Traveling with my boyfriend, Peter, we've managed to make it down to Florida to spend Christmas with my family before continuing on, so over the next few days, I will attempt to chronicle all the events that happened on our journey up until now.
Our trip began in Harrisburg, PA, our mode of transportation a beat-up 1995 Subaru Legacy. It's the ultimate anti-theft vehicle in my opinion, since no one would want to even consider stealing that thing. Despite its sketchy appearance and broken muffler, the old clunker got us to State College, PA the day after I arrived, to visit my old workpace. We made it there by evening, the first heavy snowfall of the season laying a thick blanket of white across the rolling hills of central Pennsylvania.
It was great to catch up with my old friends and coworkers We took a short night hike through the snowy trails with my dear friend Katie, and afterward spent some time with her and my old boss sipping hot cocoa and catching up on life.
My friend Ali, and her fiancee Al, were kind enough to invite us to spend 2 nights in their new home over Thanksgiving. I felt bad since they were still in the process of moving in, on top of trying to balance family festivities over the holiday, but they were nonetheless incredibly generous and kind. The first night we enjoyed a delicious homecooked meal with them before going out to see some live music downtown, and then came back to listen and dance to Al's amazing banjo skills.
The next day was Thanksgiving, so Peter and I decided to take the day to plan the first few days of our road trip. We headed into town to find somewhere with free internet. As it turned out however, since it was Thanksgiving, everything was closed. Eventually we found a diner that had internet, so we settled into a back booth and ordered some coffee. When the waitress came, she informed us that the diner was serving turkey dinners for 50 cents as a charity fundraiser for cancer research. We gladly ordered, and spent the afternoon eating Thanksgiving turkey and booking hostels and places to stay.
After one more night at Ali's place, we hit the road again and drove through the snow to Peter's cousin's house, a couple hours away, to spend a second Thanksgiving celebrating with them. His cousin is a congressman for PA, and lives in a beautiful, custom-built house on a huge plot of land. They were a very kind family as well, welcoming us into their home and even invited us to stay overnight, which we gladly accepted.
Despite getting an early start the next day, we ended up getting lost for 2 hours in rural PA when the GPS tried to route us to a gas station miles off the highway. We had wanted to get to New York City by mid-afternoon, but didn't end up getting in until 7pm and got stuck paying over $20 in tolls getting through the tunnels to Brooklyn. Lesson learned: don't always trust the GPS!
Well, long story short, we finally found our hostel, an unmarked building in a Chinatown offshoot of south Brooklyn. For NYC, it was quite affordable at $50 per night for a private room and right near the metro station. Most of the other guests were Chinese, and appeared to be living there, rather than traveling through the area. However, we did meet a couple from Russia and an American traveling with his Japanese friend, who all seemed very excited about being in NYC.
Now that we were in the Big Apple, I felt like our road trip had truly begun. The next day would begin our exploration of the big city.
Stay tuned for more!
0 comments:
Post a Comment