Hyde Park is a little town with several mansions and museums. We could visit only one mansion and we picked the Vanderbilt Mansion. What can I tell you?! It is good to be a millionaire, and the best is to be such one in the USA!
Wandering through the rooms and the gardens reminds you the biggest and richest palaces of the kings in Europe.
Our next visiting place was West Point. Can you imagine my excitement, being an Israeli officer, coming near the legendary place on which we heard and learnt during our training? It was a big disappointment to find it is closed to visitors because of September 11! Only family members of the young trained officers were allowed to enter the place! The only compensation we got was a very good meal in a Mexican restaurant not far away from the camp.
We made a charming visit to Bear Mountain; from its top one can see the entire Hudson valley below as far as the horizon…
That night we stayed at Best Western Nyack.
New Jersey.
We passed this state on our way to Philadelphia. The only place we visited was Edison National Historic site at West Orange. Wandering through the laboratories one cannot avoid thinking about the huge contribution this man gave to the human development!
That morning was the only raining time during our visit in the USA. Can you imagine our luck being on a tour with only two hours of rain during 25 days?
Well, coming from the Holy Land, the sun always follows us…
We found no more interesting sites to visit in NJ. What we did found, with no offend, that NJ is only a passing roads to many Americans. There were no such crowded roads in any other state! After some very long and fatigue driving hours, we reached Brooklawn, our next two days base for visiting Philadelphia. There we stayed at Days Inn.
Philadelphia.
I think there is no Israeli who did not study the early history of the USA. To me this period of time was always fascinating, and comparable to the Jewish straggle to establish our own state. So, a visit to Philadelphia is accomplishing of a childhood dream! We had a very exciting day at the Independence National Historic Park.
I couldn't avoid taking pictures with the Liberty bell.
At the evening we had a very pleasant meeting with a couple of American friends, who came especially to meet us from Wilmington, Delaware.
We became friends when we met them on a guided tour to Scotland a few years before, and our friendship keeps going on. They took us to a very unique restaurant called Ponzio's.
The food and the company were great!
The meeting with the Amish people as I described above, made us curious about them. Reading the AAA guide book, we found to our pleasure that we are not far away from the Amish land. Our former plan was to drive straight to Washington D.C., but now we decided to visit first the Amish land. It came out as an excellent decision. At the Amish village Bird-In-Hand (what a name?!) we found all the explanations we asked for. There is a tourist center explaining all about the Amish people: their foundation, believes and traditional way of life.
Full with satisfaction we drove to Washington D.C., to our reserved motel – Days Inn Alexandria. There we stayed 3 nights.
Washington D.C.
It was our third visit to this wonderful city that we like so much.
At this time we stayed in a beautiful suburb named Alexandria. My wife even found a suitable and cheap jacket at a Benetton store. Sometime you need to come to the USA in order to buy cheap and good European products!
This time we visited museums that we hadn't the chance to visit on former tours to D.C, like that for Modern Art and the Corcoran Gallery of Art. At the last one we had a very nice experience, listening to a great performance of Jazz at noon.
To my disappointment the botanical gardens in the city were closed.
Pennsylvania.
We faced a very interesting but emotional day. Our plan was to visit Gettysburg.
At first we visited Eisenhower National Historic site. It was surprising to learn that such a great soldier and leader had habits of a common man, sitting by the fire place or running a farm. I think that dealing with animals is much more easy then dealing with people…
In the memory of those who died in the battle of Gettysburg, I don't even dare to tell with my poor words about the place. I can only tell, that me, an Israeli officer who participated three wars, suffered again all the horror, pain and agony I felt.
May be such a war, must have happened in the history to make the American people what they are today…
It was not easy to get a room for the night at Harrisburg. After we found one in Super8 Motel Carlisle, the owner explained, that in the area there was an exhibition and motor race of old cars, occasionally happening once a year in those days. As he told us that all the roads will be crowded we canceled our plan to visit the famous chocolate factory, Hershey.
New-York City.
Next day we drove all the way to New-York City. Lucky enough, we were advised by a tourist information office, in NJ, that there was only one open way to enter NY City, by the Lincoln tunnel. The Holland tunnel was closed to the public because the works in ground zero.
It took us two hours to cross the tunnel because of the heavy traffic.
Can you imagine how happy I was to return the car after more then 4000 miles?!
It was our third visit to NY City. This time we stayed in a booked apartment in Greenwich Village. I don't know why, but the city looked to me quite different this time.
The buildings were not so high; visiting Time Squire was not so exciting…
We stood 2 hours in the line to buy tickets to the Loin King musical, but left the line when we found out that the price was 92$ per ticket!
We enjoyed very much staying in Greenwich Village. It is not at all as NY we met on previous visits.
We also enjoyed wandering in the near neighborhoods, like Chelsea.
A couple of friends from Long Island, with whom we traveled together in Lapland, invited us to dinner in a restaurant. Although the table was booked before, it took a long time until one table was vacant. Well, it seemed that the New-Yorkers were coming back to themselves…
We took the subway to Brooklyn. We walked on the charming streets of Brooklyn Heights, and then we faced very emotional scenery – in the promenade facing ground zero, many lighted candles and wreaths of flowers in the memory of the innocent victims…
Such an end of the visit to USA reminded us more than anything the place we are going back…
