Day 2: Sunday - Waking up in a city that never sleeps

New York New York to Burlington

I want to wake up in a city that never sleeps…

View from Diana and Leon's Chelsea apartment

First morning in NY and we started the day New York style at Murray’s Bagels with huge serves of cream cheese (plain and maple, raisin, walnut flavours) – enough to make a cheesecake, accompanied by a couple of supersized filtered coffees.

Yum! NY Bagels and coffee

Refueled and refreshed we walked west through the streets of Chelsea towards the Hudson river admiring the apartments, townhouses and terraces each with their own distinctive fire escape ladders as we went.

Chelsea NY

We came across High Line Park, a disused raised freight line that used to transport materials to and from the industrial west side of Manhattan, which was converted into a beautiful park in 2002. It runs from West 30^th St to Gansevoort St; we joined it at W 23^rd St and followed it through the Meatpacking district to West Village. It was great that someone had the vision to push for such an unusual and amazing place in the middle of the city - you feel completely removed from the intensity of the city when up in the calm gardens overlooking the river.

High Line NY

 Before we knew it, we’d run out of time and had to race up the narrow 4 flights of stairs in the apartment block to grab our bags, then down again (contemplating the fire escape hatch) and through the streets to Penn Station for our train to Burlington. Luckily we arrived at the perfect moment, with the crowds of commuters milling around the station board and the platform number just ticking over to tell us we were departing from the East platform.

Arriving at Penn Station

 It was time to relax again and be taken on a journey – the Vermonter raced along, and both of us had a jet-lag induced snooze, and caught up on some reading and writing. We caught our first glimpse of the Manhattan skyline as we left the city, then the farmhouses of Connecticut and Massachusetts, and the forests of New Hampshire and finally Vermont.

First glimpse of the Manhattan skyline

Amazed at the lush forest through southern Vermont

We didn’t linger at Essex Junction where we alighted the train, even though there was a raging town block party, but caught a cab into Burlington and Dan’s place, where we were staying the night.

Arriving in Essex Junction

Dan's place in Burlington

We let ourselves in to the bright green, 2-story, weatherboard house and bumped into a stunned, and slightly swaying twenty-something hipster guy. It turned out that this was Dan’s housemate, Evan, who is the local DJ and was getting ready for a gig later in the evening. Evan recovered quickly from his initial surprise, “Whoa, man. You guys are from Australia? We have heaps in common then – we both hate the British!”

Before he headed off, he suggested we check out the Farmhouse in town for dinner. We took his recommendation and had some delicious Bratwurst and a local beer (from a huge selection), then savored a final Ben and Jerry’s icecream (Salted caramel and Americone, Triple Caramel Chunk and Vanilla Heath Bar) – last one for the next week.