So How Did We Do On My "No Paper Maps" Policy?

We (mostly I) set out with a goal of not using any paper based maps of New York City (streets, subway, etc.), either in a fan-fold, book, poster, etc., form during our trip. We did succeed for the most part with this goal. We relied on web sites, Google Maps, Windows Live, the GPS in the my phone, and by asking people. The only exception we made was in the Museum of Natural History, where we used a "map" of the floor plan of the place. 4 flippin' floors of exhibits. With Michael the only one that had any sense of direction, Andrew and I needed help. Does that use constitute a failure of our mandate? I don't think so, but I leave that up to you to decide.

So, with today's technology, you can navigate, on foot, around an unfamiliar city without looking totally like a tourist with a map in your face the whole time. We may have looked like geeks, following our phone like a Star Trek tricorder, but we made it for 4 days being jacked into the interwebs the whole time.

Here's a map of all the locations we visited

Google Maps is amazing. You can create your own points-of-interest map. I've done that with our trip. Plotted all the places we visited while we were in NYC. If you click on the little blue place markers, it will show what that place is. I'll eventually link all the places to posts here on the blog, so you can see the pictures and read the story of what we did at that place.


View Larger Map

Day 3 - Coney Island!

Day 3 - Buying a "Rolex" in Chinatown...

Here's a little video chronicling our adventure of buying a "Rolex" in Chinatown. It was well worth the price of admission...

Day 2 - Look who we met!

Day 2 - Inside the Apple Store!

Day 1 - We had so much fun!

Today, we landed around 10am and we boarded a van to take us to the hotel. This van driver was bent on freaking all of us out with his driving slillz...but we got there semi-safe and sound. Our hotel is nice. It's old but recently renovated. Kind of retro-chic. We immediately went to Times Square to take in the sights and sounds (and smells). We went by Planet Hollywood and looked around then walked around and took lots of pictured (see other blog entry for pics). We went to the Virgin Megastore and a giant Toys-R-Us that had a ferris wheel on it! We went back to the hotel and rested and then we to eat at Planet Hollywood for dinner. Then off to Spamalot! It was great! Very funny. After Spamalot we went to the Empire State Building. The line was very long, even at 11:30 at night. It tooks us about 2 hours to finally get to the 86th floor observatory. We took lots of pictures up there. That was it for Day 1. We crashed at the hotel after that.

Day 1 - Michael's left over dinner...

We ate at Planet Hollywood tonight before Spamalot! Food was OK, except Michael's "pizza". Here's what's left of it. Yuck!

Day 1 - The view from our room...

Day 1 - Times Square!

We got to the hotel, and our room wasn't ready, so we stashed our bags and hit the pavement. We walked down to Time Square. About 10 blocks away. <soapbox>One word about NYC blocks: the north-south blocks are short, and the east-west blocks are LONG! Very long. About 4 times longer than a north-south block. So, if you can walk only north-south, do it. Take a taxi east-west.</soapbox>

So here are some pictures of the sites we saw waiting for our room to get ready:

An honest to goodness Canadian Mounted Police. What was he doing in New York City? Must have taken a wrong turn.

Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum. We hope to visit there tomorrow.

He's just glad to be here, isn't he?

That is a big Joker!  Not Heath Ledger's Joker, which was better than Jack Nicholson's Joker, which was better than Cesar Romero's Joker, which was.....

Our hotel. The New Yorker. Great art-deco hotel. Well worth the price. As you can see it was near the subway, and it was near 35th St., and just down 34th St. from the Empire State Building.

A giant painted billboard on the side of a building. My boys from Mythbusters.

In front of MTV's TRL studios.

The real Death Star model (from Return of the Jedi) and a couple of X-wings and TIE Fighters (not to scale.) 

Tired already?!?!? We just got here. We had been up since 4am, but your guys are teenagers. You have unlimited energy, almost super-human. Here I am, a 45 year old gray-haired fat guy, and I out lasted them. Old Guys Rule!

 
As you can see, we saw quite a bit, and we just got here! There is so much to see and do!

Day 1 - Van ride to the hotel...

I had arranged a van ride to the hotel from the airport. Now I've ridden in a NYC taxi before, but never a communal van. They packed us in like sardines, and off we went, like a NASCAR dash to the finish! Now, we own a 15-passenger van, just like the one we rode in here, but I never knew a van this big could drive that fast, and make maneuvers like that. I also found out this kind of van can fit into spaces as small as a VW bug will fit. Must be a flux capacitor on-board. We got there in one piece, but a little frazzled. I'm sure we drove by some pretty cool sites, but they were all a blur.

Day 1 - We have arrived! New York beware!

Day 1 - On the plane!

Some cool pics from the air. Michael had the window seat, so he took the pics. Some are way cool!

Michael's first plane trip. "Look Ma, they have winders in this here aero-plane!"

Break out the binoculars. That's Lady Liberty.

Manhattan! Our destination. Can we get dropped off here?

Not quite the Skyway Bridge near our house, but it's a big one. I'm also not sure which bridge that is, but it's cool!

This is an aerial view of Flushing Meadows Park, where the 1964-65 World's Fair was held. Walt Disney was the builder/designer of the fair, and there's a good photo montage here that shows the fair in it's heyday. It's not in very good shape now. Some interesting facts about the 64-65 World's Fair: the Ford Mustang was debuted, the monorail used at the Disney theme parks unveiled, and a lot of the concepts for Disney's original EPCOT were experimented here. The globe in the background is called the Unisphere, and there's a 2 part video on YouTube here and here. Anyway, in the movie, Men In Black, these things were destroyed. They must have fixed them!

Financial District of Manhattan. We'll be there in a few days walking around (hopefully.)

Day 1 - At the airport!

Day (-1) - Driving to Orlando

We are driving to Orlando on the Friday before we leave. I'm taking Sarah, Mary, and Anna with me to spend the weekend with their grandmothers and a couple of friends.

There's a tropical storm south of Cuba right now, heading west-north-west. I hope it doesn't come the way of the west coast of Florida while we're gone.

Day (-3) - One of my goals for this trip

One of my nerdy, geekilicious goals for this trip is to not use any paper maps or city guides of any kind. I want to only use my phone which has access to the interwebs and GPS. We'll see if that's possible.

I found that the Metropolitan Transit Authority, a real important sounding name for the subway peeps in NYC, are totally in sync with their traveling minions. Their website is smartphone friendly. Go to mta.info on your mobile browser and they have a trip planner, maps, everything. Buses too. That, along with Windows Live, and Google Maps Mobile, and Verizon's VZ Navigator (GPS software), we should be well equipped, and rarely get lost.

Another thing I found was that Google Maps now has walking directions, in addition to driving directions. Perfect for this trip. For instance, from our hotel to Time Square is like 87 miles driving, but only six tenths of a mile walking. Crazy roads in The City.

We're taking lots of bread crumbs just in case.

Day (-4) - Here we go

I wanted to kick off the blog with a little background. The boy's grandmother (my mother-in-law) wanted to give the boys a graduation gift. Michael graduated from high school 2 years ago, and Andrew graduated this year. A trip is what she had in mind for them, and New York was the obvious choice. Of course they needed a chaperone, so that's why I'm here. I'm the hired help. They're the guests of honor. This trip is for them, but we want it to be memorable.

Right now we're in the planning stage. We got our flights. Delta. Bleh. They better not try any shenanigans with this charging us for baggage junk they've been doing lately. We've got our hotel. The New Yorker. Here's a picture. It's an old, art-deco hotel. Can't wait to see it.

Now, we're trying to decide what we're going to attempt to do while we're there. First thing we thought of was Spamalot. A Broadway play based on the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail. After that, it's all superfluous.

We leave Saturday, August 16, at 7:30am. We'll be posting all along the way.

Thank you Nanny!!!!!!