Day 22 started with continued efforts to track down exactly where the Queen Mary 2 departs from on our day of departure, given the change of plans on our arrival, but frustratingly no one seemed to give a particularly reassuring answer! Thus we decided there's nothing else to do but to simply go to the riverside and look on the morning we are supposed to leave, and if there’s a big ocean liner parked there, then that's where we go! Of course by me I mean Dad, as he is very helpful like that, and tends to be up ridiculously early anyway!
So after sorting this out, we decided to spend the day visiting one last tourist attraction on my list, the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum, located on the aircraft carrier USS Intrepid, on the Hudson River. Amazingly, as this is not something you expect an aircraft carrier to be built for, the museum is almost fully accessible, with the exception of the Concorde and submarine. As the title of the blog suggests, this trip really was just one for us boys, as we got to look at lots of military hardware which is all about being very fast, loud and blowing things up - which myself and my Dad found very interesting but would probably bore people that aren't little boys at heart! The museum also featured a lot of history about the aircraft carrier which was commissioned in 1943 and saw action throughout World War II and the Cold War. And to make things more interesting, the museum also has a number of simulators which looked a lot of fun so I dispatched my Dad and Marius to enjoy them on my behalf. They seemed to enjoy themselves, although Dad was too much of a wimp to try the next simulator which would allow him to fly his own plane in a dogfight. Given that he's driven in Manhattan I'm sure a dogfight would be a piece of cake, but he wouldn't be persuaded!
After the museum, we walked back to the hotel alongside the Hudson River, which started off as one big cycle lane but later got a bit more scenic as it became the Hudson River Greenway, a thin strip of grassy park land. Quite a popular spot for sunbathing, particularly today as the temperature touched 90° at one point - that aircraft carrier deck was pretty sweltering I can tell you! We had our second opportunity for fame of the trip as we walked behind another film crew - this first happened in Boston but the TV crew didn't seem particularly professional, but this time I actually recognised the person being filmed! Of course, at that time I couldn't actually be more specific than “that science guy in the BBC documentary about time” - which I think was overheard by one of the film crew as I got a bit of a dirty look! Now I have access to the Internet I can tell you it was Professor Michio Kaku (50 points if you know who that is without finding a picture!). I'll have to look out for future documentaries he presents to see if we are in the background!
The evening was quite a simple affair as we found another restaurant just one block away from the hotel, another one serving some pretty nice food. It makes me think that we have really landed on our feet with the location of this hotel - not too close to be in the centre of all the tourist hordes and complete chaos which is Times Square, but still within walking distance of many attractions, and just in the right place for lots of lovely eateries. As it was still quite early, I decided to head to the nearest cinema to take in a movie. Unfortunately all of the offerings at the moment are pretty mediocre summer blockbusters, but I went for Iron Man 2 - completely silly but just about watchable! By the time we were coming out from the film it was half past midnight and the temperature was still 78° -very strange to be walking around in shorts and T-shirt at that time, but I actually rather enjoyed it!
It’s sad to think this trip is entering the final stages, so I’m determined to do something special for my last day in New York. As soon as I find out what that is, I'll let you know!
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