Another copypasta e-mail, these things take too damn long to write. Sorry if I'm repeating info I've already posted here, most of the important stuff is in the first three or so paragraphs:
I'm in a coffee shop in Toronto, hanging out waiting to check in to our hostel, smack in the middle of Toronto, in the shadow of the CN Tower. We've just gotten here after spending two days in St. Catharine's, Ontario (15 minutes from Niagara Falls). We've come up here earlier than we had originally planned because we need to register and insure our car, and it is a tedious and longwinded process that will take at least a week, if not longer.
Apparently it is impossible to register a car in New Jersey or NY State unless you have a permanent address so when we bought the car we also got temporary insurance and registration, which expire today (4/8/10). We were led to believe by the dealer, family friends of Sam's in Canada and the Ministry of Transport website that with Sam being a Canadian citizen, we would be able to register + insure the car with just her passport. Of course, life is never that easy. After finishing in New York we decided that we would just pop up over the border, stay the night at a motel, go to a MoT office the next day, register the car, insure it, get back in our car and go along our merry way (we had planned to go see Jace in Buffalo and see a Frank Turner gig and probably Kat and Stephen in Rochester over the weekend.). What actually happened was that after driving 10 hours from NY to the Canadian border and spending another two hours waiting in a gridlocked queue of cars to actually cross the border, we had to stop at immigration/customs where we spent three further hours importing the car and paying taxes + duty as well as sorting out my visa. We also found out here that despite having had the car recently inspected, Canada has additional standards, including a requirement of daytime running lights. You know how old Volvos have lights that come on as soon as the car starts, and stay on? Every car in Canada has those. In total, from filling out the initial forms to actually finally being insured+registered will take five business days AT LEAST, in which time we can not go anywhere, principally because as of 1330 on the 4th, our car is uninsured and as such illegal to drive. We finally checked into the motel at just before 0300hrs.
The next day was no easier. Once again we operated under the assumption that we could just waltz into an MoT office, hand over Sam's passport and our international licenses and we would get our shiny Ontario plates. Instead we were told that we could not insure the car unless we had an Ontario driver's license. Once again, we thought this would be just fine because there is an agreement between Canada and Australia where you can get an Ontario driver's license in a straight swap for yr old Australian one, which is what Sam did when she came to Australia in the first place. This would be all well and good, except for that for some perverse reason, the province of Ontario requires that proof of the driver's experience be presented, and that it can only be mailed, not faxed or e-mailed, for it to be valid. This applies only to Western Australia. With every other state in the country, you can get it faxed, no worries. I am beginning to suspect that there are forces working specifically just to fuck with us.
So, now here is what we have to do:
- Contact the Ontario Ministry of Transport to arrange for an inspection and modifications on the car to bring it up to Canada's specs (this is what will take approximately five business days to sort out. Knowing our luck, it will actually take far longer).
- Contact the Department of Planning and Infrastructure in WA and have them express mail us Sam's driving history to the hostel we are staying at
- Take that history to the Ministry of Transport (wait in line for 2 hrs, probably), take a written driving test to get an Ontario license.
- Insure the car, at the cost of approximately one arm and one leg.
- Register the car, receive plates, pay more money to the wonderful Ontario provincial government.
We hope to do some sightseeing in there too. Maybe. Oh yeah, we have to go vote in the Australian federal election at some point as well. Yay!
We bought the car on the second day of being New York. We didn't actually go into Manhattan proper until the third day. Once there we went and visited Ground Zero (the subway from Hoboken station goes straight to the old World Trade Center site)and the WTC museum, an incredibly intense emotional experience. They are 26 stories into building the "Freedom Tower", which will stand where the South Tower of the WTC used to be. It will eventually stand 76 stories tall. It won't quite dominate the entire New York skyline like it used to, but it will still be the tallest thing in downtown. On the site of the North tower they are making a gigantic memorial fountain/waterfall, with water cascading into the foundation of the old tower.
After WTC we walked downtown to Wall St and Battery Park, which is the southmost point of the island and the location of the ferry for the Statue of Liberty. We had planned to go see the statue, but the hour and a half line as well as the near 100ºF heat (the first week we were in NYC was the hottest of the entire summer) and oppressive humidity discouraged us. Instead we walked back uptown along the east side of the island and past the Brooklyn Bridge before hanging a left into Chinatown and Greenwich Village where we stopped at Katz's Delicatessen, site of the fake orgasm scene from "When Harry Met Sally" (there's a sign hanging above the table it was shot at) as well as pastrami sandwiches the size of yr head.
The day after that we went to Midtown, Madison Square Garden (disappointingly round) Times Square (a slight letdown after Shinjuku, but pretty insane nonetheless) and walked around Central Park, where just after sunset we found ourselves caught in a torrential downpour. This was the only time it rained in New York while we were there, and we just happened to be in the middle of a park. We ended up having to run about 20 blocks down Fifth Avenue until we found some scaffolding to shelter under. Later on we found solace and shelter in a Hooters on 56th St. Hooters sucks, guys. Everybody talks about how amazing the wings at Hooters are, but I have no idea why.
The following day we spent moving our stuff across town to stay with my friend Eugene, who lives in Forest Hills, a somewhat built up suburban are in Queens that's most famous for being the home of The Ramones as well as Peter Parker/Spiderman.
The following three days were spent roving about all of the touristy stuff in the city including the Natural History Museum, Guggenheim Museum, Statue of Liberty (still had to wait an hour and a half), Empire State Building (two hours in line, you had to queue for tickets, queue for ground floor security, queue for the elevator to the 80th floor, queue for the elevator for the 86th floor, then queue for the observation deck. Then you get to queue to get out again! And this was at 10pm), Central Park Zoo, NBC Studio Tour and Rockefeller Plaza Observation Deck. All of these places were amazing, and we could've easily spent a whole day in the Natural History Museum alone. Even with the cursory visits we paid everything we still couldn't fit in everything we planned.
For the rest of the week we hung out with Eugene and his friends and explored more of New York's less obvious attractions, including going "urban spelunking" in an abandoned subway tunnel that runs the length of Manhattan's west side, which has been converted into a kind of gallery space for graffiti artists. We also visited Chelsea and SoHo's fashion districts and St. Mark's, which was the epicentre of the early punk rock scene in New York city.
That more or less brings me up to date!
TL:DR; Fuck you, Ontario provincial government!
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Topic: Blog Thread III : Look Who's Blogging Now (Read 899901 times)