I returned from the US five hours ago, at 12:20 local Norwegian time.
The jet lag is messing up my head. My eyes want to sleep, but my body wants to stay awake. I can't decide if I'm hungry or not. I think maybe a little bit. I'll grab a snack later. The time difference is six hours. Sleeping on the airplane is near impossible. Especially when you're 6'8" and have longer legs than usual...
This was my third summer vacation in a row that I spent in the US. It's quickly becoming a tradition. I probably wouldn't have gone over there this year if my sister Hilde hadn't convinced me to go with her. But I'm glad she did! It was a great trip!
My brother Arne lives in Philly, so our main motivation of going to the US was to visit him. Me and my other brother Johannes went over to visit him there last year as well, but since then he has bought a new apartment, so I was eager to see what it looked like. We didn't go to Philly right away though. My brother was on a business trip to Las Vegas the first week, so me and my sister stayed in New York the first 4 days, and then later took the Amtrak down to Philly to meed up with Arne there.
I've been to New York twice before, but never as long as 4 days. The extra time was nice to have, cause then we didn't have to rush around Manhattan in order to see everything. We did the usual touristy stuff like visiting the Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, Ground Zero, Time Square and so on. We also went to see "The Phantom of the Opera" on Broadway. I had always wanted to see that musical, so even thought we had to wait in line for one hour to get tickets it was a great experience! The hotel we stayed at was the Skyline hotel in Hell's Kitchen. It was just a couple of blocks away from Time Square, so no complaints there. The service was also good. We were upgraded from a normal hotel room to a suite for some reason. On the bad side there was no breakfast included. And also there was some restoration work going on in the elevators so they were often unavailable. A little bit annoying. I wouldn't mind staying at the hotel again though!
In Philly I saw my brothers apartment for the first time. It was a very nice place! Very central, and a very interesting layout. The apartment was spread out on three floors. Sitting room and kitchen on 1st floor, bedroom and bathroom on 2nd floor, and another room on the 3rd floor with access to the roof! A friend of my brother's also teamed up with us in Philly and stayed with us the whole week. So the apartment was a little crowded with all 4 of us staying there, but it worked out quite fine! From Philly we had day trips out to the Amish country, Washington DC and Nazareth (Martin Guitar Co). We also had plenty of time to check out the historical district in Philly. I saw a lot of it last year, but didn't mind refreshing my memory. The Art Museum, Constitution Center, Liberty Bell and Penn's landing were just a few of the tings we saw. We also went to the Eastern State Penitentiary. That was incredible and can be recommended to everyone who ever visits Philly! Al Capone is one of the prisoners who have been in there. It was the first Penitentiary ever built and served as the model for more than 300 other prisons world wide. Originally the prisoners would be isolated and not allowed to talk to each other. The purpose of this was so the prisoners could think about the crime they had committed and develop a feeling of guilt and regret.
Now I have decided that I am in fact hungry, so I'll wrap this up.
The bottom line is that my vacation in the US was a great success! The weather was great most of the time, and my sister was a great traveling companion! I'll try to add some pictures later.
