(Written by kencraw)

Well, my quick tour of the East Coast has already made it to its final destination: College Park, MD.

On Tuesday morning my brother and I left Springfield, MA for New York City. We booked a hotel in Newark, NJ because, well, we’re cheap and NYC hotels are ridiculously priced. So, we found a hotel (Comfort Suites for $80 a night) not far from Newark-Penn Station which is on the end of the commuter subway from NJ into NY (so the subway ride in was only $1.75) called PATH.

The other unexpected “upside” was that this was the rail that terminates underneath the World Trade Center, or at least used to. So, while tourists who stayed in NYC are straining to find a spot to peak through the covered fences and see what remains in the hole in the ground, PATH takes you right through the middle of the what left of the sub-structure. If you’re interested in getting a good view of WTC, that’s the way to do it. If you’re already in NYC, you’ll have to actually take a trip to NJ and catch the train back to get the view because it’s not visible on your way out.

Once we got into town around 1:00 PM (drive from Springfield plus commuting in took a long time), our first order of business was to have lunch at Lombardi’s, the oldest/first pizza joint in the US. It was a fine pie. Definitely worth the trip for those pizza lovers out there. From there it was to the Empire State Building (a horrible tourist trap), Times Square, Rockafeller Center, St. Patricks Cathedral (a very important stop to me), the UN (already closed for tours by the time we got there) and Central Station. (Have I mentioned I’ve never been to NYC before? Or was it obvious?) We made great use of the in-town subway too and their $7.50 all day pass.

The last thing of note that we found was the cross from the WTC. Many know about it, but here’s more details at wikipedia. Well, at the moment it is being temporarily stored next to St. Peter’s Catholic Church which is essentially adjacent to the WTC. But it’s in a pretty unremarkable location on the side of the Church by the sidewalk without anything of note pointing out that it’s there. In fact, I walked by it and only noticed it when I did a double take on why there was a piece of steel sitting there. In fact, it was only at the end of the day when I came back to take pictures of it (to be posted later) that anyone else who walked by noticed it.

It was pretty funny to see the chain reaction of people noticing it as I was taking pictures and then others taking notice of it because the previous people had taken note of it. For all of 5-10 minutes after I took pictures just about everyone who walked by stopped to take a look. But by the time I was out of view of the area, it returned to being unnoticed.

The next day, today, we did the ferry tour of Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. Since we were in Newark, we took the ferry from the NJ side, which was far superior as about 4 out of every 5 people who were on the islands were on the NYC ferries. So while our ferries had no lines and were half empty, the ones from NYC required waiting a couple ferries to get through the line and then be crammed in like sardines.

We continued our tour down to Philadelphia in the afternoon. We saw the Liberty Bell and tried to see Independence hall, but were unable to go in because they had finished tours for the day (notice a pattern here?). From there we went to check out the Philadelphia Museum of Art, not because of the art because it’s famous from the Rocky movies for being the steps that he ran up all the time. There’s even a statue of Rocky off to the side and foot-prints of Rocky’s feet on the top of the stairs.

Finally, before heading to College Park, we stopped at the home of the first Phili Cheese Steak. It was pretty mediocre and you can get just as good a sandwich at any respectable place.

From there we drove to College Park. I took far too many pictures and I won’t bore all of you with them. Tomorrow, we’ll head into DC and tour it. We’ll do more of the same on Friday. Then of course, the Maryland game on Saturday.

More to follow…