hendrikch.com - Hendrik Christian Blog on Daily Life

Our many tours schedule has ended the day before when we reached New York from Boston. As planned, we still have two full days in New York before our flight back. We visited my father’s brother (read: my uncle) who lives in New Jersey. My uncle brought us to a place no travel tour will ever bring you to, a pumpkin farm.

Notice how many pumpkins, big and small are in the farm. We took the big ones for photos, we didn’t actually buy any of them hehe… I was so overwhelmed seeing soooooo many pumpkins in one place. Have I said there are so many of them? If you haven’t gotten the idea, here’s another picture of them.

Pumpkins are really heavy too.

Not far from all these pumpkins are the apple farm, or garden, whatever you call it. It’s free all-you-can-eat apples. Every apples you could eat there are free. Only those that you picked to bring home are payable.

If there are such a term like free-flow apples, this was it.

Red apples, green apples, delicious apples, swollen apples, stepped-on apples, all kinds of apples, you name it, they’re all here. Unfortunately, there are also lots of apples on the ground, unwanted.

In order to get the apples you wanted, you need to prepare to climb trees like monkeys do.

Just to grab that one apple you want high up hanging from the tree.

For dinner, we had nice sumptuous meals, with all kinds of animals. Prawns, beef, chickens.

Complete with vegetables and red wines.

On a totally unrelated topic, I found these antiques in my auntie’s place.

A 1.2GB hard drive. Even my mobile phone has three times that capacity in a card that’s probably 1/1000th of this size. Nevertheless, it was always fun to remember the past, wasn’t it?

This hard drive was probably bought slightly over 10 years ago. If that was not antique enough, how about a still-working Macintosh system first launched in 1987, complete with keyboard and that famous one-button mouse? No hard drive, no internal storage, only a floppy drive in front.

You had to wonder how far Macintosh systems have come along in 20 years, but they still stick with their concept of all-in-one CPU-integrated-in-monitor that carries its design even to the most recent iMac. Even one button mouse design still holds today. Heck, the latest Macbook series don’t even have any mouse buttons. When other people are going from two-button mouse to three and beyond, Apple has gone from one-button mouse 20 years ago to zero-button today.

No visit to Boston will be complete without visits to their famous universities. First, we dropped by Harvard University, just next to Harvard Square. In the campus, there is the statue of John Harvard. The statue is actually nicknamed "The Statue of Three Lies". For all the good nicknames in the world, they come out with such a nickname for a statue in one of the most famous university in the world, *weird*.

Why that nickname? On the statue, it was written "John Harvard, Founder, 1638". The truth is, John Harvard was a contributor, like a donator, not the founder. That’s the first lie. The second lie was that Harvard University was founded in 1636, not 1638. The third lie was the statue itself. It doesn’t depict the face of actual John Harvard, but some random student used as a model by the sculptor. There you go, three lies in one statue in the greatest university in the world, *haiz*

The campus itself looks much smaller than NTU, but maybe I haven’t explored much of the area.

However, they certainly have a very nice building for their library. And if you haven’t noticed from my outfit, it was very cold in the morning in Boston when I was there.

Next up was another famous university, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or usually referred simply as MIT.

They replaced all "U"s to "V"s so it’ll feel more Latin, and people will think they look smarter that way. This time, looking at the campus map, I am sure that MIT has a huge campus.

After visiting Harvard and MIT, we went to Trinity Church. Next to this church, they have a statue of a preacher by the name of Phillips Brooks.

The church building itself looks like any other church built in the 18th century, but what make it looks great is its reflection on buildings next to it.

Notice how nice the reflections of the church is on the all-glass building next to it. I believe churches should be like this, to reflect God’s love and shine on others around it.

We then proceeded to the downtown area where we saw more tall buildings around.

Our destination in downtown was none other than the famous Quincy Market.

In Quincy Market, you have to treat yourself to lobsters, clam chowders, and all kind of seafood on offer.

Don’t worry, their lobsters are not this BIG. Their fridge-magnet lobsters are so uniquely-Boston that we bought a dozen of them back.

That turned out to be the last place we visit in our 5 days 4 nights very-happening (at least for me) tour to Canada. From Quincy Market, we all head back to New York. Good for us, out of three drop-off points, our Flushing Queens was the first, so we had actually reached back New York by 4pm for a well-deserved rest (and laundry).

Not so far north from Montreal city, we visited the last city to visit in Canada before heading back to USA. That is Quebec City, a city, although located in Canada, has most of its people speak French, you know Bonjour-speaking people.

First, we dropped by its Old Town, that is so peaceful, clean, and well kept.

So lucky when we were there, Quebec City was celebrating her 100-year anniversary.

Our next destination was a defense post built years ago, called Citadelle de Quebec. There were real war machineries around, like a tank.

Or a machine gun.

Or its bigger brother, a bazooka.

How about seven of them?

Around the castle was a river, which acts as a natural defense system as well. This defense post or military base is sloped in such an angle that opponents from across the river can’t see into the military base.

For lunch, we went around the city and found a French cafe. The waitress were not particularly fluent in English, but she’s definitely speaks French very well.

Guess, who’s that at the corner of our table paper? None other than Celine Dion.

Soon after the lunch, we headed back to Boston, USA.

As usual at the border, our tour bus, because of me, was stuck in the US border for over an hour while trying to enter back to USA. *haiz* I wonder how bored those people in the bus were while waiting for me being interviewed, questioned, and checked by the US Borders Officers.

Unfortunately for our tour, by the time we reached Boston, it was already too late for a city tour, so we headed straight for dinner and hotel.

Today, we were all asked to wake up real early, and left hotel at 5.45 AM !! The reason being, we were scheduled to reach Thousand Island Cruise by 8.45 AM, and the journey there from Toronto took close to 3 hours. As the name suggests, there are A LOT of small islands around here, many of which only have ONE house on it.

I’m not sure how much each island costs, but I’m sure it must be very expensive. On the cruise ship, there are two monitors where you can see exactly where you are. Can you spot where the cruise ship was located at in the picture below?

It is that little red dot on the top right hand corner. We went from Ivy Lea to Rockport, going around to see Boldt Castle, and then we turned around and back to Ivy Lea.

We then reached Ottawa around lunch time. For lunch, we all had the same thing, their hotdog, supposedly the best in US and Canada.

They had lots of old buildings, but well maintained, and I have no clue what they are.

Soon, we left Ottawa, and three hours later, we reached Montreal. The first place we went to in Montreal was Saint-Joseph Du Mont-Royal.

The view down from the church was breathtaking too. From the front of the church, you get a very nice view of the Montreal city.

In the church, they have a big pipe organ too. Too bad, no one was playing it when I was there.

Soon, about 15 minutes journey later, we visited a 1976 Olympic Games Stadium.

We took a lift up that tower behind me, all the way to the top. The view from the top was really breathtaking as well. The view of some of the stadiums around.

The view of the city of Montreal.

Down the tower, we were ushered into the actual stadium. I got to see the Athletic stadium.

Also, the swimming complex, although much smaller than Beijing’s The Cube.

Just outside the tower, inside the Olympic complex, they have the flags of all countries which won gold medals during that 1976 Olympics. Sadly for Canada as the host, they didn’t have any flag up there since they didn’t manage to win a single gold medal during that Olympics. Shouldn’t host nation at least receive a dispensation to put up their flag there?

Last evening, we only stopped by USA side of Niagara Falls. This morning, we went across the border to Canada to have American buffet lunch on top of the Skylon Tower, where you could see the Niagara Falls from few hundreds feet high up.

Before we went across the border, in the morning, we took Maid of the Mist cruise ride that would bring us in a ship very near to the Niagara Falls. It’s so near, you are guaranteed to get wet that they gave everyone a raincoat to protect yourself.

Whenever sun shines on Niagara Falls, you’re bound to see rainbow, from one end to the other end.

Now, how often do you get to take a picture with a full rainbow, it’s so brilliant?

Many thousand of years back, there were no rainbows. Until one day, after God has sent a great flood to wipe out human beings from the face of the earth, except Noah and his family, He promised that He will never wipe out human beings again by flood. With every promise, there’s always a sign, and for this promise, God gave rainbow, beautiful rainbow that we can see until now.

After we’re done with US-side of Niagara Falls, we all went across to Canada.

Trouble maker like me, however, never get enough luck with the US Customs and Borders officers. There were no enforced border when you get out from the USA to Canada, when two weeks ago, I was told I need to get a departure stamp when I leave USA, or else I won’t be allowed to get back into USA. Only me, myself, and myself. None of the other tour members have this issue.

Since I didn’t meet any of the USA Customs and Borders officers, after I went over to Canada side, I asked them about this matter. They confirmed that I need to get back to USA side to get the departure stamp before I get into Canada, or else, I may have had my last ever footstep in USA. As such, having no choice, I walked back the Rainbow Bridge connecting Canada and USA, fortunately shorter than the bridge between Singapore and Johor Bahru. After I got the departure stamp (after pretty long interviews and questions, why I didn’t report, where I was going, am I coming back to USA again, until when, blah blah blah, you get the idea), I walked back the Rainbow bridge again heading to Canada. No bus, no taxi, nothing, just walking.

While the rest of the tour members are having buffet lunch at the top of the Skylon Tower, looking down the beautiful Niagara Falls, I was stuck walking back and forth between two borders trying to get all the paper works completed properly in a chilling weather.

By the time I reached Skylon Tower, I only had 20 minutes until the time our group had to leave. I would never be able to finish $35 worth of buffet in 20 minutes, so I opted for a cheaper Starbucks cookies and pastries downstairs for my lunch. Sad

Thankfully, everything was done properly, and I didn’t miss the bus going to Toronto.

Frankly, I was already so tired that I slept all the way to Toronto, and I really had no more mood for sightseeing.

There were two places we visited in Toronto. The New City Hall that looks like an eye ball and eyelids from the top and CN Tower, the highest building in the city.

The Toronto New City Hall from the side.

The Toronto New City Hall from the top.

Can you visualize it?

CN Tower, the tallest building in the city, I can’t reach the top.

After we reached hotel, I did my usual-night-time tasks, copying photos and videos, backing them up, and if there are Internet connection, uploaded them to Smugmug, and checked the weather for the day after. Standard stuff. My Macbook is pretty much indispensable for this 3.5 weeks trip. How else can you manage thousand of photos during this trip without a laptop, right?

By the time we all hit the third week, not to mean that I don’t appreciate my holiday, but when you can have too much of something, holiday seems to me as one of them. Just two weeks ago, I was excited, prepared for tour around USA. After I reached the third week, the feeling of tiredness has sunk in.

The main destination for today was the mighty Niagara Falls. On our way there, we passed by the interesting Corning Museum of Glass.

First, you’ll get to see how they “created” glass pumpkin, by keeping blowing and turning the “liquid” glass material so gravity won’t help to shape the glass by pulling the “liquid” glass material south.

This chess set is completely glass material, very interesting.

I’m not sure what this is, but it looks like a ship. Again, made of glass.

We reached Niagara Falls in the evening, and I took some pictures that I could took in a dark pitch black night sky.

Near to Niagara Falls is the Three Sisters Island.

You can step so near to the water that you know, few hundred meters ahead will go down the Niagara Falls. Surprisingly, the water here are still pretty calm, but I’m guessing the current below are pretty strong.

When we reached the Niagara Falls, my first impression was like “This looks much smaller than I thought it’d look like”.

As it’s already pretty dark, we couldn’t spend much time in the Niagara, so we called it a night.

Today, there are no tour scheduled, so I finally got a chance to wake up late, as late as 10AM. It felt so good to wake up so late after waking up 7AM latest every day for the last many mornings.

After lunch, we took New York subway to Roosevelt Island, the island between Queens and Manhattan part of New York city.

There’s nothing in this island really except houses. You could probably walk around the island in an hour. From Roosevelt Island to Manhattan, we took the $2 cable car that passes by next to 59th St Bridge you see on the map above.

We then walked to the famous Fifth Avenue on the line of 59th St. Walking south, we stopped by Apple Store again that was really crowded with people. Next to Apple Store is a huge toy store Fao Schwarz. It’s so big, we spent more than 2 hours in the store.

Taking picture with a toy soldier. He’s very friendly, as all their other staffs I feel.

You may have seen a 3D sphere-shaped puzzle before, but wait until you see a super-sized world map they have in the store.

They also have a huge piano for you to play, with your feet no less.

Just outside the store, exactly in front of the Apple Store, there were pairs of guys and girls hugging each other, not wanting to let go of each other. For all you could guess, they were actually advertising a new kind of drink called Fuze, which is a combination of black and green tea.

Standing near them are people distributing their new drink to passerby. It tastes pretty nice too, I think.

Walking downtown, we hit 50th St where Rockefeller Center is located. By this time, the legs are already pretty tired, so we hit back home.

I wonder how much they’re selling this thing.