Our travels around the East coast so far

We had a busy week last week and divided our time between the office in Northport and the road. We visited some schools around New York and New Jersey. There were a couple of occasions where we had to go to separate events. Lorraine was due to be in New York city and I was to visit new Jersey. We thought about having me drop her into the city but the thoughts of driving in New York city freaked me out and so it was decided that she would take the train and I would drive. This plan was great in theory but Miranda, our friendly Sat Nav, decided to make life difficult. Just when I thought we were becoming friends she brought me straight through the middle of Manhattan. There I was, all of a sudden, surrounded by yellow taxis and totally freaked out. I gathered myself and held my ground as huge trucks tried to bully me out of the way. A couple of wrong turns later and I was back on the road to New Jersey.

Lorraine took the train in and after visiting the school went to stay with Cheyenne, David and Dakota in the city. She was laden down with brochures and promotional materials and had to haul her huge backpack all over the city. She did manage to make some friends on her travels and came back with stories of odd conversations on the train.

After my experience driving in the city I decided that I never wanted to drive there again and so we took the train in on Friday night. We were in Connecticut that day and so we parked the car in New Haven and jumped on a train. On our arrival in Grand Central Station Lorraine noticed that the ticket collector had taken away our tickets even though they were returns. As usual I had slept for the entire journey and so was of no use in any of this. We did manage to convince a very nice Customer service supervisor to give us some new tickets. The lady behind the desk gave us some advice as we were waiting: “Trust nobody, If it seems too good to be true then it probably is and Be aware of your surroundings” And so with this knowledge and some new train tickets we set off to find Charlie Covey for a night out in The Big Apple.

We met up with Charlie, Mark, Molly and Gordon (all of whom we worked with at Sail Caribbean) and Lorraine’s cousin Joey. We started the night in a pub called The Galway Hooker and  then moved downtown to yet another Irish bar (Ryans). After these Charlie thought it was time to introduce us to something a little bit different. We all headed to LIT, a basement bar that looked pretty scary from the outside but was pretty cool on the inside. Kit joined us there and we left at about four in the morning with one thing on our minds: food. Charlie had been talking about Philly Cheese Steaks all evening and as I had never had one we decided to give them a try. We were gutted to hear that the place was closed. (well I pretended to be gutted when in fact they sound awful). We settled for a burger and fries which tasted as good as any food does at four in the morning.

There were a few sore heads in Charlies apartment the next morning but we didn’t have time to hang around as we were heading back to Connecticut to visit my aunt Fran and uncle Peter. They showed us a great time in Colchester. I had never been to their house before, it is beautiful and made even more beautiful by the welcome we received. Saturday night was perfect: we had dinner in the house, some wine in front of the fire and then caught up with stories and tales. On Sunday they showed us all around Colchester. We were more than happy to sit in the back seat and have a tour guide. Peter grew up in Colchester and so he knows the area really well. It was so nice to get his view on things. The area was absolutely beautiful with four nature parks within twenty minutes of their house. We ended our tour in East Haddam, a village made famous by the Goodspeed theatre.

We stopped off in the hotel for a cocktail before heading back to Fran and Peters. We stayed with them for another great night on Sunday. Fran made dinner and again all the elements were just perfect: great food, great company, great wine and a fire.

Luckily we did not have to rush away on Monday morning so we took our time, got some work done in the morning and then called to where Fran works to say hi before getting on the road. This time we were headed to Massachusetts. We sent Monday night in Bedford at a pretty average hotel but had fun nonetheless. The area of Bedford is gorgeous. It looks like a Christmas card scene complete with the big house, the lights (still up on 16th January!!) and the local kids skating on the pond. Lorraine got so excited about the ice skating bit that she screamed out loud.

 

This morning we woke up to a light covering of snow. It made everywhere look even more pretty and luckily it didn’t hamper our drive back to Northport this evening. We are heading to New Jersey tomorrow and then back to Connecticut on Thursday and are excited to stay with Fran and Peter again before driving up to Boston at the end of the week.