug addicts in the area. Upon reaching the laundromat, we asked if we could use the wifi and the lady at the counter told us to be careful of our laptops as thieves might snatch and run away with them. When blue eyes asked if there’s a tailor nearby to fix jeans, she laughed and said, “You want to fix your jeans in the ghetto?” For that short moment, I was getting worried. Goodness, where the hell are we? Thankfully, we survived the laundry and we took the bus back to downtown.

Nassau doesn’t appeal to me very much, but I probably don’t fall into the city’s target market. Glad we’re leaving tomorrow!

Nov 22

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New York, New York

It’s been a few days of pause from blog. We have a good reason: NYC has been a chaotic maze! Both Blue Eyes and our new traveling friend, Jarmo  (who touched down at JFK on the same day as us) have been to NYC couple years ago but still it wasn’t easy for us to navigate and move about.

ENTERING THE US

I was initially anxious about touching down at JFK after hearing several unpleasant stories about interrogation and checks so I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t as scary as I imagined it to be. The custom officer asked me many questions (blue eyes passed after one question!) about my trip – what’s the purpose of the stay, where am I staying, how much do I have, when am I leaving and what I do for a living. Our bags were not checked or inspected and within 45 minutes we were out of the airport. The transfer to NYC was simple – we took a shuttle bus that cost $18 per person, which dropped us at Port Authority Bus Terminal (the main station in the city). Jarmo was drinking coffee when we found him at the café inside the station.

THE ACCOMMODATION

I booked us a flat in New Jersey that I found on Airbnb but much to my disappointment, it’s not exactly the entire flat that we rented. It was more like a guesthouse as we share the kitchen with five other guests who also rented the rooms from the Indian couple. It costs us $120 per night and for three persons, that’s $40 per person, which was within our agreed budget. The location was decent as it’s a 10-minute bus ride to Times Square but we found out traffic could be horrendous and waiting for the bus is no fun. Also it costs $2.70 per way per person. I wonder if I should have just rented a place right in NYC instead. Nevertheless, we liked the wifi the most because it works very well and the speed was awesome! I watched two episodes of Criminal Minds on CBS online 🙂 Tip: Stay in Manhattan; pay a bit more for the convenience. 

A funny moment: On the second morning, I decided to make scrambled eggs. The kettle was already on the stove and as I heated up the pan for the eggs, a loud beep burst into the air! I went to ask blue eyes to come and check, and as he did, our landlady Frida came running down. She was shocked and asked if there was a fire since the alarm rang. Blue eyes managed to shut the alarm and Frida quickly switched on the cooker hood and opened the window so the smoke could get away. Fortunately the firemen didn’t come 😉

FIRST IMPRESSION

Personally, NYC for me has been quite stressful. The city is huge and the transportation system can be confusing. We’ve only got on buses punctually twice in all the five days that we’ve been here and that’s because we boarded in New Jersey. Buses and trains in NYC itself don’t seem to follow schedules. Tip: If staying in NYC, buy the one-week pass for unlimited use of subway and buses. The first night when we arrived, we waited for 30 minutes for the bus. Over the weekend, construction on some of the tracks resulted in less trains running and we were swamped at a station full of people waiting for a train to arrive – we didn’t get into the first train because it was too full and had to wait another 15 minutes for the second one. On a positive note, we were very fortunate that the weather has been very kind to us over the six days in NYC. With the exception of 8C and raining on Thursday, we had mostly days in the teens with a bright sun 🙂 That makes the picture taking much easier and walking out was a lot more pleasant.

SIGHTS & SCENES

Liberty Island

After the second attempt, we finally managed to visit Liberty Island on Saturday. The first time, we were too late for the ferry – less frequency during winter. The second time, we decided to take the ferry from New Jersey side, which was supposed to be a train ride to Liberty State Park. TIP: Ferry from New Jersey side to Liberty Island is less crowded compared to taking it from Battery Park in NYC. But be ready to walk from Liberty State Park to the ferry terminal.

We were told that there was a free shuttle on weekend; unfortunately the shuttle bus didn’t come and we decided to walk for 2-km to the ferry terminal. Fortunately a taxi stopped and we paid $10 for the trip. TIP: If staying in Union City, the taxi ride to Liberty State Park is $25-30; saves time and ease of convenience.

The day was sunny enough and the view was gorgeous.  The ferry ride also includes Ellis Island, which we did not visit. The Statue of Liberty shone brightly in green under the sun. Interesting fact: The statue is green because it is made from copper and oxidization over time turned the colour to green.

Battery Park

On coming back, we stepped out on the NYC side instead to continue our day trip. The ferry dropped us off at Battery Park, which is a nice park to walk around. There are many people jogging and the view to the waters was again amazing. We took a break and bought pretzel and hotdogs – not very good and way too expensive for $12.

Guggenheim Museum

Blue Eyes wanted to see the famous Guggenheim Museum – the one in NYC is the first in the world. It’s a collection of Modern Art, which I thought was too abstract for my taste. We paid $18 per person and we finished the tour in less than an hour. TIP: Visit Guggenheim for free for two hours on Saturdays after 5pm.

Central Park & Broadway

Central Park was just opposite so we took an evening as the sun starts to set around 4.30pm. I understood now why the park is so famous as it is a nice change from the skyscrapers and high-rise buildings around. There’s a huge lake in the middle of the park, named Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir after the famous former First Lady. The park is home to 24,000 trees and autumn is probably the best time to watch the colours of nature – bright yellow, orange, green, brown and red leaves everywhere! Autumn happens to be our favourite season too 🙂

We didn’t finish touring the whole park because we’ve had a long day and my recovering ankle started to be painful. So we took a detour and went to the nearest subway to Times Square. I had wanted to watch a musical at Broadway but Wicked was not on sale and the queue for Mamma Mia (on 40% discount) was too long. Mentally I was exhausted and the sight of having to queue for some time for tickets dampened my interest – in hindsight, perhaps I should have been more persistent since watching a Broadway musical was something that I really wanted to do in NYC. Now I guess I’d have to wait for the next trip to NYC (unsure if there’d be one …) 🙁

Brooklyn Bridge

On our last evening in NYC, we finally found enough energy (after postponing twice earlier) to check out Brooklyn Bridge and I’m really glad we did it 🙂 The bridge is gorgeous on that night was the skies were clear and reflections of lights from the skyscrapers and bridge were just amazing. NYC is certainly a city that never sleeps! There’s an area at the Brooklyn Bridge Park that gives an overview of the bridge as well as the skyline of Manhattan. The walk on the bridge was quite short – about half an hour to 45 minutes depending on how many stops one takes. We couldn’t see the entire view while on the bridge as some parts were on restoration works – it is one of the oldest bridges in the US – but where we could, it was well worth the walk. Fortunately also, we had a warmer night of about 13C so the walk was quite easy.

BEST MOMENTS

Personally, my best moments in NYC were with friends, both old and new 🙂 Jaime so happened to have a flight to NYC about the same time and we managed to hang out at Times Square on Thursday – Korean lunch followed by drinks and rooftop party! Then, we met Sue at the laundromat and she kindly invited us over for a Sunday breakfast. We got to know her family and had a wonderful time sharing travel stories. Sue’s husband loves to travel too and have been to many places – they spent a month in Hawaii when Sue’s parents were visiting! We also met Jarmo’s friend, Usher who brought us to a Nigerian restaurant in Brooklyn for dinner. That was quite an experience to discover the taste buds of Nigerians 🙂 The conversations at the dinner table was interesting – I learned a lot about Nigeria – and I’m inspired by Usher’s enthusiasm for change and contributing in his own capacity to make that change.

In a city like New York, it’s so easy to lose sight of the faces and lives. There’s always so much to do, so much to see and so many places to go. But meaningful moments are usually those shared with others – those who travelled with us as well as individuals who we meet along the way. I’m glad NYC had many of such 🙂

Nov 21

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What I would do differently if I were in NYC again

  1. Rent a flat right in Manhattan – New Jersey is close by 10 minutes bus ride but the waiting is quite tiring.
  2. Buy the one-week pass for $29 for unlimited use of trains and buses (this doesn’t apply for New Jersey!) – we spent a hell lot of $$ for buses and trains – cost $2.70 per bus ride per way; $2.25 per train ride per way.
  3. Find out how to read addresses in Manhattan – first of all, Manhattan is divided into Uptown, Midtown and Downtown. The map of Manhattan is a grid; south to north is always called Avenue and East to West is always a street; 5th Avenue is right in the middle; to the right is east and to the left is west.
  4. Download the subway map to my phone – it’s not easily available at stations and it’s damn stressful to look for one every time.
  5. Spend 45 minutes each night to plan the next day; saves a lot of time from getting lost or taking the wrong train in the wrong direction
  6. Visit Union Station for performances/gigs by aspiring artists
  7. Walk on the Brooklyn Bridge while the sun is setting and take a break at Brooklyn Bridge Park
  8. Pay a visit to UN headquarter
  9. Visit Guggenheim Museum after 5pm on Sat to enjoy the two-hour free visit
  10. Watch a Broadway musical
More on NYC soon!

Nov 15

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Iceland got character!

I’ve been meaning to finish posting on Paris before moving to Iceland but a friend asked if I could blog on Iceland so here it is 🙂 … Versailles, Montmartre and Pere Lachaise will wait for another day 😉

Coming to Iceland has been a refreshing experience. Despite having only a short stopover of 3D/2N (we leave tomorrow evening, sob!), the time spent here is probably one of the best memories I would carry with me (albeit the broken luggage bag but that’s for another post!). Geographically, Iceland has one of the most amazing nature that I’ve ever seen and Icelandic people have a quirky sense of humour that I like very much. For example, when I was flying IcelandAir, one of the ads shown was this quote, “The most amazing thing about winter in Iceland is not students pouring over books in five universities, it is that Gryla, the illiterate mother of the 13 Yule Lads, is still the most known and feared person in Iceland.” The Yule Lads are famous Icelandic folklore characters which teach children to be good 🙂

Iceland is less than three hours from Paris and about five hours to NYC. Good thing about Iceland is almost everyone speaks English so communication for foreigners is pretty easy. The capital city, Reykjavik is located about 30 mins from Keflavik International Airport. IcelandAir has a promotion for passengers flying its routes – they can stopover in Reykjavik for free (hence why we managed to get here!) We rented a car from Hertz, which gave us the best price versus two others, and found our way to Snorri Guesthouse.

The accommodation was perfect. It felt more homey than Paris’ hotel and finally we have a kitchen to use (shared, of course). Breakfast was included in the 59 eur/night rental and the spread was really nice – yogurt, cereal, six types of spreads, breads, ham, salami, tomatoes, cucumber, capsicum, and the usual juices and coffee and tea. Needless to say, I had a hearty breakfast to kickstart the day.

Reykjavik is a pretty city; the centre is a quaint little place with many restaurants, cafes and shops on cobbled street. Iceland has over 300,000 population and 60% of them are in Reykjavik. On the first night when we arrived, we went and had laundry done at The Laundromat Cafe, which is both a cafe and a laundromat (it’s ingenius!). Food was great and while we ate, our clothes were being washed!

For our only one full day of sight-seeing, we headed to the Geysir, which is less than two hours drive from Reykjavik. I’ve seen geysers before, first time in New Zealand and second in Taiwan, and guess now I can add Iceland into the list 🙂

Much to our surprise, the route passes by the Thingvellir valley, where the North American plate meets the European plate, called the Mid-Atlantic Ridge! There was also a little waterfall, which quick water dashes upon the dark rocks again and again. I stood in awe at the sight where the earth breaks into two; speaks a lot of the unseen powers.

Finally we reached the Geysir (it took longer than two hours since we stopped so frequently to take pix!) and they were quite amazing to watch! One of them is still active and erupts every 10 minutes. The oldest one no longer erupts, apparently the last time was after the earthquake in year 2000. The wonders of nature 🙂

So that’s the Icelandic adventure for me so far and I’m loving every minute of it! 🙂 Hope to come back again to see the glaciers one day!

More pix here.

Nov 11

Walk, walk, walk

After two cold, grey days, Wednesday and Thursday turned out to be warm and sunny. I took the opportunity to have a walk in Paris city and checked out all the iconic buildings; places that people say you must see if you’re in Paris.

Eiffel Tower

My friend Shwu told me to take the metro to Trocadero, which gives the full view of the tower. From there, I walked towards the tower only to find a long queue for those who wanted to go up and catch the city view. I decided I didn’t want to wait. So I continued walking and took photos along the way. I still don’t know yet if I should regret for not going up.

Place Monge – Jardin des Plantes, La Grande Mosquee de Paris, Pantheon, Jardins du Luxembourg

I was to meet Shwu and her mom along with another friend, Pauline at the Place Monge station. Found out that Monge is the fifth district in Paris (in total there are 20) and is one of the oldest districts in the city. Shwu has been living in Paris for the last four years so she was our guide for the day. First destination was the Jardin des Plantes, a garden just down the road. Trees are in yellow and brown and against the clear blue skies, they looked beautiful. Across from the garden is the largest mosque in Paris – the city has the largest Muslim population in the country – and we took the opportunity to take a break at the tea house in the mosque and have a cup of mint tea with some Turkish dessert.

We continued to Mouffetard, a market area with narrow cobbled street with cafes and bakeries on both sides. The market was already closed by that time but it was still a nice walk uphill, checking the various shops available. The Pantheon was just further up. I took photos from the outside but didn’t go in since I was the only ‘tourist’ in the group. We ended our walk at the Jardins du Luxembourg, which was a beautiful park with a large pond at the centre. We stopped and sat on the lazy chairs and chatted, while watching the autumn day passed us by. Couldn’t have asked for a better day!

Avenue des Champs Elysees – Arc de Triomphe – Place de la Concorde – Notre Dame – Hotel de Ville

Thursday was a walking day on my own. I decided to check out the chic street, Champs Elysees which has all the expensive shops. The Charles de Gaulle Etoile is the metro station to stop at and immediately coming out of the station, I could see the Arc of Triumph ahead of me. Traffic was busy so it was quite a task to cross the street to have a closer look – I didn’t bother.

The Champs Elysees Avenue is quite a long street and it has huge shops of every brand one can imagine. Louis Vutton has its own entire building on the street, right next to HSBC! It’s quite interesting to watch people going into shops and coming out with bags and bags of stuff. Makes it hard to believe that Europe is in any crisis; at least not in Paris or at Champs Elysees 😉

The street straight from the avenue leads to the Louvre Museum. It’s quite a walk and I passed by Place de la Concorde where the Obelisk is found standing. I skipped the garden which I visited last Sunday and took the street leading to the Musee de Orsay metro station. I wanted to get to Notre Damer without having to walk the rest of the way.

I found the church standing spectacularly against the warm sunny blue skies. There were hundreds of people (of course). The entrance into the church is free. There was no service at the time but the signboard indicates to keep silent at all time while inside. A song of hymn was playing in the background. I sat down to rest and basically to recollect myself from the adventure of the day.

As I get on the way, I found a little garden behind the church, which golden trees sparkled in the sun. I sat down again and watched people walking by and wondered what stories are their lives telling? 🙂

I had wanted to head home but stumbled upon Hotel de Ville on the way to the metro station. A huge majestic building with many interesting sculptures and carvings on its walls. It’s not a hotel, hotel. It actually houses the administration of the City of Paris. Sun was setting while I was there and the light of the sunset against the building was gorgeous.

So it’s been a productive two days and I’m glad that I got the list over and done with despite not seeing all the iconic buildings. Think for the remaining last few days here, I’ll just take it calmly and enjoy Paris without the rush.

For more photos, click here.

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