Friday 28th - New York to New Jersey

India's highlight of the US trip must be meeting up with Arwen and Gianna, her friends from school in Cape Town. The girls live in New Jersey now, and India has been counting how many times she has to sleep until she can see the girls. It was Friday, and zero more times to sleep.

I'd decided to bring with us most of the household things we'd need on the month long trip, as hiring them from the rental company would simply have been a waste of money. Even buying new ones would be cheaper than hiring them. Matias did a good job packing bed sheets, towels, mugs, plates, spoons, saucepans etc. They all fit in two large and one small bag. The amount of luggage was manageable until we bought a three wheeled pushchair and got a baby car seat and a holder with the buggy.

Heikki phoned the RV rental company and arranged for us to get the van a day early - today. We'd need to travel 50 miles north of Manhattan to get it. Traveling there with a taxi would have been easiest, but we'd go by train. We pondered with what to do with our increased pile of stuff. One option would be to leave them at the hotel, but then we'd have to find our way back to Manhattan to fetch it. I might be able to drive there with our huge RV during the night, with no other cars on the road, but we're not allowedin Manhattan tunnels because it has LPG for cooking ect. So train it would be. We decided to get porters at Grand Central station to help with the luggage.

We took a taxi to the train station. There was traffic so we were running late. As soon as we approached the Station, we realised there were no porters. We'd need to make the train as the window for picking up the RV was merely a half an hour, so we had no option. We'd need to carry everything ourselves, in a hurry.

Grand Central Station is nothing compared to stations like Liverpool Street. Medium would be a better description.

The train ride took an hour and 10 minutes. There was an announcement before our station, but we couldn't make out what they said. People started rushing down the isle past us. One of the passengers told us we wouldn't be able to get out from the closest door. We'd need to walk down a couple of carriages to get out. Heikki started rushing down with some of the bags, and the fellow passenger offered to help. India's puschair, with what topped with backbacks, toys and baby seats, got stuck as I pushed it down the isle. We'd never make it... (to be continued, we need to go out now)