There and back again

I'm back in New York City now, after spending a weekend in St Paul, Minnesota.  I went for the weekend to visit my brother and his family who live there.  The flight departed from JFK Airport at gate B20, a Delta flight, operated by Northwestern, carried by Compass.  It was a two hour and forty minute flight to get there.  There was forcasted snowstorm for the New York area, and we were lucky to get away on time as snowflakes were starting to appear as we waited on the tarmac to leave.  Hearing from friends later, the snowstorm apparently delayed over 700 flights, and someone we knew had their flight to LA delayed until Wednesday due to it.

The landscape of Minnesota is very flat.  Flying in, the buildings were quite low, not much highrise or skyline blocking towers.  The density is also low by comparison to even Sydney.  My brother came by the airport (Minnesota airport is a combined international and domestic, which made it huge and confusing to get around) and picked us up.  We headed straight to the Science Centre to take a look at the Titanic exhibition.

The exhibition had a collection of artefacts from the recovery of the Titanic, along with re-creations of the staterooms, pictures and tales from the events that had happened.  We all recieved a boarding pass when we started the walk through and at the end you could see what happened to the particular passenger that you were following.  I thought it was pretty well done, and the preservation work was pretty important in that due to the high pressure of the sea water the artifacts had been in for so long, a lot of long and painstaking work was required to maintain them from degredation.  All of the displays had regulated humidity and temperature sensors inside them.  One of the more entertaining peices was a boiler room wrench.  In my younger days, there was a Half-Life multiplayer Mod based loosely on 007, where you could use a "40lb monkey wrench" well, this wrench was probably more in the vicinity of 200lb lol.

It was amazing to see the list of people who died and survived, with the largest amount actually being the crew that died, staying aboard to help passengers off.  The gallantry of the passengers also, such as a sailor picking up a child and tossing it into the lifeboat as it was being lowered, to ensure that the child survived, or the lady who chose to stay onboard with her husband since she had no-one else to be with if he died.  For me, my passenger, some woman, survived.  We then took a look around the rest of the science museum and had lots of fun playing with the interactive displays that they had.  It was actually pretty cool, and in a way, it is something that we do actually lack distinctively in Australia, the presence of "science" museums where kids primarily, but adults too, can learn and have fun.  I went to one in Taiwan back in 1999, which was lots of fun too.

That night, we had dinner at a "Hmong" place, and it was okay, I had a green chilli pepper and it was so strong I practically couldn't feel my tongue and was crying T_T;;;;;

After that, went to bed, for another day ahead.  On the Sunday, we drove to a local place called Battle Creek, where there was a hill next to the community centre where people go to ski and play snow sports.  We went down the hill a few times on a cardboard box, which was quite fun except for the part about going backwards most of the hill LOL, I rolled a few times butt over head (backwards of course), and kind of decided to stop before I hurt myself since my travel insurance didn't cover "snow" activities.

In the afternoon, we then went to the "largest mall" in the country, called Mall of the Americas.  It used to be a football stadium, then it got converted into a shopping mall when the team moved elsewhere in the city with a newer facility.  It has five floors, and well, it's big enough that it has a full-time running amusement park in the middle of it, and also the worlds largest underground Aquarium in it.  We had lunch at Chipoltes which was pretty nice, their burrito's are MASSIVE and pretty cheap too.  After some more cruising around through the mall, we were actually pretty tired, so went back home for some rest.

Dinner was home-cooked, we had some photos taken, and then bed.  The return flight back to NYC was a 7am flight, so we had to get there pretty early.  Passing through the security checkpoints was pretty long, time consuming, pain in the arse really.  Then the long long hike to the gate before hopping on the plane.  We had to get de-iced also before take-off with an anti-freeze solution.  The flight was fairly uneventful and we touched down in NYC on time pretty much.

A comment about security.  On the way there, I managed to use my Australian drivers license at JFK as ID for my boarding pass check.  I also was allowed through with my 160g tube (partially used) of toothpaste.  This is in NYC, you know, site of 9/11 right?  So, on my way BACK from Minnesota to NYC, I couldn't use my Australian drivers license but had to use my Passport as ID, AND, they confiscated my toothpaste... -_-;  Talk about inconsistency...

So, yes, NYC was blanketed in snow.  We caught the Air-train from Terminal 4 via Jamica Station, then the E line, transfered to the 6 line, then walked from Lexington and 33rd.  Lots of snow on the curbs and sidewalks, lots of snow on cars that haven't been used, lots of snow in gardens.  It's quite pretty actually from afar, but at the street level, it's dirty and grey slush lol, kind of loses it's romantic aspects of it quickly if you have to avoid stepping in the puddles.

So, no real plans as such for the rest of the trip thus far, going to play it by ear.  My USYD Kendo Jacket kicks ass, as combined with my other clothes, it's kept me reasonably warm in Minnesota conditions, (it was as low as -13C) and seemed to be fine in todays 2C conditions when we got back.  Just have to see how it goes.