CELEBRATING THE BIG 65!

Rosella and I will be both celebrating our 65th birthday in the next 6 months, and we wanted to celebrate these milestones in a very special way, 

We have planed a special holiday that will span from now till the end of April,  We started our journey earlier on Thursday of this week by heading out by car to visit New York City for a few days.  The main purpose of this visit is to attend a Josh Groban concert at Madison Square Gardens next Monday November 14th.
On Tuesday we continue our road trip by heading out towards Miami Florida via the Blue Ridge Parkway in West Virginia,Virginia and North Carolina with a  two day stop in Charleston South Carolina to visit this historic part of America.

Then its off to Miami where we will take a flight to Barcelona on November 21st to spend the next 6 days exploring the Catalonia region of Spain.  Here we will be staying at the same bed and breakfast that we stayed in when we visited Barcelona with Art and Ethel a few years ago.  It is located 5 minutes away from the famous ''La Rambla'', a beautiful, long, tree lined pedestrian street with a marketplace atmosphere.

On November 28th, we board Celebrity Cruise Line's Solstice ship for a 13 day Trans-Atlantic cruise with stops in Malaga and Seville Spain, Lisbon Portugal and Ponta Delgado in the Azores and then 8 full days at sea before our arrival in Fort Lauderdale on December 11th, the day Rosella turns 65.  By shear coincidence, our daughter Renée and Duane her husband will be in Fort Lauderdale that evening waiting for the second leg of back to back cruises which they had planed long before we decided to do the Trans-Atlantic cruise so we plan to have a very special time to celebrate Rosella's birthday with them.

We then travel to Destin in the North Western part of Florida where we rented a condo for a month close to our friends Charles and Rose-Marie LeBlanc to spend the Christmas and New year season with them.

On January 14th, we head South to Ft Lauderdale where we will be joined a few days later with Art and Ethel who are flying to Ft Lauderdale to spend the next three months at The Wave Condominium in Hollywood Beach. 

During our stay there, we plan to take another last minute cruise to explore the Eastern Caribbean islands with Art and Ethel.  Rosella and I will leave Ft. Lauderdale for our return journey home on April 15th for our return to Shediac a few days later.

Our first stop in Bangor Maine

As outlined above, we started our journey on Thursday morning and drove to Portland Maine. 

Our hotel there had a heated indoor-outdoor pool.  You enter the pool inside the hotel and cross to the outside through a special barrier that joins the inside to the outside of the pool.  So we suited up and went for a nice long relaxing swim outside in the cold pouring rain, it was a great experience.



On day two, we drove to Bethel Connecticut, about 1 hour away from New York City, spent the night and headed for Long Island City on the outskirts of Manhattan right after breakfast early Saturday morning and were in our hotel room here in New York by 11 am.

Time to freshen-up and change and we were boarding the subway train on this beautiful sunny November afternoon, headed for Central Park to spend the rest of the day.  The  NYC Subway F Line which is two minutes walk from our hotel and would normally take us directly to Central Park in Manhattan in ten minutes is currently under renovations so we boarded another train that took us the detour route. 

Lunch in Manhattan on 60th St

Three subway lines with lots of confusion and asking for directions about where to go next, an hour and a half later we were having soup and sandwich in a little Café on 60th St in Manhattan and after that were on our way to Central Park for a glorious sun filled afternoon. 

Under the Statue of Liberty
 in Central Park

New Yorkers and  other tourists were out in droves,  the artists, the buskers and entertainers, street vendors, were all at their finest  The  fall foliage was still very colourful, folks were paddling boats, kids and adults alike were steering mini-sailboats on the lakes, all were enjoying the sights and sounds of this very magical place in the heart of NYC. 

Putting on a show in Central Park

Creating a portrait in the Park

Rowing in the Park

People watching in the Park

Mini sailboats in the Park

The subway return ride was much easier, from Manhattan, we were back in our room within 20 minutes.  We decided to have supper at a pizza joint right next door to our hotel and the pizza was excellent.   After that, we spent the evening winding down in our room.  I did a bit of searching on the Internet and read Thursday's edition of the Moncton Times and Transcript  while Rosella watched TV with lights out by 10:00 pm.   Having gone to bed so early, I woke up at 4:30 and started preparing the first segment of our blog for this trip. 

Today, Sunday Nov 13th, right after breakfast, we were on our way to Time Square to board our bus that would take us on the NYC Freedom Tour by land and Sea including 9/11 memorial. The bus took us to pier 84 where we boarded a NYC water taxi that took us along the Hudson River towards Battery Park, just a few blocks from Ground Zero and the 9/11 Memorial. We made our way along the streets to reach the memorial. By going there with a tour group, we were guarantied entrance to the memorial which otherwise is booked well into the new year. it took us a while to go through security and reach the memorial site but it was well worth the wait. 

The two one acre rectangular waterfalls which sit directly where the former World trade Towers A and B were located on the 16 acre World Trade property fall a distance of 30 feet and drain in a giant square opening at the bottom of the fall. On the edge of both falls are inscribed the names of all the people that died on September 11th including the passengers on the four flights that came down that day, the victims at the pentagon as well as the 6 people that died in the 1993 when a truck bomb was detonated below the North Tower of the World Trade Center.   With the construction on the new North Tower being built in the background of the memorial, it was a very touching and sombre experience.

Victim names immortalized

Full view of the waterfall

New North Tower under construction

NYC Water taxi

We then took the bus back to the piers to continue our Water taxi towards Brooklyn where Rosella and I decided to leave the group and walk across.

Strolling the Bridge

Were on Brooklyn Bridge
with Manhattan in the
background

Bird's eye view
from the
Brooklyn Bridge

The Brooklyn Bridge, one of the oldest suspension bridges in the United States. Completed in 1883, it connects the New York City boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn by spanning the East River. With a main span of 1,595.5 feet (486.3 m), it was the longest suspension bridge in the world from its opening until 1903, and the first steel-wire suspension bridge.

Sunset on Manhattan

By this time, it was late in the afternoon and the sun was starting to set on Manhattan. 

We took our good old time to stroll across the bridge and when we got back to the Manhattan side, we boarded the Subway with a beautiful sunset background to find our way back to our hotel in Long island City.  It is now early evening  !

Stay tuned!