New York, New York (part 1!)

We have just had the most awesome day in NYC; after the expanse of the Albertan Prairie, civilisation has really had such an effect on us... there are strangers and cars everywhere!!! (We are far more used to tumble weed than yellow cabs)! And ... after waiting until 10.30am for our kids to get up, we have managed to see most of what this truly amazing city has to offer!




We started off with a Water Taxi around New York harbour, which included the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, Brooklyn Bridge, Pier 17 et al... a really fantastic trip in every sense of the word, made even better by working out how to bypass the crazy queues down at Battery Park. As an added bonus the trip was proceeded by a completely awesome display by a group of 4 street performers on the finer arts of break-dancing and acrobatics...Leigh's one-armed press-ups came in a very distant and sad 2nd place!!


From there we decided to head to the Empire State Building...obviously we had to get a hotdog from a NYC street vendor en route ... and of course Charlie wanted a hotdog without a sausage! Ben fulfilled his aspirations of hailing a New York Cab and we had an amazing taxi ride through NY where along route we saw, amongst many other things; urban basketball courts, cool looking Italian restaurants, Irish bars and many other entertainment centres. Leigh & I would have husselled in on one of the games if we had the time!

The Empire State Building was magnificent, after which we hailed another taxi, even Charlie and Olivia were quite the experts by now, and made our way to Times Square. Again, a completely amazing NY experience and again loads of friendly people (is it just an English voice thing??) and we picked up a tour bus back to the hotel through Greenwich Village, Soho (disappointingly for Leigh not like London!) and Wall Street (surprisingly tiny!).

After short walk down the Hudson River and an obligatory play park later we we back in the Embassy Suites...and joined the rest of the hotel in the Manager's Happy Hour of drinks, nachos and popcorn...huge fun for all the family! More from Central Park tomorrow...

The Final Countdown!

As you may have gathered I am winding the blog down now! Whilst the last 4 weeks have been hectic, they have also been rather boring too with only a few exceptions; namely Charlie's 4th birthday and a couple of leaving do's! The rest of the time has been spent packing and organising our trip back to the UK.

Of course, the good old Canadian weather is always a topic of conversation and we have had all four seasons during this last month! Everything from hot sunny days, to thunder, lightning, high winds, hail and of course, snow! At least the village is looking nice and green now - good prep for the UK!


Charlie had a lovely 4th birthday; he had about eight of his friends over from his pre-school, Little Gophers, for a party. The sun shone that day (thank goodness!) and so they were able to play in the garden for most of it! Olivia was very keen to help out and was busy bossing all the little ones around. It was all far too uncool for Ben though who managed to disappear for the duration!


Leigh is in to the last few days of his hand over now and I am packing the last few boxes. The children finish school on Friday, Leigh finishes on Saturday (followed by a 'few' drinks in the mess!) and then we leave the village on Sunday. We are flying up to Calgary, overnighting there and then flying to New York for a couple of days. A great way to finish our North American posting!

Leigh took these photos of the village during a helicopter flight over the Prairie training area; you can get a fair idea of just how remote we are here! I look forward to posting my final blog from New York, New York!