The Big Apple Adventure!!

We left Block Island and headed to Mystic, CT on Wednesday Morning of last week (20th of September) However, due to a strong head wind, we were unable to arrive in time to spend a day at the museum we had planned on visiting. Instead we decided to aim the boat with the wind and enjoy a lovely sail. We arrived in Mystic at the Noank Village Boatyard later that day and trekked into town in search of good food. We were successful and happily dined at an appetizing Hibachi style Japanese steak house and followed suit with a movie at the local theater (The Invincible) We retired early that evening (post movie) to rest up for our travels to the Maritime Musuem (Mystic's historic Seaport) We managed to take lots of pictures that day but unfortunately had the picture quality set too high to use on our blog - we did manage to snap a few of some pretty wooden boats. We spent the day wandering around and seeing the insides of some very impressive old ships (whaling boats - quite interesting!!) We wound up the day with some grocery shopping and dinner on the boat.

Friday the 22nd we set sail for Long Island, NY - Sag Harbor to be exact... which is located in West Hampton. HOW BEAUTIFUL!! Dan and Erin walked to the local theater that night to watch The Illusionist (GREAT movie, highly reccommend) and finished the night at a New York pub enjoying some tasty Stella Artois. We seemed to lose track of how many stellas we had (oops) and gratefully spent the following day (nasty rainy weather) lying in bed and watching movies... haha, laaaaazy day for us!! We had decided to spend a few days in Long Island, so on Sunday and Monday we wandered around town shopping, eating, and watching football (American football for all of the U.K folk) Dan seems to developed quite the affinity for this sport and has already begun the traditional American pasttime of yelling at the players on the screen as if he could be heard.

Tuesday the 26th (yesterday, at this point) Dan and Erin rose bright and early and hopped the Hampton Jitney (bus) to New York City. What a fun day - we began at the Empire State Building, enjoying one of the city's finest hot dogs from a local vendor, and paid the fare to travel to the top. The view from 86 floors above the city is IMPRESSIVE, thats for sure. Erin hadn't been since she was 13 - Dan had been once before. From there we mosied our way to Times Square, stopping to enjoy a slice of NY thin crust pizza - yum! We wandered in and around Times square for a short time and finally made our way to Rockefeller Center. In the winter, there is a beautiful ice rink in the plaza - this time of year it was being used for outdoor dining. From Rockefeller we walked to St. Patrick's Cathedral, one of the oldest and most amazing churches in America. Dan felt a bit strange inside (lots of people praying!) but the decor was breathtaking. From the church we walked towards Radio City Music Hall - closed for the day - so we then made our way to Central Park where we enjoyed sitting down for a few minutes (five hours of walking this far!) in a horse and buggy carriage ride around the park. After disembarking from our equine vehicle, we walked a short couple blocks to Erin's favorite store, FAO Schwartz... life size (and bigger) teddy bears galore!! Here we saw the enormous piano many of us remember from the Tom Hanks movie Big and played with as many toys as we could find. From there we hopped the subway to NoHo, a village area of NY downtown near Grenich, an artsy communtity with lots of restaurants and shops. We walked through NoHo, into SoHo and settled in for dinner at a lovely italian place where we were seated outside in a beautiful garden next to a waterfall. A few hours and some great food and wine later we wearily traveled back to the bus stop and made our way back to Sag Harbor.

Today is Wednesday, September 27th and we sailed the boat backwards to Block Island on our way back to Martha's Vineyard. Plans have shifted a bit - for those of you we haven't filled in, Dan and Erin will be spending the month of October in Edgartown, MA (on Martha's Vineyard) while Taylor travels and takes care of some things on his end. Once hurricane season has passed (November 1) Dan, Erin, and two delivery crew will be sailing the boat from Cape Cod to Tortola nonstop. This is roughly a ten day sail and if all goes well, we will be in the Caribbean mid-November where we will settle in (hopefully) to a new job somewhere else. Tomorrow we are staying in Block Island for the day/evening again, and Friday we will be headed back to the Vineyard. We will still keep you all updated on whats happening when - until then, sorry for the delay on the blogging again... we just get caught up having such a good time, we completely forget!! Love and miss you all!!

Oh yeaaaaahhh - almost forgot... whilst in SoHo Erin finally managed to convince Dan to enter a hair salon (drum roll please) and despite cold feet, ladies and gentlemen, he WENT THROUGH WITH IT!! Very nice - what do you think?

Some additional pictures of our day - on top of the ESB and patting our dear friend the horse (name???) Lucey Blue, over and out!