I'm home.

What can I say? I had a good trip. I saw a lot of things, most of them touristy, but a few of them not. I met relatives, and made observations on strangers. 

(Conclusion on that, by the way, if you insist, is that all the people I met on the street were very helpful and friendly. With storepersons and securitypersons, it varied. Yes, America does seem to have some issues with safety and security, both in inadequacy and overcompensation. But I never felt unwelcome, and I certainly discovered some very human, compassionate things.)

Goodbye, 'Murrica! 'Bye, all! Thankyou for coming on this journey with me. Let's do it again sometime!

Melon

This morning my cousin took us to a great place to have Southern BBQ. Well, we went to the new restaurant that had opened as part of the chain which had started in his college town and spread. I loved it!

Then began the approximately 24-hour plane journey back to Australia. So I’m almost notoriously bad at doing real-world things like handling airports, banking and the like. This time I left my laptop in my luggage when I checked it in. I checked at every stop if TSA had let it go through (lithium-ion batteries are not supposed to go in luggage, and my laptop was ON, I might add), because it would be a major pain if it doesn’t get on a flight, because if it got stuck in, say, Atlanta, I have pretty much no way of getting it back.

Other than that, it was a pretty smooth journey. At one point mid-journey I noticed this. Guess who?

(L-R) My mother, myself, and my older brother.

 Interesting to see how we’re passing the time on the flight in the same way – or are we?

Took a tour of the UN headquarters in NYC this morning. I saw that it really is an amazing organisation – it’s really inspiring to see the displays they have, including depictions of the Declaration of Human Rights and the Millennium Development Goals, and to be in the rooms where big decisions are made – the chambers of the General Assembly and the Security Council.

Also confirmed the things that will have to be on to-do list the next time I come – among them Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s, the Lower East Side and The Strand bookstore.

P.S. Edited the junk food image from a few entries ago because I realised I’d forgotten some. :P

It’s my last couple of days “in” NYC (still commuting of course) so I’m doing all the quintessential New York things I still haven’t done – Broadway, Central Park, The Met, Macy’s.

Central Park was beautiful. I loved seeing people sleeping and reading there – probably locals. I saw many people doing different forms of exercise there too.

I saw a matinee on Broadway, but found it wasn’t really any different from seeing a show in any other theatre. Maybe I would find it different if I was watching an evening show? I bet it’s great to live where you could see a show whenever, though.

I’m liking New York more now that I can ignore some of the huge expectations built up by friends.

I really like Philadelphia. Maybe because I didn’t have my expectations built up like New York and DC, but also because it’s a nice combination of old and new. Not to mention – Philly cheesesteak at Pat’s? I got a pleasant surprise – it’s good stuff!

Scrapple, however, which I had with pancakes at The Dutch Eating Place (Start Your Day The Amish Way), must be an acquired taste.

Also saw the LOVE statue today – I like how small it is. I was warned it’s underwhelming, but I love that such a tiny statue created such a well-known icon.

Dinner was at a diner back in suburban New Jersey – not the burger and shake kind, the family restaurant kind. I discovered it’s LOTS of good food (with a huge variety!) for a ridiculously low price. If I lived here, I think I’d be at the diner all the time.

I admit back in New York at first I did not want to visit the 9/11 Memorial. I have always somehow not really been able to connect with the event, and I expected it to be a bunch of museums and photos and accounts of the event, and somehow I just wasn’t interested. But my brother insisted we go, so I went.

It was well worth visiting. It was actually a park on Ground Zero with a few memorials – the two pools where the Twin Towers stood were classy, respectful and beautiful. I love that the names around the pools were arranged thoughtfully; fulfilling requests and showing connections. I was embarrassed to admit, though, that I didn’t know about the WTC attacks of 2/26/93.

So today I visited the Pentagon memorial. It too was done well, and although very simple, provoked thought. I certainly can relate a lot more with the events of 9/11 than I could before.

 Arrived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania today, to see the history of American development. It is interesting to see a country with so much more history than mine. I used to think we’d both been around for about 200 years. Not true! USA was a nation before Australia was even settled. Not to mention the difference in structure; America had to fight for independence from Britain, agree to a common set of ideals and even afterward there were still battles. Australia just kind of agreed to be a nation (after the officials went on a cruise and partied, or so I’ve heard) and the power of the states comes from the federation. I visited the hall where the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were signed. It’s amazing to think of a convention where people negotiated terms being held so long ago.

Today I continued to see the sights of DC. I’ll share something I found interesting today.

According to Newseum, the Nordic countries have the most free news (freedom of press) in the world, and are the most democratic and least corrupt. They are also in the world’s top 5 for the highest newspaper readership. I think this is fascinating – my companion suggested that perhaps that is the case because they trust their media. I wonder what else causes high news readership?

It was outside there that I saw a protest targeted at the International AIDS Conference taking place in the city.

The other thing from today is that we had dinner in a popular restaurant that evening. As usual, at the beginning of the meal our waitress introduced herself and talked us through the menu. It was a tapas place so we chose a few things to begin with and then chose a few things later in the meal. When we wanted to order those our waitress was nowhere to be seen. We waited a little bit, and as she didn’t appear, we asked somebody else, who said she would, to take the order. When our original waitress re-appeared to ask how things were going (we had expected her to do so earlier), she seemed put out to hear it. “You ordered with somebody else?” She recommended another item on the menu and took our order for that. At first I thought we had committed a large faux pas by ordering with someone other than our assigned server, but then I had it pointed out to me that we had given her a chance and she had nowhere to be seen, so we did what was right.

An update on the safety thing – I have seen more crime here (yesterday I saw a man chasing another man, “Stop that man!” and the chasee finally stop and return an item; a block away, I saw a group of young people calling the police while one of them held fabric to his jaw). But that data might not mean anything at all.