Road Trip to New York City

Beakster

Posted August 3, 2010

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Posted August 3, 2010

Yo!

Just got back from a long weekend in New York City with my Capri! Absolutely knackered. Was up at 5:30am this morning and managed to drive back to Toronto in 11 hours which was pretty good going. Fantastic weekend though, the Capri ran perfectly with not even the slightest mechanical issue! Here are the highlites:

We left Toronto at 6am on Thursday morning and headed for the US/Canada border and Niagara falls:

Made it to the falls around 8am and took some photos. Not very easy to get a good photo with the car in it. The road doesn't really get close enough and there isn't a good vantage point to take the shot from. Here's a few with the Capri and a couple looking over the wall.

Then we stopped in Niagara's oldest restaurant for breakfast. It was good enough but one of the things I miss about the UK most is the fry ups, they don't even come close here.

My mate who came down as my passenger works in a pub and only finished work an hour before we left, so he napped most of the way.

The approach to NYC. Its a big place alright.

The trip down from Toronto to New York City took us 13 hours. That includes breakfast in Niagara and crossing the US-Canadian border. Never a pleasant process. I've crossed a lot of borders in my time and the US border officers seem to go our of their way to make you feel unwelcome.

After a few beers we headed to bed, and the next day priority number one was some sightseeing in the Capri. First stop, The Empire State Building.

Then the flat iron building:

I love the Ford Crown Vic that the Taxis and Police use here. Yellow cabs are everywhere and you need to be a bit aggressive to make any progress in the traffic with them.

We didn't get pulled over, just stopped to take a photo with the NYPD Crown Vic

Then we got a photo with the Ghostbusters firestation. It's actually a real firestation now:

Next we headed to New Jersey and Liberty Park...

Again, it was difficult to find a place to put the car to get photos of the land marks. I wanted to drive down close to the water but there was a No Vehicles sign. We decided what the hell and just drove it all the way along the pedestrianised bit anyway. There were no rangers around, and we were doing a maximum of 10mph. There were probably only about 10 pedestrians there but the filthy looks they gave us were very amusing! Worth it for the pics though.

Here's one with Time Square in the background. Next time I go back I want to try this photo again, but with an expensive camera and at night time when its all lit up.

Driving around NYC is hard work. Drivers are very aggressive and its non-stop horns. We had one guy behind us going mental because I refused to go through the green light into the box junction as I knew I'd block it. He was hammering his horn and giving us the finger, but had I gone through then I would have blocked the cross traffic and someone else would have just done the same. The sat nav was a god send for getting in and out of the city centre, but in Manhattan it was useless because of all the tall buildings and sent us around circles.

I was pretty tired after all the sightseeing, so we put the Capri to bed and went out on the piss. I found a bargain at one point during the night when I bought this fax machine from a homeless doris for $5.

The subway was fun. Lots of interesting people there. Loved this sign and spotted a rat running about on the track.

I even managed to find a bar which sold Tennents lager!!! :beer: I was delighted as I've not had it since I was back home at Christmas.

The next day when I went out to the Capri I became very paranoid because my radio had reset to factory settings. I started thinking someone had been under the bonnet trying to disable the alarm or hot wire it, so I took off one of the wheels and kept it under my bed. Maybe that was overkill, but hey its New York City and apparently car crime isn't unheard of there.

Despite its reputation we didn't see anyone get shot/robbed/killed or even raped which was nice. I'm sure like all cities it has its bad areas but I didn't feel unsafe at any time. All the police cars had one of these bumper stickers though...

Great weekend, although very tiring. A long drive but with such cheap petrol in the US it would have been rude not to. I was paying about $30 to fill up the tank of my Capri, although remember that's only 91RON fuel and hence the cars all have less power, only 109BHP in my 2.8, but I'll soon have a few mods to increase that.

I think my next road trip will be to Montreal in a few weeks as I haven't been there yet. I'd like to drive across the US to San Francisco but I don't have the money or time of work available to do that right now so it will probably have to wait until next year.

If you enjoyed this and haven't seen my previous road trips then here are some links. Just scroll through them to find the pics