I find myself with flights booked to New York, next month. For a variety of reasons, these flights were going to be useless, and I’d be chalked up on the airline’s ‘No show’ list, but this week I’ve decided to go anyway, despite it cutting into precious work time, and upsetting some other applecarts which I have to tend.
I’ve never been to New York, though I’ve always wanted to go, and – truth be told – I’m more excited about this trip than pretty much any other holiday I’ve been on. I can’t recall being more excited about going away since my honeymoon. I think mainly, it’s because I’ll be travelling alone, and I’ve never been on holiday on my own before.
I’m staying for four nights, between the 9th and 13th of October. Though my return flight on the 13th departs at 8:50am, so I guess there won’t be any late night boozing on the 12th!
Going it alone also means making all the associated arrangements on my own too. I relied on others too much in the past for this kind of thing, and it’s quite exciting in itself to have so many little things to organise pre-trip. It took me half a day, for example, to work out that it would be cheaper for me to pre-book train tickets (even 1st class ones!) down to Heathrow and back than to drive down and park my car – plus I got the added benefit of not having to negotiate the M25 and M1 on my return, after a 7.5hr flight and all the associated jet-lag.
I’ve never been so organised about a trip before! I’ve even sorted out travel insurance!
I’ve also decided to try and ‘travel light’ (at least, for the outbound leg!), and am going to stick to just one carry-on bag, rather than checking luggage. I figure I’m only going to need 4 days worth of clothes, which to me amounts to four pairs of socks and pants, a couple of t-shirts, a couple of shirts and a pair of trousers, plus a washbag. I picked up a cheap small rucksack which ought to do the job.
I’ll also be taking my Nikon D50, and my Sigma 18-200 – I figure there is no excuse to not take my ‘good’ camera when there are all the sights of New York to take in. To carry the camera around, I’ve picked up a Crumpler ‘Pretty Boy’ Medium (no, really!) shoulder bag, as it a) doesn’t look immediately like a SLR camera bag, and b) is lighter and smaller than my current Lowepro bag which carries all my SLR gubbins.
Finally, because I just can’t leave home without a computer, I’ll take a laptop with me. But not my Macbook Pro. I’ll take a netbook.
I’ve toyed with the idea of getting a ‘small cheap computer’ (aka. a netbook) for a little while, ever since seeing the original EeePC in work a year or more ago – but i’d dismissed the idea as it seemed like a terrible false economy to me. You got a tiny laptop, sure, but it was at the expense of a decent processor, a barely-usable 7″ screen, and – crucially for sausage-fingers me – a crummy keyboard with which to type. I actually tried out a EeePC 900 for a day or two a few months ago, and I got very frustrated with how poor the keyboard was and ended up returning it.
Since then, we’ve had some HP 2133 ‘Mini-note’ netbooks at work. These are HP’s entry into the netbook market, and they are nothing short of lovely. They’re far more sturdily constructed and certainly look much more business-like than the Fisher Price-esque contruction of the original EeePC’s. It also has a virtually-full-size laptop keyboard, and is a doddle to type on. However, it fails on two crucial points – a) The CPU is an ancient Via C7, which struggles even on the bundled SuSE-based Linux, and b) the price. It’s £350 quid – and nudging £400 if you want the decent capacity battery version.
So, what I was searching for was a netbook which had a decent keyboard, and enough ‘ummph’ under the bonnet to make it actually usable. Enter the Acer Aspire One.
£220 bought me a blue Aspire One with a 120GB hard disk, and 1.6Ghz Intel Atom processor. It has a far, far, far better keyboard than any EeePC I’ve played with (701,900,901 – not played with the 1000 yet) though still nowhere near the HP, but the price-point made it too good not to buy. The 3-cell battery gives around 2.5hrs life, which isn’t fantastic, but a 6-cell battery is arriving any day soon, and this promises to push the battery life up to around 6-7 hours. If I can source one of these batteries before I go away, I will buy one.
So, in the rucksack will be some clothes, washbag, camera bag containing camera, netbook, power chargers for phone, camera and netbook, and a couple of UK->US socket adaptors and that ought to be it. From my investigations, the bag should pass as hand-luggage according to KLM’s baggage policy. This should save me a lot of time at JFK, with no baggage carousel lottery to be played, and no worry of the bag going astray at Schipol on the outward leg.
The return leg is a straight JFK->LHR flight, with no connections, and as I understand New York is the shopping capital of the world, so I plan to buy a holdall or case out there, and fill it with goodies (for myself, for Aimee, Christmas presents, etc) to bring back. I will, at this juncture, also point out that I will of course pay any UK Customs and Import Duty required on any purchases over the given limits, of course. Ahem.
So – world – I ask thee – what should I go see, other than the usual tourist things? A number of people have told me that rather than going up the Empire State Building, it’s far better to go up the Rockefeller Building and view the city skyline from there – taking in the Empire State Building itself – and to go up at just before dusk, so you get daytime and nighttime perspectives on the city, and I’ll very likely do this. Plus there’s a tip to take the Staten Island ferry, rather than taking a trip to see the Statue of Liberty, as you can’t actually go all the way up the statue anymore, anyhow, and the ferry is a freebie – what other tips can travellers offer?
I realise there’s the whole Broadway and theatre aspect of things – but if I want theatre (and I rarely do) – then London’s got plenty of it, and I can’t imagine a performance of Spamalot (or whatever musical is de rigeuer) is any different on Broadway as it is in the West End, so I’m not really looking for recommendations to take in a show.
I really am terribly excited – can you tell?
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