This was the day, I'm finally going to AMERICA!!! Sooo excited. And a little nervous too. Got up at eight to have plenty of time before the plane for Amsterdam left at 11.30. After checking in I did some giftshopping at the airport. I just had to get something for Linda and Vicky. Dala-horses in bright red for the refrigerator door and two fantastic cards with motives from Göteborg and the archipelago.

First flight was great, no turbulence whatsoever and good spacious seats, I liked that. We got away from Landvetter airport almost 20 minutes late and I ended up having less than twenty minutes to catch my connecting flight. And of course the gate was on the other end of the airport. I got there in time to stand in a looong line. They had an awful humid heat in the airport, I would really have appreciated some air conditioning. Oh well, when I got on the huge plane, a Boeing 747, I got a nice cool temperature.

The two americans I was seated in between didn't say much, hardly even answered my hello when I got seated. And I was kinda hoping I'd get someone to talk to on the flight. I just picked up my book instead. At that moment I felt the seven and a half hour long flight would be verrry long. It didn't turn out like that, the book made the time to dinner disappear quite fast.

They handed out customs and immigration forms and of course I didn't have some of the things I needed. Like the address of where I was gonna stay, I only had the name of the hotel. It was enough, I just put that on there.

The Kennedy airport is the most boring airport I've been to. Grey corridors, no windows and it was just as warm and humid as in Amsterdam. At least in Amsterdam I could see the world. Immigration line was really fast, like 10 minutes, but then I had to wait for the suitcase instead. Through the customs and I could finally see NY.

The next moment i had two screaming and laughing girls attacking me. You guessed right, that was Linda and Vicky. Glenn kinda stayed in the back. With a big red rose from Vicky in my hand I entered the construction area outside the terminal.

First sightseeing in NY was around the parking lot, Glenn was a nice host and showed us around before we entered the parkway to the hotel. Heavy traffic and a nasty accident slowed us down for a while.

Isn't the view breathtaking? The hotel was in the middle of nowhere between two highways. The distances between things surprised me. The room was nice enough though. Vicky found the USA network on the TV for me while I set up the computer and found out if my telephone plug was gonna fit. It did.

After I had a shower and a change we headed out for dinner, Seafood. We had to wait for a table, alot longer than the ten minutes they said on the phone when Vicky called ahead to ask about reservations. The fact that she likes seafood can't be mistaken, look at that smile :o) I love seafood too, but I was way too tired to be able to eat very much of it.

:o) I got to see Silk LIVE!!! Gosh, I wish I had not been so tired. But that was tobe expected really, it was three in the morning. I hooked up to the internet with some help from Vicky and Glenn's internet provider. Worked great! Free local calls were nice. I think Deb was really surprised to see me.

By eleven I was out cold.

Maria and Linda does Manhattan

When the alarm clock rang at six I was amazingly enough already awake, not ready to get up, but awake. Breakfast, I need breakfast before I can function in the morning. Scrambling into my clothes I walk down to the breakfast room to see what's on the menu in the US. They had a pretty nice buffé and I went for boiled egg (they pealed them for us, amazing, never saw that done before), bread, fruit salad, orange juice, waffle with butter and jam. And ofcourse a large cup of coffee, gotta have coffee. It wasn't as strong as I'd like, but I guess It was okay.

Shortly after seven Vicky and Linda showed up at the hotel. Vicky was working all day so Linda and I had the day to ourselves. I wanted to see Manhattan and Linda offered to be my guide. (Not much of a guide it turned out, she'd hardly even been into the city before.)

Vicky dropped us off at the trainstation, it took me quite a few times to be able to get the name of it pronounced, Ronkonkoma (Had to check the spelling even now when writing this). We missed a train and had plenty of time to get better aquainted and snap a picture or two at the station.

Linda was really happy to get away on this trip, she told me she had not been on vacation in 12 years. I feel so lucky, I've only missed going on a vacation trip once the last 12 years. I live for travel, all my spare money goes to trips (except lately when I've spent far too much on tapes, zines and photos). I just wish I made more money so I could go more than the once a year I manage now.

The trainride took longer than I expected, almost an hour  and a half. Hmm, I didn't remember the trip from the airport being that long at all. I was eagerly looking out the window all the way, wanting to see as much as possible. Linda had not slept very much, if at all that night. Vicky's cats liked her too much :o) She soon fell asleep beside me on the seat, very comfortable seats. I still had trouble believing that I was really in America, I've wanted to come for so long and until only a few months ago I didn' t think I ever would.

Stepping out from the Penn Station on Manhattan was an experience I'm not likely to forget any time soon, if ever. Both me and Linda almost fell backwards looking up to see the sky between the unbelievably high buildings. Lucky me, Linda had some idea of the location of our first stop. The Empire State Building.

At the ticket office on ground level we found out that they had a Movie Ride, we got tickets. Wow, did Scotty from Star Trek give us a ride for our money. In an imaginary spacecraft we crashed on Wall Street, took a warp speed ride through FAO Schwarz and a dip in the East River. It was a blast, I love rides like that :o)

They told us there was ZERO VISIBILITY up there when we got our tickets. We didn't care, we were going up there, wanted to see it for ourselves (or rather see nothing for ourselves).

They weren't entirely accurate, we could glimpse the ground through the fog if we stuck our heads through the fence. And NO, I didn't get stuck!

I'm not entirely sure it was fog for that matter either, it was more like walking in the clouds (I know, I don't have to go to NY to be in the clouds, only need a CPicture for that). I've experienced being in the clouds before, more than once. But that was in the Austrian Alps or in the Swedish mountains, skiing. Here at least I had the ground as a reference point, in show its a little harder, its as if you're blind in white.

We soon got bored by the view (hehe) and got on the express elevator down from there, and ended up in the souvenir shop.

"What do you want to do now?" Linda asked as the polite guide she was. "How about something to eat?" I suggested. So we scouted the neighborhood for restaurants. What we found first wasn't a restaurant, it was the library. And being with the "Library Brat" we ofcourse had to get in there. Linda was amazed, they had soooo many computers in there. We decided to sign up for a computer later in the afternoon. Surprising Deb, again. It was kinda nice and quiet in there after the chaos on the streets.

Back outside we finally found a place to quiet our screaming bellies. "Pizza with everything" for me and a pizza with cheese and tomatosauce for Linda. We must have stayed at the small pizza place for at least an hour, we had so much to talk about. Fu, CP, USA, Sweden, TV in general, family, jobs or anything that came to mind.

Back on the streets again I didn't really have any goal in mind, but Central Park would be nice. Okay, lets see, how do we get there? I had already discovered that Linda liked to ask people when she was the least in doubt of direction or anything else. When we had our goal set, she immediately walked up to the nearest police officer and asked "How do we get to Central Park, the easiest way?" He was very nice, he told us that it was an easy  20 minute walk up Fifth Avenue. I had bought a map in the souvenir shop in Empire State Building (I love maps, have lots of them from all the places I've been over the years.)  and it didn't look all that long to me, but it was. Blocks were not like home, they were two or three times as long. 20 minutes was an understatement as we got sidetracked more than once.

First stop was the NY Public Library (no not the library we signed up for a puter in). Linda just had to have her picture taken in front of it. (sorry no pic, it was her camera)

Next sidetrack was the Rockefeller Center. Linda told me they have ice-skating and a huge Christmas tree there in the winter." ahh, I've seen that on TV, wow, that's here" (that feeling of recognition would be familiar by the time I arrived in Toronto for FU location spotting.)

In summertime the gold sculpture was surrounded by water and the square was occupied by an outdoor restaurant. Looked nice, but we already had lunch so we continued towards Central Park again.

Next stop was St. Patrick's Cathedral. It was amazing finding a building like that in the middle of all the modern high-rises around it. It didn't quite fit in there. Linda wanted to see it from the inside so we crossed the street and went inside.

It was beautiful inside. Linda quickly got her camera up and snapped a few pictures at the interior. Before I had the time to get mine up we were told that it wasn't allowed to photograph in the middle of mass. Oh well, the outside would have to do for me.

After that it wasn't much further to Central Park. We held our breath through the odor of the horses parked outside the entrance. No way I was going on a carriage ride with a smell like that, not to mention my horse allergy wouldn't agree with it.

The contrast was astounding, well inside the busy world outside of the high walls were effectively shut out. Birds were singing and we relaxed on a bench by the pond for quite a while.

The Image of the buildings outside the park will always be with me. If not for them, we could have been in the middle of some deep forest, miles away from the city.

On the way back to our   date at the computer we made a short visit at the Plaza hotel, wow what a setting for a pitstop :o) It was just as fantastic inside  as the Cathedral we'd seen earlier. But we did feel a bit out of place in there in our plain tourist clothes.

We made the library, only five minutes late, to find that they desperately needed to upgrade their software. Netscape 2.01 does NOT handle JAVA. So we couldn't chat :o( The personnel suggested we tried one of the local branches. Thank God Linda's got one of those at home or I would never have met her. We had some fun reading mail though, and I printed Wendy's Double Dog Dare Day. They looked funny at me when I couldn't stop laughing when I read it.

After the library we needed another meal and Linda suggested a place called Sbarros. Italian stuff, tasted great. Tired from all the walking we decided to take the train back to Long Island when we'd finished our dinner.

The train was crowded and we had to stand quite a while, our feet killing us, before we got seats. We stopped for a while at Jamaica, something wrong with the doors. All I could think as the staff argued over the intercom was "I wish this was the real Jamaica. I'd be off in a flash, heading for the beach and the water." The hot and humid train wasn't agreeing with me.

When we arrived at Ronkonkoma (didn't have to check this time, hehe) we called Vicky. She was almost finished for the day and we sat down to relax while we waited for her.

I was exhausted, I didn't want to think about getting up at four to get the rental. Neither was Linda. Vicky was an angel and agreed to do the early pickup herself and then get us later to sign up as codrivers. I was dead tired but managed to stay awake for some chat, but I'm afraid I was out just as cold by eleven as I was Sunday.