Statue Of Liberty National Monument

Friday, August 1, 2003

Port Huron

Ontario, Canada

London, Canada

It was with both trepidation and excitement that we began this trip.  It seemed as if world events had unfolded such that the Olins would be traveling to places of great importance and consequence. Terrorism by radical Islamic fundamentalists, worldwide outbreaks of disease, and geoglobal political strife had made even simple summer vacations complex and worrisome. Yet, at the same time, we were about to visit sites of tremendous historical significance, places that any American must see if they are to fully understand and appreciate what it is to be an American.

So on a typically sultry August afternoon, after picking up Michelle at KVCC Basketball Camp, we set out north and east toward our country’s “Cradle of America”. We would be traveling to important places that have marked “beginnings” for many Americans; Faneuil Hall, Lexington Green, Plymouth Rock, The Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, The U.S.S. Constitution, and even Fenway Park. We would also travel to a special place undergoing a new beginning, the World Trade Center Site.

The mileage on our new Jeep Cherokee was 3,676 miles.

Within minutes after launching into our adventure, we were engaged by a monsoon thunderstorm that followed us all the way from Kalamazoo to Port Huron. The Weather Channel had informed us that this massive chain of three low pressure systems was one of the largest that they had seen in twenty years and went from Michigan as far west as New Mexico. We were expected to spend at least the first half of our trip in drenching rain.

We stopped to pick up dinner at Arby’s in Charlotte, and we drove around Lansing on I-69 while the kids watched Jurassic Park on their DVD screens in the back seat. We decided to cross into Canada at Port Huron/Sarnia because we had seen recent news reports of huge security tie-ups on the Ambassador Bridge in Detroit. We gassed up in Michigan, just a few miles from the border, and then followed the signs that said “Bridge To Canada”.  Traffic began to slow down and then came to a stop about ten cars deep from the customs checkpoint. We paid $1.50 and began to cross the old and rusty iron bridge over the St. Clair River. At the top of the bridge was a plain white sign with the letters C A N A D A.  Looking north, we could see Lake Huron spreading onto the horizon. On the other side of the bridge were the Canadian customs kiosks. Here, we waited in line for about ten minutes before we pulled up to the window.   Tam rolled down the car window. The pungent odor of rotting roast beef and dirty sweat socks belched out at the Canadian customs agent. I think I saw her eyes watering up a little as she asked us how long we were staying in Canada. We were very quickly waved through.

We immediately stopped to take pictures at the Ontario welcome sign.  One of my primary goals was to take pictures at every state and province welcome sign along the way. I had been doing this on every trip and these new additions would bring our total of collected states to forty-nine!

Tam pulled back onto Queens Highway 402 and drove at a snails pace of 100 kilometers per hour (sixty-two miles an hour). We crawled at this speed for what seemed an eternity. Then I noticed something. We had been driving for a hundred miles without seeing even one billboard. Then I noticed something else. There were no buildings or power lines in sight either.  The sensation was like driving in total remoteness. After the initial shock of realizing this, we began to enjoy just a little bit more the broad openness of the Canadian landscape. 

Our travel plans had changed before we even started.  Originally, we were to drive to Toronto and spend our first night there, but the city had become the epicenter of a worldwide flu outbreak called SARS that had killed thousands of people around the world and dozens in Toronto. Our scheduled hotel, the Westin Toronto Prince, was located directly across the street from the North York Hospital, epicenter of the outbreak. At Tam’s insistence, we booked rooms at the Delta London Armouries in London, Ontario, about ninety miles west of Toronto.

The Armouries is a local landmark, built in 1905. It was an actual armory, converted about thirty years ago into a AAA four diamond hotel. It maintained the original castle-like red brick fascia, although behind it was your typical six story hotel building.

I told Laura that the place was haunted with spirits of dead army soldiers. That didn’t bother her a bit. In fact, she loved the idea!

We pulled into London in the dark and searched briefly for the hotel, which was located in the center of downtown.  We checked in and settled into rooms 410 and 411 for the night. Tam and I watched American Pie on Canadian television. I snacked on a Clodhopper candy bar, purchased from the vending machine. The Winnipeg-made peanut butter fudge graham wafer cluster was delicious! I sat up in bed a read a little bit about London, Ontario.

More than two hundred years ago, John Graves Simcoe was searching for a location on which to place a capital city for Upper Canada. He selected a site along the Thames River and the city of London was born.  Unfortunately, the capital was actually placed in Toronto but the popularity of London and its beautiful hilltop location in the river valley continued to grow.  In 2003, it was home to 335,000 residents.

It is also the birthplace of legendary bandleader Guy Lombardo.

London was indeed beautiful when we drove down the sloping hills toward the Thames River. The city was clean. The buildings were modest but well-kept.  Even at 9:30 at night, the downtown was bustling with people celebrating various summer festivals in the large downtown city parks.

Tam and I agreed that London seemed similar in size and character to Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Saturday, August 2, 2003

Toronto, Canada

Skydome And CN Tower

Trenton, Canada

I woke up early, at 6:30 am, and pulled the drapes open. Heavy, dark gray skies hung low over the city. It had been raining all night. The streets were puddled. It was spitting rain still, making rain-drop rivers that ran down the hotel room window.

Everybody got up and moving quickly and were on the road by 8:30 am. Tam pulled into a Tim Horton’s drive-thru restaurant for bagels, coffee, and sodas.  This would be the first of fifty-thousand Tim Horton’s restaurants we would see on this trip.

Tam continued driving northeast on highway 401 toward Toronto. Within twenty minutes, Michelle made us pull off at a village named Drumbo so she could go potty. We pulled into the only gas station/ food mart in the tiny town.  The owner stepped out of the front door and told me in a gruff foreign accent that he would not take our garbage – only our bottles our cans.  But at least he let Michelle use the restroom.

Twenty miles later, Laura had to go to the bathroom. We pulled off, pottied, and topped off the car at the local Sunoco Station.

The closer we got to Toronto, the worse the weather became. Clouds rolled low and dark. It began to rain heavily. Things were looking threatening inside the car as well.  Some of us were worried about going up in the CN Tower.

The highway became ten lanes wide at the Toronto International Airport and we took one of the arteries toward the central district. We blew past historic Fort York in the hammering rain. The garrison was built by none other than John Graves Simcoe in 1763. And it was at this location, on April 27, 1813, that Americans stormed ashore from Lake Ontario and destroyed the Government House and Parliament buildings. The British retaliated for this attack by occupying Washington, DC and burning the American President’s residence.

Beyond the fort, Lake Ontario was churning, whitecaps pounding along the concrete seawall.

We pulled off the Gardiner Expressway onto Spadina Avenue. We were literally directly beside the world’s tallest structure – the CN Tower – and we could barely see the top five floors of it! Tam parked the Jeep in the underground Skydome parking lot.  The lot was almost empty, as was the entire city. It was hard to tell if this was due to the foul weather or the SARS outbreak – or both. This weekend was to have been the annual “Caribana Festival” in Toronto, the largest event of its kind outside of the Carnival in Rio De Janiero. Typically, more than a million people come here to celebrate this event. I only saw about twelve people wandering around on the sidewalks and they were not celebrating.

The SARS outbreak in Toronto had all but destroyed the tourist business in the city. In fact, there was a huge charity outdoor concert two days before we arrived to raise funds and mobilize support for the flagging local economy. The concert featured the Rolling Stones, The Guess Who, Justin Timberlake, Mike Myers, and many other big stars. I could understand all of this concern. Toronto was essentially a ghost town. 

But hey, the Olins were here to spend money, save our neighbor Canadians and help turn their economy around!

Toronto is Canada’s largest city and busiest inland port. It was discovered and settled by Etienne Brule in 1615.  Along the shore of Lake Ontario, he found lush forests and ample water. In a few short years, Fort Toronto was a thriving trading post, attracting legions of explorers and settlers to the area. In 1763, as a result of the Seven Year’s War between Britain and France, Toronto fell into British hands.

During the war of 1812, Toronto was attacked by the Americans who destroyed much of the hamlet’s governmental buildings. It was not until 1934 that the Speaker’s Mace, seized during the assault, was returned.

Toronto continued to grow quietly for nearly a hundred years until the industrial and shipping boom of the early 1900s nearly doubled its size overnight. By the 1970s, Toronto was the fastest growing city in North America. A concerned populace initiated a slew of restrictions that slowed this growth substantially. Through aggressive city planning, Toronto attempts to blend the old and the new – protecting its Victorian past while promoting future development.

The four of us marched around the Skydome and to the CN Tower. The CN Tower, at 1,815 feet, is the tallest structure ever built by man. On a clear day, Niagara Falls and Buffalo are visible. Forget about that today. We would be lucky to see downtown Toronto directly beneath us. 

We walked in and found the place empty. This tourist site, geared for thousands of visitors, had rope dividers all over the place and nobody in line.  We walked right up to turnstile and watched two elevator operators argue over who got to take us up to the observation deck – things were that slow.

We all faced out, looking out of the glass windows of the elevator.  Everything disappeared into whiteness almost immediately. The next forty-eight seconds of our ride was in a cloudbank. We disembarked at the 1,135 foot observation deck and set out in search of the famous Glass Floor. Indeed, there is a two-inch thick polycarbonate glass floor that looks straight down eleven hundred feet.  Today, we could see about a hundred feet down the side of the tower before it faded into white.

 

Laura ran out onto the center of the floor and began stomping as hard as she could. I cautiously walked out onto the glass trying to film Laura. Tam and Michelle stood on the edge contemplating the possibilities. Tam then tip-toed out onto the floor – making a shaky giggling sound. It took Michelle several minutes before she crawled out onto the edge of the floor, laid flat on her stomach, and then looked straight down into the abyss. It was a shame that she could not see down to the ground, because much of the psychological aspects of the glass floor were lost in the cloud cover.  Nevertheless, the whole thing was a mindblower. 

  

While Michelle went to the snack bar to get something to eat, Tam, Laura, and I took another, narrow elevator up an additional three hundred feet to the Sky Pod, a smaller observation deck further up the tower. At this level, we were at 1,467 feet high (higher than any other platform on earth). From this height, all we could see was the top of the main observation deck, thirty three floors below us. Tam noticed that the floor was moving at this height. It felt damp and windy up there too.

We rejoined Michelle and descended the tower. After a few minutes in the gift shop, we retraced our steps back to the Skydome and the Hard Rock Café. This Hard Rock was unique because it overlooked the inside of the Skydome ballpark. We ate lunch while watching the stadium setup crew raise and lower large stage curtains in preparation for some big event.

 

After lunch, the smothering rain forced us to look for indoor activities, so we drove to the Eaton Centre Shopping Centre for a couple hours of retail therapy. On the way there, we passed through several artsy neighborhoods with weird and bizarre shops and some very interesting local people. One guy sat on a street corner with a sign that said, I will kiss your ass for $1.00.

We wandered about inside the mall until the fire alarm went off. By this time, we were all getting cranky, so we all piled into the Jeep and headed up the QEW2 through the Toronto suburbs to eastbound 401 and our Holiday Inn hotel in Trenton.

Looking back toward Toronto we could see just the top of the CN Tower reaching above the low clouds. Then it all disappeared into a mass of white.

It began to rain so hard that the highway came to a complete stop several times as traffic passed through sections of water two feet high. 

The Trenton Holiday Inn was like any other Holiday Inn built in the 1960s. It was your classic, two-story, square, red brick and glass building. The famous script neon Holiday Inn logo spread across the roof as a beacon to all travelers. What made this Holiday Inn different from most others was the Canadian Air Force fighter jet on display in the hotel backyard. The plane was mounted on a pole as if in mid-flight. A marker underneath it stated that the Royal Canadian Air Force Museum was located in nearby Trenton.

Tam, Laura, and I ate dinner at Oscars - the hotel restaurant. The people sitting next to us were French Canadians and spoke French to our waiter Pierre. He even called me “Misseur.” It was a sure sign that were getting closer to the province of Quebec. 

Sunday, August 3, 2003

Quebec, Canada

Montreal, Canada

Biodome de Montreal

Olympic Stadium

Gay Pride Parade

At 2:11 am, Tam and I were stirred from our comfortable sleep by noises outside our hotel room door. I peeked out through the peep hole and saw a newlywed couple posing for pictures with their friends. They were yelping, toasting and celebrating loudly. I thought for a moment about opening the door and complaining, but then my conscience got the better of me. So I just stood and watched through the door. The loud celebrations carried on for several more minutes until the husband finally picked up his wife and dropped her into their room directly across from ours.

At 8:11 am, the Olins barged out into the hallway, smashing their baggage into the walls and against the opposite door. The kids began to argue over who was supposed to carry what out to the car. This escalated until Tam unleashed a scream that shook the entire wing of the hotel.

We don’t get mad… we just get even.

Still overcast, at least it was dry on this morning. The Canadian weather channel showed the massive low pressure system was centered over Michigan and spread all the way to Halifax. The weatherman said that this was such a large system that it was impervious to the jet stream and would be stationary for the next five days.

Just across from the hotel, as expected, was another Tim Horton’s.  We ordered our ritual of bagels and soft drinks. Although this time, Michelle also ordered a large ham sandwich with fries. She must have been feeling better. Tam ate her Jenny Craig breakfast bar, of course.

The sun actually came out for a moment at 10:17 am while we continued northeast on 401 toward Montreal. In fact, this was the beginning of what turned out to be a beautiful day.

We crossed into the province of Quebec at 11:30 and promptly stopped at the welcome center. We noticed an immediate culture change. All signage was in French. English, if there was any, was subordinated to small secondary text. The bathroom fixtures were weird and European-like. Same with the soda machines.

The Province of Quebec was founded by Jacques Cartier in 1534, when he claimed the area around the Gulf of St. Lawrence for King Francois I of France. Throughout the last five hundred years, its history, its influence, and its language have been French.

Tam continued driving toward Montreal, but it was hard to tell where we were. Towns, and cities and rivers and streets all had these crazy, long, unspellable names. I can read a map very well but still had trouble figuring out our location. It took me twenty minutes to find the Biodome and Olympic Stadium. However, we were assisted by major highway construction which kept traffic moving slowly. This bought me some time to figure things out.

I made my first strategic mistake of the trip when I decided to hold off lunch until we arrived at the Biodome.  Unfortunately, it was after 1:30 when we got there and the kids flew into a huge funk that lasted more than an hour.

The Biodome is a radically contemporary work of modern concrete architecture. It was originally the Olympic bicycling racing stadium. It was renovated in 1992 and its interior divided into four unique ecosystems: Tropical Rainforest, Laurentian Forest, St. Laurence Marine Ecosystem, and Polar World.

We followed a path that meandered from one ecosystem to the next. Tam noted that the animals were not “placed” out in the open, but often tucked away in the plant life to be spied only by the most observant visitor.

Right beside the Biodome, the Olympic Stadium complex towered over everything. The stadium design was like a huge modern concrete clamshell with a huge, powerful and sweeping leaning tower that rose 575 feet directly above the center of the complex.

We boarded a “funiculare” that slid up the backside of the tower to a two-story observation area that permitted 360 degree views of the Olympic Park, greater Montreal, and the St. Laurence Seaway. The view was spectacular on this clear, late afternoon blue bird day.

  

Next, our plan was to follow Rue Notre Dame southwest toward Vieux Montreal (Old Montreal) and eventually to our hotel.

To our surprise, there were roadblocks at every intersection. Cars were gridlocked in all directions. Tens of thousands of people were marching up and down every street.  The four of us noticed at the same time that these were not normal everyday people.  Shirtless men holding hands and groping each other. Women with butch haircuts and fists held high. It was Gay Day in Montreal. More than fifty thousand people had gathered for the event.

We were less than one mile from our hotel and it took us forty-five minutes to detour through Montreal’s Chinatown before we got to the Four Points Sheraton on Sherbrooke Avenue. 

The desk clerk at the hotel told us (with some pride) that the Gay Pride Parade had been a great success and that the musical group, the Village People, were playing a concert at a nearby city park this evening. He even gave me directions, a map, and pointed up the street to the right.

Heading out to explore Montreal, we stepped out the front entrance, immediately turned left and walked about twenty blocks, down historic Sherbrooke Avenue. I knelt in homage to the home of Dr. Molson, founder of Molson’s Beer.  At Crescent Street, we turned and walked south into a gaslight district with dozens of interesting street side cafes and bistros. After debating for a few minutes, we selected Café Tapas, where we shared several appetizer-sized dishes on their upper level outdoor patio.

 

As we waited for our meal, however, the entire neighborhood became enveloped by a parade. Michelle pointed out a truck driving up and down the street, carrying a large billboard advertisement for Trojan condoms, with a ten-foot high penis on it. We ate, very quickly, and then went next door to the Montreal Hard Rock Café for ice cream sundaes.

 

The four of us leisurely wandered back to our hotel, stopping to window shop at several art stores along the way.

During the walk, Michelle and I would listen to other pedestrians to see if they were speaking English or French.  Predictably, most of them were speaking French.

Looking out of our hotel room window in the approaching evening, I could see the mountain named Mont-Royal looming nearby. This mountain landmark is what had drawn explorer Jacques Cartier to this site. In 1535, he climbed  it, claimed the mountain for France, and named it. However, while on the way down, he discovered 1,500 Iroquois Indians living on it. The city was later named after this mountain.

As I looked more closely at the very top, I noticed a lighted cross that someone had placed there.  The skies beyond were darkening once again, the sky flashing in the distance, making instant mountain silhouettes.

Monday, August 4, 2003

New York

Vermont

Stowe

Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream

New Hampshire

Maine

Kennebunkport

L. L. Bean Store

In 1763, the British took control of the province after a long war with France.  Surprisingly, British governors were accepting of the culture and guaranteed use of the French language and Roman Catholic religion under the Quebec Act of 1774. Still, there was no love lost between French Canadians and the English.

As a modern, independent Canada emerged in 1867, through the acquisition of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and the merging of Quebec and Ontario, Montrealers rejoiced at the decreased influence of Great Britain.

In its “golden age” during the early twentieth century Montreal emerged as a cultural and artistic haven. It’s relaxed social morays and constant flow of liquor made it a popular destination during the American prohibition. But then Montreal seemed to fall behind, economically, as Toronto became the port and business location of choice.

Expo ’67, a memorable World’s Fair, and the 1976 Olympic Games were attempts to spur interest and growth in Montreal. Both succeeded only moderately. In 1976, French was voted the official language of the Province of Quebec.

Today, the Province of Quebec and the city of Montreal still fight for their sovereignty.

The Olins were up and moving by eight o’clock. The streets were wet from overnight storms, but the rain had stopped and the skies were trying to clear. Michelle was anxious to get back to the United States. We drove south on Highway 15 to the border at Port Champlain, New York. As usual, we picked the slow-moving line. A lady customs officer was inspecting every car in our lane – emptying trunks and back seats. Just as we pulled up, her replacement showed up, doughnut in hand, and he waved us through while brushing the powdered sugar off of his face.

 

We ate at McDonald’s at the first exit in the United States. We cut across Route 11 over the northern end of Lake Champlain to Interstate 89 and into Vermont. Another photo op and we were on our way south toward Burlington and into the beautiful Green Mountains.

The name Green Mountain Boys still stirs the hearts of American historians today. In the 1770s, Ethan Allen led a group of local vigilantes from the Green Mountains to keep the New Hampshire Grants (which is now land in the state of Vermont) from becoming part of New York State. These mountain men were tough as nails and used threats, intimidation, and violence to achieve their aims. Later, they used these same strategies to win the first major battle of the Revolutionary War on May 10, 1775 at Fort Ticonderoga. 

At Waterbury, we exited and turned east toward Stowe. Almost immediately, only a few hundred yards off the interstate, we found the Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream Factory. A flagman waved us into a secondary parking lot and we walked up the hill to an ordinary, mid-sized production facility with a wildly-painted entrance on the side.

  

At a six-lane ticket counter, Tam purchased factory tour tickets for the 11:20 am tour and we loitered around the gift shop looking at psychedelic tie-dyed T-shirts and cow-shaped coffee mugs. A young man walked to the corner of the room, rang a cowbell and introduced himself. He then escorted us to the Over the Moon Theater where we watched a seven minute film on the origins of Ben and Jerry’s.

Ben & Jerry’s Homemade, Inc. was founded in 1978 by boyhood friends Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield. With a borrowed investment of $12,000, they renovated a gas station in Burlington, Vermont and began selling innovative flavors of ice cream, made from fresh Vermont milk and cream. Children of the 1960s, Cohen and Greenfield named many of their ice creams after psychedelic rock bands and other lifestyle-related practices of that decade. The company went “corporate” in the late 1990s, and since then, has lost some of its original panache.

After the film, we were led to an upper mezzanine where we watched the filling and packing of two flavors of ice cream. As the tour guide was describing the smooth operation of the factory, the guests were witnessing a major foul up where dozens of pints got caught in the conveyor mechanism and three employees were frantically pulling the mess apart. It was straight out of I Love Lucy!! Literally hundreds of pints of Cookie Dough ice cream were scrapped right before our eyes.  Ice cream was splattered all over the floor and the employees. 

Laura and I volunteered to clean it up.

Finally, we were standing in the sample room. Our guide gave us one very small cup of two flavors of ice cream – Vanilla For A Change and Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough. The free samples were not all that generous, perhaps because they were busy selling their ice cream just outside the gift shop.

After purchasing a few T-shirts and hats, we walked outside to an ice cream cart and bought some treats.  We then followed the stone trail to the top of the hill behind the plant and the famous Flavor Graveyard. About thirty headstone markers featured the varieties of ice cream that lived – and died – at the Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream Company. It was a fitting tribute and conclusion to our tour.

 

The Olinmobile got underway at 12:30 and we continued south on Interstate 89.

We stopped at Montpelier to photograph the Vermont State House and gas up the car. The kids experienced their first “full service” fill-up at the Gulf station from Ed, the owner/operator. He cleaned the windshield and checked the oil and tires. Tam was so impressed that she tipped the guy $2.00. Ah, the good old days!

 

McDonald’s provided our second meal of the day in Randolph. Before we knew it, we were crossing the Connecticut  River into New Hampshire. The acquisition of a state sign photo was made difficult because it was located on a freeway exit ramp. We did get the all-important picture, though.

“Live Free or Die” is the motto of the state of New Hampshire.  It was first visited in 1603 by English sea captain Martin Pring. In 1622, Captain John Mason named the area after the English county of Hampshire. New Hampshire was the birthplace of President Franklin Pierce as well as Challenger astronaut and teacher Christa McAuliffe. In 1963, New Hampshire adopted the first legal state lottery in the United States.

I noticed that all of the state roads and license plates in New Hampshire featured the granite profile of The Old Man Of The Mountain, a natural granite rock formation that looked just like face of an old man. Unfortunately, the stone face fell off the mountain a few months before. Now its just “The Mountain.”

Nearing Concord, the darkening clouds unleashed a torrential downpour which obscured everything but the twenty yards of road in front of us. The deluge of rain continued as we cut across New Hampshire (Route 101) and then north on I-95.

Michelle, Laura and I stood in the soaking rain as the girls posed under the Maine state sign. Their 46^th state.

The rain had become a low, heavy fog as we exited at Kennebunk and drove to the ocean at Kennebunkport.  Believe it or not, we spent ten miles looking for a local Laundromat, which we found near downtown. While Tam did two loads of laundry at the Maytag Laundromat, I took the girls out on Ocean Drive to Walker’s Point and the magnificent home of former United States President George H.W. Bush.  The low, overcast weather actually enhanced the oceanfront experience. The Bush family was in residence as exemplified by the ten black Chevy Suburbans in the driveway and the three secret service agents circling the home in orange zodiac boats.

The Bush house was a majestic gray clapboard and stone structure thrust out in to the Atlantic Ocean on the rocky peninsula of Walker’s Point. It could easily be seen from Ocean Drive, separated only by a small ocean inlet.  I took several pictures of the home with my long-reach telephoto lens. 

 

Then suddenly, Michelle yelped, “What’s that!”  She pointed to a high-powered speed boat streaking in from the fog and into the inlet.  It was a thirty foot open bow Whaler-type boat with two massive twin outboards. The machine powered into the bay at high speed, turned hard right and came to a stop behind a large stone and concrete breakwall. The name of the boat, Fidelity II, could be easily read on the side of the vessel, along with the image of the United States flag.

Several young people disembarked, including Jenna and Barbara Bush, the  daughters of George W. Bush. They quickly walked along the break wall and disappeared behind a security screen erected between the dock and the house. We excitedly hurried back to tell Tam all about it. When we got there, we were just told to help fold laundry.

The four of us drove back to Ocean Drive where we ate dinner at Mabel’s Lobster Claw Restaurant. Tam had Seafood Diana while the three of us had the Shore Dinner (steamed lobster, clams, and chowder).

Halfway through dinner, Laura blurted out, “Oh, gosh!!” From her seat, she could see out the restaurant window and back into the kitchen through another window, where they were smashing lobsters onto a tabletop to kill them before cooking.

  

After dinner, we cruised around Walker’s Point again for Tam. We noticed that Bush’s next door neighbor had a “Howard Dean for President” sign in his front yard.

I drove up Interstate 95 in the dark and in pelting rain directly to the L.L. Bean Retail Store. At 10:00, the place was so crowded that we had to park in the second remote lot and walk two blocks to the building in a downpour.  Needless to say, Tam and I bought rain jackets. The kids got new backpacks for school.

 

Hey guess what? Michelle was hungry again and made us stop on the way to the hotel at 11:00 pm for two bags of potato chips, two candy bars, acne cream, and Tums for her gassy stomach.

We were pretty tired and very soggy when we pulled into the Freeport Hampton Inn. 

From the comfort of my hotel bed, I watched the Hall Of Fame football game between the Green Bay Packers and the Kansas City Chiefs. The game was called in the third quarter due to the bad weather in Canton, Ohio. It was still raining all the way from Ohio to Maine.

Tuesday, August 5, 2003

Massachussetts

Salem

House of Seven Gables

Lexington and Concord

Sleepy Hollow Cemetery

Boston Long Wharf

I flicked on the TV at 6:45 am to find news bulletins reporting that the J W Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, Indonesia had been bombed by an Al Qaeda terrorist, killing ten people. This was disquieting, considering that we would be staying at an infamous (al queda) Marriott hotel in Boston later that evening.

We drove through Portland in the daylight and without the wipers going this time. We still didn’t see much from the interstate. Nothing but trees in all directions.

Maine was both rugged and harsh, yet it was also beautiful and serene. We drove through miles and miles of sumac, birch, and pine forests, punctuated by granite outcroppings.

Think of Maine and you’ll likely envision a lighthouse looming over a rock-strewn, wave-washed shore.  More than sixty such towers dot the Maine coastline. But inland, more than ninety percent of the state is forested, earning it the nickname, The Pine Tree State. And, of course, Maine’s lobster industry is world famous.  Rockland, Maine is known as The Lobster Capital of the World.

The Maine Turnpike, on which we were driving was built in 1947 and is considered a National Landmark of Civil Engineering. We backtracked to New Hampshire and then hammered toward the Boston metroplex.

Another state sign, another photo.

Our first stop was Salem, Massachusetts.  It was the first capital of the Massachusetts Bay Colony from 1626 to 1630. It is better known, however, for the infamous Salem Witch Trials that took place in 1692. That year, nineteen innocent men, women, and children were hanged and one was crushed to death as a result of a hysteria that engulfed the entire village.

When I was a kid, I remembered Dad driving right up to the House of Seven Gables in the sleepy little village of Salem. Three decades later, we pulled into a huge, seven story parking ramp. The retro-modern National Park Service Visitor Center was as good place to start as any. The man at the information kiosk was extremely helpful – particularly in separating the important points of interest from the tourist traps.

Armed with a handy map, the four of us set out for the Witch Trials Memorial. The official NPS site, the memorial, is a walled-off corner of the old village cemetery. Twenty large slabs of granite, each carved with a victim’s name and the method of execution, stuck out like shelves from the surrounding, waist-high, stone wall.

 

Of the twenty markers, nineteen said “hanged” and one said “pressed to death.” We meandered down toward the Salem wharf and ate lunch at Witches Brew, a bar and grill hangout frequented mostly by locals, and away from the tourists. The chowder and lobster roll sandwiches were delicious.

 

From there, we walked down to the House of Seven Gables. Author Nathaniel Hawthorne, born in Salem, wrote of a fictitious house with seven gables based on the neighbor homes he remembered from his childhood.  Years later, a local woman purchased a home that once belonged to Hawthorne’s uncle and set about recreating it in the mold of the house of that novel. She opened the home for tours in the early 1900s and they continue to this day.

Our tour of the house began at 1:05 pm and seemed rather ordinary for the first few minutes. Wood floor. Crooked walls. Old brick fireplace with iron pots, etc.

 

Then the tour guide opened a secret door and ushered us up a hidden spiral staircase inside the brick chimney to the second floor. The staircase was extremely narrow and dark and creaky.  The kids loved it – especially Laura!

Two more times, we walked through dark, secret passageways from room to room on the second floor. Laura immediately wanted to move in. The House of Seven Gables was definitely a highlight of our trip thus far.

While preparing to take a picture in front of a statue along Congress Street, a lady jumped into our photo.  After a momentary surprise, everybody smiled and I took the shot anyway. So I have a really nice picture of Tam, Michelle… and Cheryl.

Next, we went to the Salem Witch Museum, a converted church and high-class tourist trap. We watched a twenty-five minute program explaining the hysteria behind the 1692 witch trials. It was a worthy educational experience.

  

Michelle was hungry again, so we fed her a hot dog from a nearby street vendor. Laura disappeared into the myriad of witch-related gift shops – looking at witchcraft books and trying on sorcery cloaks.

Tam and I noticed at least a dozen real-life witches, dressed in black and wearing “Witca” necklaces and other symbolic occult jewelry. Apparently, Salem had become a Mecca for people of this persuasion.

The Olin caravan waved goodbye to Salem and continued westward on Route 128 to the villages of Lexington and Concord. This region is also known as “The Cradle Of American Liberty” for its importance in the development of our great nation. 

On April 18, 1775, the British Army crossed Boston Harbor at Lechmere Point and began a march intended to reach Concord and destroy the militia’s arms stored at James Barrett’s farm.

Notified by two lanterns in the steeple of the Old North Church, couriers William Dawes and Paul Revere set out to inform Samuel Adams and John Hancock in Lexington of the impending attack.

By the time the Redcoats had reached Lexington on the morning of April 19^th, the militia under the command of Captain John Parker was waiting for them at Lexington Common. With only seventy-seven men, compared to the British force of seven hundred men, Captain Parker had no intention of impeding the opposing army – he wanted to make a display of patriot resolve. So it was here that Parker uttered the famous words “Stand your ground. Don’t fire unless fired upon.  But if they intend to have a war, let it begin here!”

A shot was fired. No one was sure from which side. The British troops then fired at will, killing eight Americans and marking the beginning of the American Revolutionary War.

  

The British Army encountered increasing resistance as they marched toward Concord. By the time they reached Concord Bridge, the British were outnumbered almost four to one and the first major American offensive took place, driving the Redcoats back through Lexington and eventually to the protection of the British Navy in Charlestown Harbor.

We parked and strolled around the triangular lawn in the center of town. It was easy to imagine the British Army coming down Massachusetts Avenue toward seventy-seven very brave souls.

There were several families enjoying picnics on the green. A few dogs were chasing Frisbees and some boys were playing soccer. None of them seemed to pay attention to the handful of historic markers on the periphery of the park. We posed for a family photograph at the famous Parker quotation marker – just as I had done more than thirty years earlier.

We followed the path of the British Army out of town, heading toward Concord. The twelve mile winding road is now a National Park and is littered with historic markers noting skirmishes and other important points of interest – Hartwell Tavern, Fiske Hill, and Meriam’s Corner.

Once in Concord, we turned a page in history and visited the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, where the great American authors Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and Louisa May Alcott are buried. Daniel Chester French, famed sculptor, is interred there as well.  Ralph Waldo Emerson’s marker was the most impressive - a large white granite rock, irregular in shape and covered with small piles of stacked stones left by previous visitors.

  

We backtracked as the British did more than two hundred years ago, along the Lexington/Concord trail. Precisely at the spot where Paul Revere was captured by British troops during his ride, Michelle jumped out of the car and left her mark behind some pine trees near Fiske Hill.

It was getting late in the afternoon. As we headed closer to Boston, Tam drove us through Cambridge and around the campus of Harvard University.

After a struggle finding our way into downtown Boston, we pulled into the Marriot Long Wharf Hotel. The poor bellman unloaded the entire car onto a cart and brought it up to our rooms on the fifth floor. We unpacked, cleaned up, and walked over to Quincy Market where we ate at the legendary Durgin Park restaurant. This city landmark was established in 1826 and the place looked much like it did back then. The four of us trudged upstairs to the large open dining room. It was noisy – clattering dishes, loud conversations, and several whining fans. Of course, there was no air conditioning. The food was outstanding. More lobster!!

 

The oppressive heat of summer did not go away with the sun. We walked through the outdoor shops of Quincy Market, sticky from sweat and the light rain that was trying to cool things off.

Wow! What a day! The kids told me that the good part of our trip had really started.

There was much more yet to come!!

Wednesday, August 6, 2003

Boston Freedom Trail

Faneuil Hall

Paul Revere House

Old North Church

U. S. S. Constitution

Bunker Hill

Fenway Park

Well, we were going to tour the Boston Tea Party ship but the hotel concierge told me that the ship burned down a year ago and the museum would not reopen until 2004.

Luckily, it was sunny and clear in downtown Boston but The Weather Channel showed massive thunderstorms sliding up the Atlantic coast. In fact, it was raining hard in Rhode Island and on Cape Cod. It was also raining in the Lexington / Concord area as well. This huge weather system had plagued us since we left Michigan and threatened to disrupt our plans for another five days.

Things got rolling slowly after four days on the road. We all enjoyed room service breakfast and stepped out of our room at 10:00 am.

Just outside our door was a man in a suit with an earpiece looking down ominously into the lobby atrium from the fifth floor railing. We postulated that maybe security was up at certain Marriott facilities since the bombing of the J W Marriott in Jakarta two days prior.

Then, as we got off the elevator in the lobby, we noticed more private security men holding an elevator door open.

We walked around the corner and straight into … Bill Marriott himself!!  Yes, the Chairman and CEO of all Marriott hotels! I greeted him with a “Good Morning” and he smiled, nodded, and continued on, with a swarm of five or six hotel sycophants trailing behind. Our first celebrity sighting and we weren’t in New York City yet.

Finally, a gorgeous morning. We stepped back almost two hundred fifty years to the 1760s as we followed the red brick Boston Freedom Trail. Our first stop was the Old Granary Burying Ground. Here, we came face to face (sort of) with Samuel Adams, John Hancock, Paul Revere, and even Mother Goose. There was also a special marker beside Samuel Adams where six victims of the Boston Massacre were placed in a mass grave.

  

  

We followed the trail to the Old State House.  This is Boston’s oldest existing state building, erected in 1713. Nearly fifty years later, James Otis gave an eight hour oration declaiming against the Wits of Assistance (British search warrants). More heated protests followed, including those against the Stamp Act and tea tax. And here, from the balcony, on July 18, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was first read to the Boston public.

Just in front of the Old State House is a circular marker in the center of the street where the Boston Massacre took place. In 1770, British troops fired into a mob of sixty protesters, killing five of them and raising tensions between the colonists and the British Empire.

 

Only a few steps away, toward the wharf, was Faneuil Hall. Built in 1742, it served as a public market and meeting hall. From the steps of this building, Samuel Adams rallied the public against King George and ignited the flames of independence from which sprung the Revolutionary War. Faneuil Hall has become forever known as the “Cradle of American Liberty”.

At this point, my camera was smoking.  I had taken two rolls of pictures in one hour. “Hey kids, go stand over there.”  “How about posing in front of that.”  Tam stopped me when I was about to make them stand in the middle of the street on the Boston Massacre marker.  So then, I got out the tripod and took several family “Christmas Card” shots in front of Faneuil Hall. I was in my element. The kids lost patience with me and took off down the Freedom Trail toward the harbor.

  

The Green Dragon Tavern is located on the trail between Faneuil Hall and Paul Revere’s House. At this tavern, many insurrectionists regularly met to discuss and organize their protests.  After a few drinks, Paul would walk eight blocks to his home. Today, that home is the oldest structure in Boston. Built in 1681, Revere lived in the home from 1770 to 1800.

  

The Olins zigged and zagged through the Little Italy neighborhoods along the Freedom Trail past dozens of family-owned restaurants. The whiff of garlic and cooking sausage wafted over our heads as we marched to the Old North Church. 

Although Paul Revere was not a member of the church, he did work there as a bell-ringer and he knew that the fourteen story church spire would be the perfect location from which to signal the arrival of the British Army on April 18, 1775.

  

  

We went inside the church and the four of us sat in a private box pew. These were small six foot square clusters of seats with walls high enough to be private, yet low enough to see the minister standing at his pulpit. We sat and listened to a presentation about the history of the church. Michelle and Laura loved the box pew idea.  Michelle liked it because it was private.  Laura liked it because she could decorate the inside of it.

The heat was really picking up as we walked across the Charlestown Bridge, over the river and to the frigate U.S.S. Constitution. We stood in line for thirty minutes, waiting to go through a rigorous security checkpoint before boarding the ship.

George Washington commissioned the U.S.S. Constitution in 1794. It was one of five ships that formed the first United States Navy. The Constitution was the largest and widest forty-four gun warship ever built in America. It was fast too!

The frigate earned her reputation in the War of 1812, while withstanding a withering cannon barrage from several British warships, one British captain declared, “Her sides are made of iron!”  Thus was born the nickname “Old Ironsides.” She remains the oldest fully commissioned warship in the U.S. Navy.

  

The skies began to threaten as we hurried up to the Bunker Hill Monument. The girls pointed out that the tower could be climbed and then they took off up the stairs. I followed and Tam reluctantly did too. Up we went, inside the granite obelisk. Two hundred and ninety-four steps spiraling all the way to the top, most of it in the dark. We finally reached a small observation room with small windows overlooking Charlestown Harbor and the Boston skyline. Everyone was soaking in sweat and breathing heavily.  I must say that the walk down was worse than the walk up. It was nearly impossible to see the steps in the dark.

Standing on Bunker Hill and looking out over Boston, I felt proud that we were able to walk the entire Freedom Trail as a family.

  

We grabbed a cab and rode back to the Marriott Long Wharf to clean up and get ready for our next big adventure. 

At five o’clock, we marched back toward the Old State House and to the Boston Metro subway station at Government Center. The subway system is called the “T.” After a few apprehensive moments trying to figure out which train to take, we boarded the green line “D” train to “Kenmore” Station. From there, we walked about three blocks to venerable Fenway Park.

   

Somehow, we lucked out. It was a fabulously beautiful evening; breezy and sunny. From our seats in Grandstand Section 11, Row 14, behind first base, we could see the Green Monster in left field. Behind it, about fifty miles away or so were massive thunderhead storm formations skirting us to the north.

We easily spent over one hundred dollars on food, drinks, and snacks.  Prices weren’t cheap either; five dollars for a bottled water, six dollars for peanuts and seven for a large beer. I had a brat and one of the local favorites “fried dough.”  Michelle had a foot long hot dog. Laura dove into a plastic baseball helmet full of ice cream sundae. Tam mostly ate parts of everyone else’s food. We all shared three bags of peanuts.

The Red Sox played the World Champion Anaheim Angels. Pedro Martinez started for the home team and threw a rare, complete game, eleven strikeout gem. The Red Sox scored the first run of the game in the fourth inning when Ortiz tripled in Ramirez. Nomar Garciaparra hammered a fastball over the Green Monster and out of the ballpark in the fifth inning.

The Angels mounted a rally in the ninth inning, but came up short. Final score:  Boston 4, Anaheim 2.

We decided to take a taxi home after the game and avoid the subway. Our driver spoke little English but spoke an African language into his cellphone all the way back to our hotel.

What a great action-packed day! Even the weather cooperated…again.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!

Thursday, August 7, 2003

John F Kennedy Presidential Library

Quincy Market

Ride The Ducks In The Charles River

Legal Sea Food

The original plan on this day was to drive to Springfield, Massachusetts to the National Basketball Hall of Fame.  This was, undeniably, an aspect of the trip geared toward Michelle and her love of the sport. But once Michelle saw the five-story Abercrombie and Fitch store at Quincy Market, she asked if we could drop the basketball thing and go shopping all morning.  Tam and Laura were open to that idea too!

What could I do as the solitary man in the group…but let them.

So I decided to go solo to the John F Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. I left the hotel at 8:30 and arrived at the museum, located on the campus of the University of Massachusetts, at 9:00 am.

The JFK Library building itself is a masterpiece of modern architecture, designed by I.M. Pei. Essentially a concrete and glass box, it overlooks the Old Harbor and faces the Boston skyline to the north.

The museum was an example simplicity, class, and decorum … as if Jackie Kennedy herself designed the whole place. Once inside, the visitor is shown an eighteen minute movie about Kennedy’s life leading up to the 1960 presidential election. At the conclusion of the program, doors swing open and into the presentation area of the museum, beginning with 1960 and concluding his life. Visitors can read documents, look at pictures, and watch video of the presidency of John F Kennedy. There were rooms set up for particular subjects: The Kennedy / Nixon Debates, Racism in the South, the Cuban Missile Crisis,  The Space Program, and The Peace Corps. 

  

Then the visitor walks down a black corridor and to the Assassination room.  Not much of the assassination itself is presented here, mostly coverage of the world reaction to it.

At the end of the tour is an interview with … Bill Clinton, who definitely tries to draw parallels between himself and Kennedy.

I returned to the hotel early and walked over to Quincy Market in hopes of finding the girls. My first guess among the three hundred stores in the mall was Abercrombie and Fitch. I was right. The bunch had been shopping in that one store for an hour and a half.

We ate lunch at Quincy Market. There were dozens of little eateries and food vendors in the building. Mom and Michelle went with Baja Fresh Burritos and Laura and I went with Thai food.

We walked the four blocks back to our hotel and hung out for a couple of hours before heading over to the Museum of Science. From there, we boarded an old friend ... a duck. Yes, the same company that did the duck tour of Seattle. Our tour guide and driver was Captain Cookie and his duck was named Back Bay Bertha.  For ninety minutes, we drove around all parts of Boston, including Beacon Hill, Newbury Street, and the Back Bay. Next thing we knew, we were floating down the Charles River beside the Harvard skullling team. The tour was fun, informative, and entertaining.  But I must admit that the “surprise” factor we enjoyed in Seattle was hard to repeat in Boston. Still, it was worth the money.

Heavy overcast clouds began to roll in as we rolled back to the Marriott. With heavy hearts we began repacking our luggage for our departure in the morning.

Our last big meal in Beantown was at Legal Sea Food across from the hotel on Long Wharf. We ate several appetizers before we all shared a four pound lobster. The girls shared a piece of Boston Cream Pie too.

We all settled in by watching the pay-per-view movie Anger Management with Jack Nicholson and Adam Sandler. Outside, it finally began to rain in Boston. The weather front had finally surrounded us.

Friday, August 8, 2003

Quincy

Adams National Historic Site

Plymouth Rock

Cape Cod

Hyannis Port

Rhode Island

Newport Cliff Walk

The Breakers

Looking out our window, I could see that everything outside was saturated from all-night rains. People were scurrying about, even at 6:45 am.  Apparently the rains had stopped. No one was using an umbrella.

We called for the bellman and packed up the car. By 8:15, we were heading south on Route 3 toward the village of Quincy. We all loved Boston and vowed to return again.

Quincy, Massachusetts is basically a suburb on the south side of Boston. In the center of town, there is a National Park Visitor Center where I bought tickets for the “Old House” that served as presidential residence for both John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams. We worked up a nice sweat in ninety degree temperatures and nearly one hundred percent humidity walking the half-mile to the house.

 

The park rangers call the house a “mansion” although by today’s terms, it would be considered ordinary. The home is a two-story farm house.  It had been renovated by various descendants of the Adams family and was gifted to the National Park Service in 1927. The house was filled with original furnishings, paintings, china, and other articles provided by family members.

This residence served as a working presidential office for both John and John Quincy. They often came here like our current presidents might go to Camp David for a few days. They would often entertain foreign dignitaries here. More significantly, it was in a Victorian chair in his upstairs bedroom that John Adams died on the fourth of July in 1826. His final words were, “Jefferson still lives.”

 

John Quincy, who became a congressman after he was president, died in the Senate Chamber of the Capital in Washington, DC.

There was an orchard and a garden that Abigail Adams planted on the grounds. As we walked through the garden to the library, Michelle could not help but point at a plant and ask,”Is this quince?” 

This, of course, was an inside joke.

The library was built in the late-eighteenth century, primarily to house the 14,000 volume collection of books that John Quincy Adams had acquired during his lifetime. Although not considered a brilliant president, John Quincy was certainly a brilliant man, perhaps one of the most intelligent presidents in history. Standing in the stone library certainly impressed the four of us.  There were books in Latin, Greek, French, German, Spanish, and many other languages. There were biographies of American heroes such as Paul Revere, books on science, and collections on Greek mythology. In the center of the room was a huge, flat table, large enough to spread out maps or other research papers. On that table was the Adams family bible. The library ceiling also featured one of the earliest skylights built in the United States.  There was something particularly soothing about standing in that dappled sunlight and being surrounded by so many books. It was one of the most serene places I had ever visited.

We worked up another sweat walking back to the center of town. Tam took the girls to the car while I continued to the United First Parish Church where John and John Quincy Adams were both buried under the chapel. 

 

While walking back to the car, I noticed a life-sized bronze statue of Abigail Adams with small son John Quincy in tow on the sidewalk. She seemed to be waving at something. I looked across the street and there was a bronze statue of John Adams waiving back to her from the other side. That was really cool.

We hammered our way through Quincy's dense traffic and sprinted to Plymouth, thirty miles south. Unfortunately, every tour bus in Massachusetts was in this tiny village.  Ten thousand visitors were all here, to pay homage to a rock!

 

Actually, Plymouth Rock is in the same place it was when my family visited in 1975. It is still inside the same granite portico and still had the year 1620 carved into it. But there had been two major changes since that visit, however:

• The rock had broken into two pieces at some point and had been glued back together, as could easily be seen by the concrete seam connecting the pieces. 
• Although both girls were able to run around to the back side of the monument, down to beach level (and they could easily slip through the bars) they could not touch the rock due to the two armed security guards that watched them like hawks.

Surprisingly, Michelle seemed genuinely moved being in the presence of Plymouth Rock.

We ate lunch at a small café near the monument. Laura ate her first quiche.

Soon, we were driving south on Route 3 toward Cape Cod. We were caught in a huge traffic backup of cars heading to the cape on this Friday afternoon. I spied a large “Welcome to Cape Cod” road sign. Since traffic was stopped, the two girls and I got out to take a picture. Then traffic starting moving again. Tam laughed and drove along with traffic while Tom, Michelle, and Laura sprinted down the road to catch her. After about a quarter-mile, three very winded people climbed back into the Jeep.

 

Hyannis Port was jammed with travelers at every intersection. I wanted to find the Kennedy family compound, so we prodded our way closer and closer to the ocean, u-turning and backtracking several times. Finally, we got to the end of the road and found the security gate, private security guards, and a car with Washington DC diplomatic plates. As it turned out, the compound was a cramped little place on the end of the peninsula, with little white clapboard houses all bunched together. It was nothing like the spectacular Bush residence at Walker’s Point.

We turned around and made a hasty retreat. We could not get off the Cape fast enough. It was a mass of humanity.

We cut across Interstate 195 and before we knew it, we were in Rhode Island. Once again, the kids and I jumped out and posed by the state sign. Just as we were buckling back in, a Rhode Island State Trooper squealed up behind us with lights flashing. We sat what seemed an eternity while he put on his hat and walked up to Tam’s window. In a very low voice he said, “Everything alright here?” To which I responded in a very high voice, “Yes sir, just taking pictures at the state sign.” He stiffly said, “Ok, then,” and let us go. Welcome to Rhode Island.

Rhode Island is only forty-eight miles long and thirty-seven miles wide. It is the smallest of the fifty states.  Don’t let its petite size fool you. The Ocean State was the first colony to declare independence from Britain. And it was the last to ratify the Constitution.

It was after five pm when we pulled up to the Newport Marriott Hotel. We had spent nearly eight hours in the car and everyone was ragged, hot, and sweaty.  Food crumbs and spilled Coke were on our clothes as we waltzed into the tony lobby of the hotel. A hotel executive asked if she could help us, like maybe we were looking for the local Motel 6?  But to her chagrin … no, we were guests.

To make things worse, the JVC electronics company was throwing a pre-concert cocktail party in the lobby.  They were the headlining sponsors of the Newport Jazz Festival, going on that weekend. KD Lang was performing that evening and Dave Brubeck, George Benson, and Stanley Clarke would perform during the weekend. 

There was serious heavy metal action (gold, silver, and platinum) going on in the lobby. More silk mock turtlenecks and Italian loafers than you could shake a stick at. Porsches, Lotuses, Hummers, and one blue Jeep from Michigan lined the valet parking lot. 

Once we got the kids settled in their room, I took Tam for a short cruise along Ocean Drive, a nine-mile scenic road along the Newport oceanfront. I also gave Tam a little peek at the Vanderbilt residence called The Breakers.

 

  

As the sun set during our drive, Tam and I finally called it a day. Our legs had been killing us as a result of that sprint up the Bunker Hill Monument.  We both took an Advil and went to bed.

Saturday, August 9, 2003

Connecticut

New York City

Times Square

Broadway

Well, I put on my new L.L. Bean raincoat and trudged out in the pouring rain to the Panera Bread store across from the hotel. I bought bagels for everyone and brought them back to our rooms. Tam reminded me that the soggy trip I had just taken was not necessary because the Marriott served a continental breakfast in the lobby.  You’re welcome very much!

Newport was settled a long time ago, in 1639 and has been a shipbuilding center since 1646. It rivaled Boston and New York as a seaport before the revolution. In fact, it is the nation’s second-oldest capitol. The great naval captain Oliver Hazard Perry was from Newport. The United States Naval Academy was located in Newport during the Civil War. And Newport is still home to the Naval Underwater Warfare Center and the Naval Education and Training Center. 

Newport is best known for the huge vacation estates of the industrial pioneers of the early twentieth century.  The Vanderbilts, the Astors, the Wetmores, and the Berwinds all built Victorian mansions along the Rhode Island Sound. A three-mile long Cliff Walk skirts the surrounding bluffs between these homes and the ocean.

Hundreds of million-dollar yachts are moored in Newport Harbor as is the America’s Cup flagship Courageous.

We took the kids on a quick tour of downtown Newport and then along Ocean Drive. Laura loved looking at the massive castles and mansions.  She wanted to move into The Breakers immediately. Michelle, on the other hand, was too busy watching the surfers catch waves in the ocean right in front of the house.

It was after 10 o’clock before we left Newport in earnest, going over the Newport Bridge and across Route 138 to Interstate 95. An hour later, we hit the Connecticut border. This was their forty-ninth state. We took pictures at the Connecticut Welcome Center.

Tam was kicking herself that we couldn’t muster the time to visit several old friends that lived in Connecticut.

On the news earlier in the day, there were several stories about the September 11^th attacks that took place in New York City. Apparently, the government was not forthcoming about potential air contamination that occurred as a result of the attack at ground zero. Another story was following the trial of an Al Qaeda operative that assisted the terrorists here in the U.S. There were also reports that authorities in Malaysia had tied the recent Marriott bombing to Al Qaeda as well.

I had not been to New York City since the attacks and wondered how I would feel about things when I saw the skyline without the World Trade Center towers.  To be honest, I had been a little apprehensive leading up to our arrival, but we would know for sure when got into the “belly of the beast.”

The closer we got to the city, the quieter it became in the car. The anticipation was palpable as we crossed the New York state line and entered the Bronx. Out of our car windows, we could see pieces of the big apple emerging: rapid transit trains, old apartment buildings, kids playing street basketball. The drivers on the freeway were also becoming rude, slamming from one lane to the other.

We followed I-95 across the Harlem River into Manhattan. At Route 9A, the Henry Hudson Parkway, we turned south and entered midtown. Michelle was the first to spot the Empire State Building, even though it was half-obscured in clouds. Within minutes, we pulled up to our hotel, The Westin Times Square on 43^rd Street.

As I was checking in, Laura ran up and asked what floor we were on. I jokingly said, “The top floor, of course.” She got all excited and ran back to Tam and Michelle and told them. Tam cynically shook her head and Michelle cringed. Then the check-in clerk gave me our room keys. Our rooms were on the top floor, the 45^th floor. In fact, we were given the Presidential Suite for a special rate of $235.00 per night ... a real bargain.

The bellman brought up our luggage and asked me if I was some kind of  “corporate-type” or something. I said, “Nope, just a family from Michigan.”  He told me that the last person to stay in this in that room was NBA basketball Hall of Famer, Bob Lanier.

Our room was on the northwest corner of the building. The suite had four televisions, two complete bathrooms, two refrigerators, and six phones. It was almost fifteen hundred square feet.

 

Michelle was nervous at first, afraid of the height. Laura ran from window to window yelling, “Wow!” Tam was visibly nervous. She mentioned under her breath that maybe we should go for a lower room. “Are you kidding? This is the Presidential Suite!!” I snorted. I will admit, however, that I did imagine a jetliner coming at us once or twice.

After a few minutes to settle down, everybody was feeling pretty good, if not downright cocky about the whole situation. Tam told me, rather directly, that I had the side of the bed nearest the window.

After unpacking, the Olins hit the streets of the Big Apple. Our first stop was Times Square. It was ninety degrees, muggy and packed on the sidewalks on this testy Saturday afternoon. There were literally hundreds of thousands of people eating, shopping, and sightseeing at the intersection of 42^nd Street and Broadway.

 

Michelle was in heaven.  She instantly recognized every billboard along the street because she saw them regularly on MTV’s TRL show, broadcast live from Times Square. She bought some T-shirts at the MTV Store too. Then we crossed the street and went into the Hershey’s Candy Store.

We stopped for dinner at Ruby Foo’s Dim Sum and Sushi Palace on the corner of Broadway and 43^rd Street.  While skinny New Yorkers were making a meal out of a cocktail and two pieces of sushi, they brought our dinner out on a four-wheeled cart. It would have been really embarrassing if it weren’t for the fact that Michelle ate most of it.

Afterward, we walked over to the studios of the Fox News Channel and watched The Big Story with Rita Cosby through the windows on the street.  None of the other networks were broadcasting live at the time.

Believe it or not, Michelle was hungry again so I took her into Sbarro’s Pizza for a take-home slice.

We returned to our penthouse digs just as darkness fell on Manhattan. Tam and I watched the city slowly light up on a busy Saturday night. It was hard to fall asleep because we were all so keyed up to be in the “City that never sleeps.”

Sunday, August 10, 2003

Private Tour of Manhattan

Central Park

The Plaza Hotel

Rockefeller Center

Chrysler Building

Grand Central Terminal

United Nations Building

Chinatown

Battery Park

World Trade Center Site

Little did we know that we were in the room that never sleeps. Michelle wandered into our room at 12:33 am, upset and claiming that she could feel the room moving. Tam had mentioned that she felt it earlier as well. For me, it wasn’t really the movement (yes, I could feel a slight swaying too) but it was knowing that the only thing between me and a six hundred foot fall was a half-inch thick glass floor-to-ceiling window.

Laura was sound asleep, dreaming of carriage rides in Central Park.

We all finally nodded off around 1:30 am. The bed was incredibly comfortable, because it was a Westin “Heavenly Bed" ... or maybe it was because, at 45 stories up, it was as close to heaven as I would get for some time.

Still, we were ready to go when we met Mr. Paul Rush, our tour guide for the day. A retired former correspondent for Reuters News Service, Mr. Rush was the pre-eminent tour guide in New York City. Mr. Rush specialized in walking tours of the city: Central Park, Greenwich Village, Chinatown, etc. 

On this day, we wanted to see the whole city, so we hired a limousine and Paul would ride along with us all over Manhattan, and point out places of interest.  We hoped to get out and walk around several specific areas of the city to get a “personal” perspective of New York City.

We all met Ahmi, our driver, in front of our hotel and piled into a black stretched limousine. The kids loved it.  They spread out over the cushy leather car seats. Paul had Ahmi turn north onto Eighth Avenue and drive along the edge of Central Park. Almost immediately, we came to halt. The New York City Triathalon was just finishing and all roads in the area were closed while the runners entered Central Park for the finish line. We sat for the first half hour of our tour looking at one brownstone building on 89^th Street.  Paul kept things interesting with his vast knowledge of local history and celebrity encounters. 

We turned around and finally entered Central Park from the east side. While walking into the park from Fifth Avenue, we saw actress Julianne Moore walking out after a morning jog.  Unaffected by the celebrity encounter, Paul continued with his tour. He is an expert in horticulture and is a volunteer gardener in the park, so we spent a good hour walking various floral-filled areas of Central Park, including Meer Lake, the Central Park Zoo, and Conservatory Pond. 

 

Paul also pointed out several important buildings along Fifth Avenue, such as the Guggenheim Museum, the Frick Museum, and a handful of embassies.  He also showed us a window ledge, at the top of a building, were a family of Red Hawks nest, a very rare thing in New York City. 

Next, we drove to The Plaza Hotel. This classic French Renaissance structure, built in 1907 had become a landmark in mid-town Manhattan. A favorite of New York celebrities, it was the location of the book Adventures of Eloise, cantankerous young girl that lived in the hotel (supposedly loosely based on the young Liza Minelli when Judy Garland lived there). The hotel lobby was featured in the Alfred Hitchcock film North By Northwest. The Plaza fell into serious disrepair until Donald and Ivanna Trump purchased it in the 1980s and brought it back to it’s original glory. More recently, The Plaza was where the movie Home Alone 2 was filmed. Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones had been recently married at The Plaza.

The Olins noisily walked into The Plaza Hotel during their exquisite Sunday brunch in the lobby café.  Gold leaf was covering everything. Gaudy gold and red carpets and wallpaper as far as the eye could see. There was a string quartet was playing in the corner. To me, The Plaza seemed very much like The Drake Hotel in Chicago ... old, stuffy, and overrated.  Paul escorted us to a painting of Eloise next to the elevator.  It seemed like The Plaza was living on old memories.

 

Ahmi picked us up in front of the hotel and drove us a few blocks to Rockefeller Center, a complex of nineteen skyscrapers built between 1932 and 1973. Paul took us inside the lobby of 30 Rock and showed us the famous wall murals by Jose Maria Sert. Paul explained that in the 1950s, Nelson Rockefeller originally hired the famous painter Diego Garcia to paint the lobby murals. Just before the unveiling of the completed work, it was discovered that Garcia had painted a small image of Vladimir Lenin into the piece. The 1950s were no time to promote communism in the United States, so Nelson asked Garcia to remove the image. The painter refused. So Mr. Rockefeller had the entire work of art, the entire lobby wall, chiseled away and then he hired Sert to replace it. A small image of Abraham Lincoln is painted in the exact spot were Lenin was before. Today, that work of art is considered a masterpiece of the art deco era.

We wandered around Rockefeller Center, looking into the windows at NBC Studios, and took pictures in front of the sunken garden where the tallest Christmas tree is placed and people ice skate in the winter. The gold leaf statue of Prometheus overlooks the garden. Paul then pointed to a window in one of the buildings, about ten stories up from the garden, and told us that he worked in that corner office when employed by Reuters News Service. He said that the office often got too hot in the winter and he would open the window to cool the room off. The sounds of classical and holiday music would waft up from the ice arena, providing a wonderful environment in which to work.

 

Ahmi picked us up and continued south on Park Avenue, the Fashion District, past the Waldorf-Astoria, to the Chrysler Building. Automotive magnate Walter Chrysler worked with architect William Van Alen to design the building, using Chrysler’s hubcap designs as decorative details and hood ornament designs as gargoyles. It took almost three years to build the structure, from 1928 to 1930. Standing in the art-deco lobby, Paul explained how Mr. Chrysler wanted the floor, the walls, and the ceiling to be covered in exotic marble and granite. The building served as Chrysler Corporation headquarters and the lobby actually was a Chrysler show room for a number of years.

Paul pointed at a clock across the room. It was the first numeric clock in the world. Above the clock was the word “TIME.” Mr. Chrysler adamantly refused to allow any advertising in his lobby. But since the offices of Time Magazine were located within, and the promotion was so subtle, he let this one slip.

We jay-walked across the street to Grand Central Terminal. Originally built in 1913 by the Vanderbilts for the New York Central Railroad, it still operates today as the central subway hub of New York City. Paul escorted us inside the huge open structure and to the center galleria. He vividly painted the vision of the great 20^th Century Limited leaving from Track 26. Maroon carpet would be rolled out to the waiting area and palm plants placed all along the way, creating an air of elegance. A railway announcer would walk out, ring his chime, and announce the boarding of the train. Crowds would gather along the carpet to watch Cary Grant, Spencer Tracy, Ingrid Bergman and other such celebrities and notables proceed to the gate for their trip to Chicago or beyond.

Grand Central Terminal fell into serious disrepair and was at risk for demolition, like the fate of Pennsylvania Station.  But the great building was saved when Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis threw her support into its restoration. It was as beautiful as ever, maybe even better.

 

We exited the terminal through a marvelous fresh food market that now provides take-home meals for daily commuters that pass through on their way home in the suburbs.

Continuing south, we drove past the United Nations Building. Paul explained how Nelson Rockefeller bought the land with cash and donated its seventeen acres on the East River to the organization for the purpose of building the current structure on that site. Although there is no single architect of record for the UN Building, it was designed by a team of eleven architects, including the famous LeCorbusier. His influence in the design is unmistakable. Although we wanted to tour the UN Building, continuing security concerns have made it nearly impossible.  Tours have been severely curtailed since September 11, 2001.

On the lower east side of Manhattan was Chinatown. Ahmi dropped us off and the five of us wandered into the teeming mass of people crowding Mulberry Street on this sunny and hot mid-afternoon. It was as if every cheap Chinese trinket shop in the world was lined up, side by side. 

 

In the center of all of this frenetic activity, Paul pulled us up a few stairs and into Pong’s Seafood and Dim Sum Café. The pace in the restaurant was hectic. Still, we were seated instantly and before our butts hit the seats, there was food on the table. Michelle loved that! All through lunch, there was an endless barrage of carts with servers shouting in Chinese and trying to sell us their food. Almost everything brought to our table was in small wooden “bento-type” boxes that stacked up, allowing for more table room. Inside were usually four to six bite-size pieces of something – shrimp dumplings, pork wontons, spring rolls, or pasta tubes. Every time we selected an item, the server would mark a card at our table. At the end of the meal, we were absolutely stuffed and it only cost thirty-eight dollars.

We continued to walk through Chinatown, stepping into the oldest general store in the neighborhood, at least two hundred years old. Another store allowed us to taste medicinal herbs and dried fruits. Around the corner, we ate Green Tea and Ginger ice cream from the Chinatown Ice Cream Company.

In the blink of an eye, we crossed Canal Street and stepped into Little Italy. Suddenly, things were subtly different. The scent shifted from curry to garlic. The wild, hyper-active pace of life slowed to one more relaxed.  Large, robust Italian waiters would step out to greet us and attempt to pull us into their establishments, speaking only Italian. Street-side dining under patio umbrellas replaced street vendors.

Paul brought to our attention that Chinatown was encroaching on Little Italy, surrounding it on all sides. In order to preserve the neighborhood, the city council had launched several initiatives protecting Italian owned and operated businesses.

Ahmi picked us up on the corner of Mulberry and Grand Streets. Paul directed him to drive through the Bowery and Five Points, a couple of legendary tough spots, where the “Gangs of New York” held sway.

After pointing out a few government buildings, Paul brought us to Battery Park. We negotiated our way past dozens Senegalese men selling fake watches and bootleg DVDs. At the water’s edge, we could clearly see the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor.  Behind us, in the park, five thousand Pakistanis were celebrating a festival.  The sounds of sitars and the smells of kabobs surrounded us.

 

A short walk from Battery Park was Bowling Green, a small, oval-shaped park encircled by a old wrought-iron fence. Inside was a peaceful and beautiful petite flower garden. On July 9, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was first read to the people of New York. The document incited the public so much that they marched down to this park and tore down the statue of King George III standing in the middle of it. They also knocked off the gold painted metal crowns that were on each on the fence posts. That fence still stands, showing the rough edges on the top of each post. And the King George statue was replaced with one of George Washington.

Paul felt that it was appropriate to finish our tour at the World Trade Center site. He said that many people he had brought there had had very emotional experiences and he didn’t want it to affect the entire tour. As we approached the site, I noticed a high chain-link fence that was covered with screening material. The hole was not visible from the street. It was as if New Yorkers did not want to be reminded of it, so they curtained it off.

From One Financial Center (the American Express building) we had an elevated view of the “bathtub” ... the hole in the ground built to support the footings of the towers. The scale of the thing was unbelievable. There was now a huge hole in the middle of New York City. It was easy to imagine where all of the buildings stood. But even more shocking was the visible realization that at least six more large skyscrapers still standing had been condemned and were being torn down slowly from within. One large forty-story building had a gigantic gouge right through the center of it. Other surrounding buildings showed visible scars on their corners and fascias. There were thousands of boarded up windows in all directions. There was an elevated pedestrian walkway that crossed West Street from Battery Park City and went to nowhere.

 

I tried to absorb the significance of what had happened at this location. I stood for a good twenty minutes, scanning back and forth. Perhaps it was the distance (we were at least a hundred yards from the hole) but I was not as emotional as I thought I would be. Neither were Tam or the kids. I think the scale of the disaster made us emotionally numb and incapable of comprehending the massive destruction and human loss that occurred here.

The high, arched-glass mezzanine in which we stood to view the site had been totally destroyed by the crashing towers, but every single piece of it, every square in that polished marble floor, and every one of those twenty palm trees were reconstructed and replaced. It reopened exactly one year after the attacks, on September 11, 2002.

We could not get closer to the site.  Many streets were still closed and others had been commandeered by demolition equipment and giant refuse bins. We did not see the famous “I beam cross” that was found under the rubble nor did we see any makeshift memorials like we had seen in Oklahoma City, at the Murrah Building site. The general feeling I got from most New Yorkers was that they would just as soon not think about it, or talk about it.

I did ask Paul what he was doing on the morning of 9-11. He was heading to art class in Lower Manhattan and had just gotten off the subway when he saw the towers on fire. Curious, he continued walking toward the buildings. He said that he noticed “a glittering” above the buildings. It was caused by papers that had been sucked out the windows after the jet impacts and were blowing around in the wind. Paul borrowed binoculars from a man on the street and saw several people jumping to their deaths. He recalled hearing a tremendous rumble when the towers collapsed and seeing people running, covered in gray-brown dust.

Paul continued. He said that New Yorkers weren’t sure what might come next that morning after the towers fell and they feared follow-up attacks.  With the streets, bridges, tunnels, and subway shut down, tens of thousands of people walked up to Central Park, thinking it was as safe a place as any. 

Our final stop of the day was St. Paul’s Chapel. It is not only the oldest church in New York but the city’s oldest public building, built in 1766. George Washington came here after his first presidential inaugural in 1789 to bless the nation. He stood on the chapel steps that day alongside John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton to greet his fellow countrymen. The church was only steps away from the World Trade Center site. While every building around it was severely damaged or destroyed, by some miracle, the chapel survived without a scratch. It was here that the recovery teams brought the deceased NYFD Chaplain and laid him to rest on the altar. The chapel also served as a triage and support center for rescue and excavation crews. Rudolph Giuliani stepped down as mayor at this chapel in 2002.

As we went through the chapel, it was filled with reminders, mementos, and photographs of the terrorist attacks and dozens of tributes from around the world to the victims, volunteers, and to the human spirit.

It was late afternoon. We drove back to the hotel, we were once again road blocked on Sixth Avenue by a Dominican Republic street celebration. 

Finally, back in our penthouse suite, we cleaned up and got ready for a special dinner. We walked to the French bistro Le Madeleine on 43^rd Street with our good friend Nellike Stravers and Tam’s nephew David Ball.  Great conversation. Great friends and family. Great day!!

Monday, August 11, 2003

Morning News Shows

Statue of Liberty

Ellis Island Immigration Museum

Naked Cowboy

Jesse McCartney Concert

I woke up early, at 7:00 am, and headed out alone for Broadway and Times Square. I was scoping out the various television morning shows to see if it was worth bringing the family.

As I went through the hotel revolving door, the young lady in front of me asked if I would hold her purse while she lit her cigarette. She had not looked back and probably assumed I was someone else. She turned back in shock to see me standing there holding her bag. It was actress Kate Winslet. She gave me an embarrassed smile and then stepped into her private limousine.

I continued to Times Square where I saw some commotion across the street. It was Good Morning America.  They regularly pulled groups twenty to thirty people off the street into a large glass room so the hosts could interview everyday people without going outside. 

The Today Show was way overcrowded. There were literally hundreds of people all packed into a roped off area. There were dozens security guards ordering people not to stand on the sidewalk. Every single person had some sort of home-made sign to show their family and friends back home. The couple in front of me had one that said it was their honeymoon ... and they came here for this?  Ridiculous. I did get to see Katie Couric, Ann Curry, and author Tom Clancy through the heavily-tinted glass on 51^st Street. During commercial breaks, the studio staff were fawning all over Couric; applying powder, brushing her hair, adjusting her microphone, lint rolling her jacket, bringing her coffee … all while the other hosts just sat there. I had heard rumors that Couric was incredibly vain and difficult to work with. It was obvious to see in the five minutes that I stood there.

CNN Studios were locked up tighter than the Federal Reserve Bank. The windows were so tinted that the bystanders had to virtually go right up the glass, put their hands up to it, and peer straight in.  The problem was, that the minute you did that, a security guy would come up and make you leave.

By far the best of all was the Fox News Channel. On several occasions, the hosts of “Fox and Friends” Steve Doocey, Brian Kilmeade, or Judge Napolitano would wave at the small groups outside and mention our presence on the air. Mr. Doocey was particularly fun. He was one really goofy dude.

I walked back to our room and Laura told me that she saw me on television.  Cool.

Tam packed up the laundry and totaled the hotel invoice for it. It would cost us more than $300.00 for the hotel to launder it. She made all of us carry bags of dirty laundry several blocks in downtown New York City to Oxford Cleaners. She got them to wash everything and deliver it back to the Westin for $34.00. Tam saved us a ton of money.

Around the corner from the cleaners, we flagged down a taxi and took it to Battery Park. As soon as we got out of the cab and stepped onto the sidewalk, we were surrounded by the same Senegalese guys with briefcases that we saw a couple of days before. One guy opened his case revealing bootleg DVDs of the latest releases, still in theaters. We bought Finding Nemo, Seabiscuit, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Freaky Friday. Another salesman sold Laura and Michelle two fake Gucci watches.

With our ill-gotten booty safely tucked away, we bought tickets inside Castle Clinton for the shuttle boat to the Statue of Liberty. Castle Clinton was a fort, built in 1807, that now serves as the National Park Visitor Center for Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island visitors.

As we waited in a long line for the ferry, a Jamaican-looking street entertainer with a guitar asked where we lived.  We told him “Western Michigan.” Then he created a song for us, right on the spot. He whipped up some story about the people of Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids, Battle Creek and how cold it was up there, all with a Jamaican flair that was hilarious. When people started giggling, he stopped and said, “Hey, don’t laugh, I might be your son-in-law some day.” The crowd burst out in a roar that could be heard as far as Central Park. Well worth the five dollar tip!!

After an intense security check, we boarded the ferry named Ellis Island and pushed off. In minutes, the Manhattan skyline slowly regressed and the Statue of Liberty eased into view.

The monument is such an icon of Americana that I had a sense of familiarity with it, even though I had never seen it that close before. Both Tam and I thought it was larger than we anticipated. The kids, on the other hand, thought it was smaller. Michelle said, “Jeesh, half the statute was the concrete base.” 

The Statue of Liberty was designed and built by French sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi in 1876, to mark the 100^th birthday of America. He spent twenty-one years on the project. The official title of the sculpture is “Liberty Enlightening the World.” Slow fund raising on both sides of the Atlantic delayed the project ten years and she was unveiled on July 3, 1886 by President Grover Cleveland.

Bartholdi toured the United States in 1871 to garner support for the project.  During the trip, he chose a small island in New York Harbor on which to place the monument. It was a non-descript location called Bedloe’s Island.

The work is comprised of sheets of copper cladding, hung on an interior steel frame built by Gustave Eiffel. Up close, it is easy to see each of these 3/32 thick sheets by the slightly discolored seams that line the work. The total height of the statue is 305 feet and it weighs 225 tons. The pedestal itself is 89 feet. Lady Liberty’s crown has seven points, representing the seven sea and seven continents.  Her nose is four and half feet long. 

In 1933, the Statue of Liberty was designated as a national monument and the National Park Service took over the administration of the statue from the War Department. The statue was restored in 1986. Its original glass-cage torch was replaced by one with a solid surface and covered with twenty-four carat gold. The old lamp was on display in side the base of the statue.

Our ferry approached from the left, passed directly in front of the statue and then continued to a slip behind and to the right. This gave us a very clear view from the water. Once moored, visitors would walk around it, as if revealing it to them once again, one step at a time. The green-patina finish almost seemed iridescent in the bright morning sun. I set up the camera on my tripod and took several family pictures.  One of the pictures had us all wearing green foam crowns on our heads.

 

At the foot of the statue, there is a large engraving of a poem, written by Emma Lazarus.  The poem is entitled The New Colossus:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land

Here at our sea-washed, sunset-gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome, her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin-cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she,

With silent lips, “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore;

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Laura ran around with her crown and her right arm up in the air. At first, I was slightly embarrassed by her behavior. Then I looked around and saw everybody doing it;  young people, old people, white people, black people, Chinese people, and Hispanic people. I could see sheer joy in the faces of many of them. I saw tears in the eyes of others. This was a very special place, with great meaning, even in this cynical and suffering world ... maybe especially in this cynical and suffering world.

From Liberty Island, we could easily see the New York City skyline. There were two large holes in it. New York just didn’t look the same.

Tours of the Statue of Liberty had been curtailed and the museum had also been shut down, both as a result of the events of  9/11. The gift shop was open, however, and Laura bought a new crown and torch with which she struck liberty poses every minute for the rest of our vacation.

Just a short ride away was the Ellis Island Immigration Museum. During the years of its operation, 1892 to 1954, Ellis Island was the arrival point of twelve million people fleeing religious persecution, poverty, or unrest in their homelands.  More than 100 million people, almost forty percent of our country’s population, are descendants of these immigrants.

Here is a fact to ponder: In the decade following the American Revolution, about five thousand people immigrated to the United States every year. By the early 1900s, that many were arriving at Ellis Island every day! On April 17, 1907, a record 11,747 people arrived at the immigration station in one day.

Our ferry pulled up to the arrival docks, just as thousands of ships did a hundred years ago. We walked up the handful of steps and entered the Great Hall, a giant open auditorium. Inside were long wooden benches spread out in long parallel rows. On those benches, the immigrants huddled, awaiting the examinations that would determine if they would be granted citizenship. They would ascend the stairs at the end of the hall, watched by doctors who would then make a coded mark on each person in chalk.

 

Upstairs, all arrivals underwent medical examinations. The most dreaded exams were those performed by the “eye men”, looking for symptoms of trachoma, a disease that caused blindness. Half of all deportations were for this condition.

If an immigrant successfully made it through the gauntlet of mental and physical tests, they would be released down the Stairs of Separation , through a set of doors and to an area in front of the Kissing Post, where they were greeted by their loved ones. 

  

We wandered freely around the museum, enjoying many of the informative and interactive displays dispersed throughout the building.  This place was heaven for genealogy freaks.

After lunch at the Ellis Island refreshment center, we returned on the next ferry to Manhattan.

Our next stops were at the NBC Studio Store in Rockefeller Center and the GAP Store on Sixth Avenue. While Tam and Laura were in the GAP Store, Michelle and I waited for them across the street at the Fox News courtyard.  At 2:30 pm, a man walked past us and, recognizing him, I blurted, “Shep …Shepard Smith.” It was Fox News anchor Shepard Smith coming in to work. He smiled, looked back and said, “How ya doin’” before snuffing out his cigarette and entering the building.

Tam and Laura soon joined us and we walked back to the Westin to rest up for our big night. There was one more surprise before we got there …

As we crossed Broadway at Times Square, we saw a local New York celebrity. It was the Naked Cowboy, a well-built guy that stands out in the middle of a traffic island strumming his guitar in nothing but a cowboy hat, cowboy boots, and a pair of briefs. He poses for pictures with tourists all day. They stuff his boots with cash for the honor. Michelle did just that, posing for two pictures with him.

 

Jesse McCartney was Michelle’s teeny-bopper heartthrob. He was a star on the TV soap opera All My Children and was a member of the super-popular boy group Dreamstreet. Jesse was striking out on his own with a new solo album and concert tour. On this night, he was playing at the George Seuffert Bandshell at Forest Park in Queens. 

A forty-five minute cab ride through some pretty seedy neighborhoods brought us to the park. We all ate hot dogs from a street vendor and sat down on the bench seats. Hundreds of young girls had already arrived and had staked out the best positions in front of the stage.

An hour before the gig, at six o’clock, the band began tuning up and then suddenly “J Mac” came out for a soundcheck. He sang three songs that I videotaped. Then he quickly disappeared backstage. At 7:10, Jesse came out and played an hour-long concert. Michelle managed to position herself in the front row. The singer stepped off the stage and stood inches away from her on several occasions.

 

After the concert, Jesse held a “meet and greet” for all his fans. Michelle and Laura wound up in the back of a line that strung a hundred yards out to the parking lot. This was because many mothers and their daughters had jammed in the front of the line.

I wasn’t surprised.  This was New York.

During the concert, I had struck up a conversation with the manager of the bandshell and told her that we had driven all the way from Michigan for this event. The lady later helped us out when she told Jesse’s manager (Sherry Kondor, Carole King’s daughter) about us. In a matter of minutes, Michelle and Laura were hustled up to the front of the line and personally met Jesse himself, got his autograph, and posed for pictures with him. 

It was a major, major moment for Michelle.

 

Now, the hard part of the event, was finding a cab ride home. We walked out of the park and to the nearest large intersection at the corner of Woodhaven and Myrtle Streets. Ultimately, we called for a taxi from Tel Aviv Taxi Service and waited in front of the corner Shell station for thirty minutes before getting back to the hotel.

Tuesday, August 12, 2003

FAO Schwartz

Horse and Carriage Through Central Park

Jekyll and Hyde Club

The Lion King

The phones rang in our penthouse suite at 6:30 am. By 7:15, we were walking up to the corner of 48^th Street and 6^th Avenue. We hoped to make an appearance on the Fox News program, Fox and Friends.

We called grandma and told her to watch for in the windows behind the hosts. At 7:35 am, our entire family was on national television, if only for a few seconds. We swung around to the side windows and the hosts, Steve Doocey, Judge Napolitano, and E.D. Hill all waved at us. The judge even blew Laura a kiss!

A quick breakfast at McDonalds on Sixth Avenue and we then walked up to the original FAO Schwartz store on Fifth Avenue. This was Laura’s day.  She had saved all of her vacation money for this moment. After we waited outside for a half-hour, some poor schmuck dressed in a toy soldier outfit stepped out and flung the doors open. Laura elbowed her way in and disappeared into twenty thousand feet of toy store.

 

This being the flagship store, it was larger, with more inventory than most.  I even saw a television program on the Travel Channel, revealing a special a special VIP room upstairs filled with big ticket toys for super-wealthy customers; such as a million dollar Monopoly set with real money. I asked the manager about the room and discovered that it, indeed, existed.  She opened a fancy mahogany door with the large words “The Best of FAO Schwartz” above it. I looked inside.  There was only office furniture stacked to the ceiling. She told me that since FAO Schwartz was acquired by Zainy Brainy Inc., the concept of the super-primo room was eliminated.  Unfortunately, it had become a political issue, some company management thinking that special gifts for the super-rich were inappropriate. Other personnel, including the store manager thought that the room was a tremendous draw, and added panache to its overall image.

Laura found a very soft teddy bear and named it Strawberry. Tam and I spotted a 3000 piece 3-D puzzle of the entire island of Manhattan and sent it to Tam’s dad Lester, who liked such puzzles.

Across from FAO Schwartz was the southeast corner of Central Park.  Laura picked out a very nice horse and carriage for a peaceful ride through the park. We circled The Pool, where the movies Serendipity and Love Story were filmed.

For lunch, we ate at the Jekkyl and Hyde Club Restaurant for a good scare and a meal. Afterward, we all tried to get Tam to buy something for herself at Ann Taylor, but no luck.

The afternoon hours were spent packing and cleaning up for the theater later in the evening. We all enjoyed room service dinner in our private 45^th floor dining room. The four of us talked about our visit to New York City. Michelle really loved all of it and said that she felt comfortable in the Big Apple. She commented that the city seemed smaller than she imagined. Laura said that the city was smellier and dirtier than she imagined. Tam was nervous at first about terrorism but got more relaxed about things as the days went on.

A news bulletin just came on Fox News. A New Jersey man and two Afghans living in New York City were just arrested by federal agents at Newark Airport for trying to smuggle a Russian made SA-18 surface to air missile into the United States. A peered over the television and could see Newark Airport in the distance.

The New Amsterdam Theatre is a vintage 1920s era building on 42^nd Street. Through the decades, it fell into decline and was slated for destruction until The Walt Disney Company purchased the place. Years of renovation brought it back to its past glory and it was now home to the hottest show on Broadway, The Lion King.

Our seats for The Lion King were in the Orchestra Section, about fifteen roows back from the stage.

The show began with a procession of creatures, including a giant elephant, down the aisles and onto the stage. They wore costumes with large animal headdresses. Some had artistic interpretations of their bodies as well.  All costumes and set decorations emphasized the African theme of the program. It was a thoughtful, heart-warming, and beautiful production.  Laura thought it was the highlight of the trip.

Wednesday, August 13, 2003

Lincoln Tunnel

Garden State Parkway

Hudson River

Hyde Park

Lake George

New details had emerged in the breaking news story of the Russian missile arrests. One British man was arrested at the Newark Wyndham Hotel. Two Afghans were arrested on 47^th Street and the state of the art Russian CM-18 missile was found four blocks from our hotel in the diamond district.

A shroud of fog covered New York City  while Tam and the kids slept in. Slowly, we packed up our stuff and got ready to move out of our luxurious accommodations.

The apprehension that each of us experienced when we arrived was now long gone. Michelle said as we took the elevator down to the lobby, that she wanted to live in New York City. 

At 9:30 am, Tam pulled out onto 9^th Avenue from Times Square and followed US 30 toward the Lincoln Tunnel. The Lincoln Highway, the nation’s first intercontinental road begins at Times Square and crosses our country within a handful of miles of Ashland, Ohio and right through Boone, Iowa; places where I once lived.

Security was very high at the Lincoln Tunnel. Dozens of officers, some with automatic weapons, stood in black SWAT jumpsuits and carefully looked piercingly into the cars driving by. We passed under the Hudson River and into New Jersey. We headed up the Garden State Parkway and stopped at the Montvale Service Plaza for food and fuel.  The kids posed by the “Last Exit In New Jersey” highway sign. It was the best we could do. New Jersey had crummy state signs.

In minutes, we were back in New York State, paralleling the Hudson River on Interstate 87. At Ohioville, we crossed over the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Bridge into Poughkipse, and continued north on Route 9 to the FDR Home, Library, and Museum. 

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born on January 30, 1882 at Springwood, the home of James Roosevelt, a successful lawyer and wealthy socialite in the Hudson River Valley. After James died in 1900, the residence remained with the Roosevelt family, Franklin calling it home his entire life.

As governor of New York and even as President of the United States, FDR utilized the home frequently. He even brought important dignitaries such as Winston Churchill and Queen Elizabeth to Springwood for diplomatic visits.

 

Recognizing the importance of his personal legacy, Roosevelt designed and built the first presidential library and museum on the estate grounds. In fact, it is the only library that was used by a sitting president. FDR would regularly work out of a study he built in the new complex.

 

Roosevelt was so acutely aware of this legacy that he even hand-selected what clothes should be displayed in his bedroom closet after his death. There is a fine line between awareness and narcissism.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt died in Warm Springs, Georgia on April 12, 1945, but he was buried at his beloved Springwood in Hyde Park, New York.

The National Park Service gave Laura the opportunity to earn a position as a Junior Secret Service Agent. She was handed a project notebook and had to take extensive notes during the tour of Springwood. With great attention and hard work, Laura was selected as an agent, complete with silver badge and award certificate.

 

Another twenty miles or so up the road, we grabbed lunch at the Rhinebeck Grill and Cantina. After a very marginal meal, we ran out to the Jeep just as a tremendous thunderstorm thundered up the valley. Although intense, the storm was short-lived. With roads steaming after the rains, we skirted Schenectady and the state capital, Albany. We followed the New York State Thruway into the Adirondacks.

Our final destination was the Georgian Luxury Resort on Lake George. Somewhere, it was said that the AAA Three Diamond resort was considered the “Queen of Lake George Resorts.”  It must have been a very, very long time ago. We paid for their two-bedroom suite, a premium room. We walk in and find bugs climbing up the walls and unchanged sheets in the beds. Laura and Michelle pointed out a chair with “poop stains” on it. Too late to change hotels, we were in the middle of the Adirondacks, at peak season, for goodness sake. The neighboring hotels, the Surfsider and Oooo Shannons were both sold out.  So we sucked it up and unpacked. We had come a very long way from the presidential suite of the Westin on Times Square.

 

We walked to dinner at the Lobster Pot and then strolled around downtown Lake George at sunset. It was a bohemian wonderland! Head shops, tie-dye shirt shops, weird arts and crafts, incense and bootleg record stores. Laura particularly enjoyed the House of Frankenstein Wax Museum. 

We carefully pulled back the bedspreads at our fleabag motel. Our plan was to sleep fast and get moving as early as possible. It would be 319 miles to Niagara Falls.

Thursday, August 14, 2003

Driving Across New York State

Niagara Falls

The Maid Of The Mist

Guiness Book Of World Records Museum

Major East Coast Power Outage

A glorious sunrise over the Adirondack Mountains seeped around the curtains as we slept uneasy at the Georgian Fleabag Motel and Resort. With great enthusiasm, everyone packed up their things and we were moving by 7:30 am.

We were famished after a long twenty-minute ride so we stopped in Ballston Spa at the local Dunkin Donuts for a bag of donut holes. Tam drove the shortcut on Route 67 to Amsterdam and the New York State Thruway.

For nearly a hundred miles, we paralleled the Mohawk River and the Erie Canal as we approached Syracuse. In 1570, the Onodagas Indian chief Hiawatha selected Syracuse as the capital of the Iroquois Confederacy.

Construction on Interstate 90 near the Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge had traffic slowed to a crawl. Lanes were being merged and Tam tried to move left into the other lane. She turned on her turn signal and merged carefully into a slot that had opened up behind us. Next thing we knew, the vehicle behind us had pulled out onto the left berm, accelerated, and pulled up next to us. Then he attempted to use his car to push our car back over into the right lane. For a few seconds, his right mirror was inside our left mirror. 

Tam rolled her window down to ask what was going on and the other guy was yelling at us in some foreign language. At this point, Tam tried to reason with him but I let go with a barrage of obscenities that shook the earth. We pulled back into the left lane, two cars ahead of him. After we cleared the construction zone, Tam drove like a maniac for sixty miles to stay in front of that guy.

We pulled off at a service plaza for lunch. Halfway through our pizza, the pissed-off road-rage guy walked in. We packed up our stuff and ran out of there like a bunch of fugitives.

Tam slammed in another hour of hard driving, flanking traffic in Buffalo, and by 1:00 pm we were standing at the edge of Niagara Falls.  

 

The Olins hustled down to the dock for our date with The Maid of the Mist.  Tam and I had experienced this before and remembered wearing slimy rubber raincoats back then. This time, we were issued blue plastic throw-away ponchos. The kids tried to act real cool about the whole thing. But as the boat continued to ease closer and closer to the Horseshoe Falls, emotions were heightened. The spray, the roar, and the churning basin ilicited giggles of glee from everybody on board. Laura, Michelle, and I left our ponchos down and got soaked. That’s part of the fun of the ride. But Tam pulled her hood up and tightened her drawstring closed, leaving a two-inch opening for her mouth. She looked like a giant blue sea anemone.

 

The American side of the falls looked like a ghost town. Only a lonely Hard Rock Café stood on the corner, virtually empty. We bought a bunch of pins and then headed over to the Canadian side, where the action was.

It was a piece of cake driving into Canada. We crossed the Rainbow Bridge and were queried briefly by Canadian customs. We turned south on River Street and discovered immediately why the Canadian side of the falls was the place to be. It directly faced both the American and Horseshoe Falls. Hotels were lined up, side by side, with every hotel room window having a magnificent view.

Our hotel was the Marriott Fallsview.  Tam and I were on the 11^th floor but the kids were up on the 17^th floor. The view from that perspective was one of the greatest I had ever seen from a hotel window. I could easily look down on both falls. But the fascinating part of this viewpoint was that I could look back, upstream, at the widening and accelerating Niagara River as it raced to the edge.

Just after four in the afternoon, we made the two-block walk to the IMAX Theatre to watch the movie Niagara: Miracles, Myths, and Magic. When I approached the ticket counter, the manager told me that they had just experienced a momentary power blip.  As a result, the film melted and had to be respliced before the next showing at 5 pm. Our movie started only five minutes late.

We walked out of the theater at 6 pm.  A guy in the parking lot had his car stereo blaring a news bulletin about some sort of major power blackout on the east coast of the United States and Canada. We paid little attention to this alert because the marquees and neon lights were flashing all around us.

We walked down Murry Street to River Street and headed to Clifton Hill, a tourist trap haven of restaurants, arcades, and gift shops. Planet Hollywood provided a mediocre dinner but the Hershey Store gave the girls a great dessert. I went to the R.C.M.P. Store and the Hard Rock Café and bought more pins and shirts.

Laura and Michelle went on the Spiderman laser ride and scored among the best of the day. Then, outside on the sidewalk, Laura climbed into a metal cage for a photo-op with a ten-month-old lion. It was a thrill for Laura, but the lion seemed pretty bored with the whole thing. Michelle had her picture taken at Guiness Book of World Records beside a statue of the “world’s tallest man.” Just up the street, we all visited the Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum. We enjoyed the freak show for a good hour.

  

    

At precisely 9 pm, the traveling Olin Family rolled into the Marriott and went up to the kids room to watch the nightly fireworks display over the falls. We casually turned on the television and were shocked to see video of Times Square in the dark. Fifty million people from New York City to Detroit to Toronto to Cleveland were all without power.

President Bush came on television to announce that a lightning strike at Niagara Falls power plant caused the blackout. Well, we were there and can tell you that lightning can’t happen without clouds. As a matter of fact, Niagara Falls was the only place in a five hundred mile radius with power. We looked out the window and could see nothing but pitch black on the other side of the falls.

The four of us sat on the bed talking about how lucky we were that we weren’t still in New York City, forty-five floors up in our hotel.

Friday, August 15, 2003

Pennsylvania

Ohio

Sandusky

The early-morning sun rose over the steaming cauldron of the Horseshoe Falls. Delivery vehicles drove back and forth on River Street, wet from overspray of the pounding water.

The falls that comprise Niagara Falls were created fifty thousand years ago when glacier ice sheets retreated forming what is known as the Niagara Escarpment. The melting ice formed Lake Erie. Today, the Niagara River is a thirty-seven mile strait that connects Lake Erie with Lake Ontario.

The Canadian, or Horseshoe Falls, are 176 feet high with a deeply curving crest of 2,200 feet. The American Falls, higher at 184 feet, have a shorter, fairly straight crest of about 1,075 feet. A third and smaller falls, named Bridal Veil falls, is separated from the other falls by Luna and Goat Islands. The flow of water over these falls is a million and a half gallons per second. This is when it is not being siphoned off by surrounding hydroelectric power plants. At night, these plants can pull 700,000 gallons per second, almost half of the total flow over the falls.

Speaking of power, CNN was reporting that the power was still out in midtown Manhattan. Hotels had their guests sleeping on the sidewalks. An estimated eight hundred people were rescued from stuck elevators during the night. 

The new theory was that excessive power draw somewhere in Ohio began the chain of events that led to the power grid collapse. A local radio station deejay in Buffalo speculated jokingly that the cause was the new Cedar Point roller coaster, The Top Thrill Dragster.

The best that we could tell, based on television reports, was that power was still out along our planned route today, all the way from Niagara Falls to Sandusky, Ohio. Radio reports of gasoline shortages and inability to pump it were major problems. I filled up the Jeep all the way to the gas cap in Canada before we crossed over into the USA. We drove up to Bridge Street and crossed over at the Whirlpool Rapids Bridge. The single lane bridge was old and rusty. One lonely U.S. Border Guard was sitting there on a stool. He waved us through even before we slowed to a stop.

Within seconds, it was very evident that power was out on this side of the falls. Local police were at each stoplight intersection directing traffic.  Buffalo was dead too. We drove right through it. There was no traffic anywhere, even during rush hour. We maintained a radio vigil while driving westward. Latest reports were that power was being restored in Ohio. 

We continued through Pennsylvania and into Ohio, stopping to take new state sign pictures along the way.

 

Traffic along Interstate 90 was incredibly light, and we made good time getting to our Fairfield Inn on Route 250, just north of the turnpike.  After we checked in, the kids clogged their toilet, flooding the room and the hotel hallway. The maid said that they had been having problems with that room. The girls were moved to new accommodations.

We ate an early dinner at Sandusky Outback Steakhouse and then watched the movie Freaky Friday at the local theater. Four tired and grouchy people trudged back to the hotel. Cedar Point would be fun, but I was looking forward to getting home.

Saturday, August 16, 2003

Cedar Point Amusement Park

The Cleveland Plain Dealer released an unpublished FBI report that isolated the cause of the huge blackout to the General Motors Stamping Plant in Parma, Ohio.

A million people were still without power in Ohio and Michigan. Fortunately, our power was up because we were going to have major fun. At 9:30 am, we were flagged into the parking lot at the Cedar Point Amusement Park. It was getting hot already, temperatures in the 80s. The high would be 95 degrees.

Cedar Point has been a popular beach resort since the 1870s, when visitors traveled to the peninsula by steamboat from Sandusky. The Grand Pavilion, the oldest building in the park, dates from this era. During the early 1900s, the park was expanded to include lagoons, an amusement circle, and several hotels, including the landmark Breakers in 1905. It wasn’t until the 1950s, that Cedar Point began the transformation into the modern amusement park it is today. It is most famous for having more roller casters than any other park in the world.

 

Doors were opened ten minutes early and Laura took off on a dead run for the new Raptor rollercoaster. On this coaster, riders were suspended beneath the rails and would swing out in both directions on high speed turns.  This marked the beginning of a day filled with rides, games, and fun. Michelle, Laura, and I rode the Corkscrew twice in a row. Then the three of us jumped onto the Gemini. Then we ran over to Mean Streak. We even got Mom on the Cedar Creek Mine Ride and White Water Landing. 

Across from the Corkscrew ride was the new roller coaster Top Thrill Dragster. The line was two hours long so we stood and watched it for a while.  The thing was incredible, launching the cars horizontally at first, pulling them by a high-speed cable that accelerates from zero to one hundred-twenty miles per hour in four seconds. Then the cars go straight up more than forty stories before turning around and plunging straight down and back to the launch pad. The whole ride lasts seventeen seconds. The ride broke down ten times in three hours, making it virtually impossible to ride it unless you just sat there in line all day.

Mom rode the antique cars with Michelle driving, then she did it again with Laura driving. She also made us do the Cedar Point Railroad and Paddlewheel Excursion. "Ooo, look-out every-body, the Indians are attacking! Be careful!"

 

We ate lunch at some sort of chuck wagon buffet in Frontierland, then hammered more rides. We did Iron Dragon, Wildcat, Blue Streak, Dodgem Cars, and the Sky Ride. 

The sun was broiling and we consumed gallons of water, pop, Icees, and lemonade. It was taking a particularly heavy toll on Laura, who was getting sunburned and dehydrated. She toughed it out and never complained. At the peak of the afternoon heat, we sought shelter in the arcade building. Inside, I played a drum simulator to Elton John’s Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting.  A crowd formed behind me while I was playing.

Michelle and Laura both had humorous pastel drawings made of them by street artists; Michelle as a basketball player and Laura wearing an antique ball gown.

After nine hours in the park, with darkening skies approaching, we decided it was best to head out. Huge thunderheads rolled up as we pulled out of the parking lot. We noticed that every ride had been shut down as a precaution. Once again, as on many occasions on this trip, our timing was perfect.

Tam selected Max and Ermas restaurant for dinner. Afterward, the girls and I took a dip in the hotel pool.  The girls wanted to go home early. Tam and I didn’t feel like driving.

Sunday, August 17, 2003

Return Home

We packed up the car and pulled out at 8:30 am. Everyone was ready to get home. We cruised the Ohio Turnpike into Indiana and turned north at Angola. We stopped one last time to take a picture at the Michigan state sign. It was my very last picture on my very last roll of film. I took six hundred and sixty pictures during the trip.

We stopped and ate lunch at Don Pablo’s Mexican Restaurant in Battle Creek before wrapping up the trip. 

When we pulled into the driveway, the odometer read 6,506 miles. We had traveled 2,830 miles.

Video Footage From The Olin Family

 Cradle Of America Trip

Trip Review

We talked about the trip on the way home and made the following comments:

BEST DAY:      

• Tom: Boston Freedom Trail / Fenway Park
• Tam: Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, Exploring NYC
• Michelle: The Jesse McCartney Concert
• Laura: Cedar Point!! (Even though I had a headache.)

BEST EVENT:  

• Tom: Statue of Liberty.  It’s an Amercian icon!!!
• Tam: Statue of Liberty. How important it is symbolically.
• Michelle: When Jesse McCartney looked at me
• Laura: When I rode the Raptor, House of Seven Gables

WORST

MOMENT:        

• Tom: Fleabag hotel at Lake George
• Tam: The Lake George hotel
• Michelle: The hotel at Lake George
• Laura: The Georgian Resort

BEST HOTEL:  

• Tom: Westin Times Square
• Tam: Westin Times Square / Marriott Long Wharf
• Michelle: Westin Times Square
• Laura: Westin Times Square

                     

BEST MEAL:    

• Tom: Le Madeleine (with Nellike and David)
• Tam: Mabel’s Lobster Claw – Kennebunkport
• Michelle: Mabel’s Lobster Claw – Kennebunkport
• Laura: Legal Sea Foods – Boston

BIGGEST

SURPRIZE:      

• Tom: The coolness of Newport, RI / The Power Outage
• Tam: How impressive the Statue of Liberty is
• Michelle: Hugging Jesse McCartney!!  Great V-Cay!!
• Laura: How fun the trip was!! 

Around The World With The Olin Family