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2003-10-17 to 2003-10-19 - My Trip To New York, New York, USA
Pre-Trip I am going to try to give you a play-by-play. But the nights pretty much blended into the next day. So the only way your going to be able to tell the difference is the fact that I hit the sack for an extended period of time (We did take naps...) Okay, my trip to New York was a trip resulting in 'mi novio' showing me some pictures of her trip to New York with her friend Erin. I've always wanted to go and seeing her pictures made me want to even go more. Afterwards I didn't give it much thought for a week or so. Then, during some downtime at work I went to Northwest's website. I found round trip tickets from Minneapolis, MN to JFK, NY for $250.00 'Wow', I thought, 'that's cheap'. Maybe I could talk Jessica into going with me. Expecting to perform some arm twisting, I purposed a weekend trip to New York. Unexpectedly I didn't need to twist anything. She thought it was a great idea. I was pretty happy too. I think that it is easier to head out and try something new when you have someone to go with that has been there before. I ended up purchasing us tickets at Expedia. I was able to buy the tickets for the flight and then I also bought us tickets for Rent (a broadway musical) and the Sex-and-the-city tour. I thought that you can't go to New York without seeing something on broadway. It sacraligious or something like that. Going there also required me to do a couple of things too. I needed to see the statue of liberty and the world trade center site. Other than that I was open to anything. So, tickets were purchased and we started getting ready. Jessica booked us a room at 'The Bently'. It was a nice hotel near cental park (6 blocks or so directly north). I was happy not to have to pick this one out. I had NO IDEA where to stay. If it was up to me, I'm sure I would have spent a small fortune to spend two nights in a box on the corner. Thank goodness is all I have to say. Friday Our flight was schedualed to leave at 7:05 am. This meant that we needed to get to the airport pretty early. Now that I think about it we got there around 5:45 or so. Our passage through security was pretty easy. No problems there. We went to the gate and waited for about 20 minutes or so before they started boarding. They were requesting people to be 'bumped', but since we were on a schedual, that wasn't an option for us. We tried to get different seats, but to no avail. We were stuck at the very back of the plane. I have read that if the plane goes down it is the safest place to be, but come on. The seats were a little tight, but with headphones and a little sleep the journey passed without notice. When we got to JFK we decided to take the subway into town. This threw a little kink in the plans due to the fact that it took alot longer that we had planned to get to the subway and then off to downtown Manhattan. But it was a fun experience and what the heck, we were on vacation. There are no time limits when your on vacation. We wandered a little on the outskirts of central park for a few blocks before taking a taxi to the hotel. Okay, I have to say it. Taxis are so cheap! I would recommend it to anyone who wants to get where you need to go, and in a hurry. We checked in to the hotel and then hurried off to the sex-and-the-city meeting place - Lafyette fountain. We scarfed down some more street vendor hotdogs then boared the bus for the tour. I'm sure that Jessica would have more to say about the tour than I would but here is the most important thing: You get a comfy ride around all of Manhatten for 3 and a half hours all the while the bus driver has to manuver through the crazy traffic - for $35.00. This is the best part. You couldn't have paid a taxi to do it. Plus all of the cool stores get pointed out and you get to window shop from the bus window. We made four stops:
Saturday This day planned on being a little more New York educational. Not so much drinking (well that too) but more touristy. Is that really a word? Probably not. We woke up around 10ish and got on our way. We hailed a cabbie that drove us down the FDR to Battery Park. Again, cabbies are so cheap in NYC. It was about 10-15 bucks for the trip all the way from our hotel. We hopped out near the statue of liberty boat moring. As we started we had to acutally walk through Battery Park. This is where we were confronted by people selling tons of purses and watches. Of course these where all knockoffs, but what the hell. We bought three rolex (which I later started calling stolex) watches. One for me (claro que!), one for my brother, and one for Jessica's friends boyfriend. I found out later that I got ripped off on the price, but rather there than in a dark alley huh? We then wandered over to the entrance to get on the boat to see the Statue of Liberty. The wait wasn't long, I thought. We waited for about 30-45 minutes to get through the security (just like an airport now) - Jessica said that if we WOULD have been there at 9:00 like we planned, there wouldn't have been a wait at all. There were plenty of vagrents there playing music and trying to get a dollar from all of the tourists. I wouldn't say that I'm stingy, but find a real job - I never give money to these people. Dateline NBC ruined it for me. I watched a show that talked about beggers making over 100K on the streets. They even followed one after a long day and he walked up to his brand new Jeep Grand Cherokee. Bleh. Anyway back to the story. We got on the boat and I remember remarking about the nice weather. It was about 60 degrees and sunny. Couldn't be a better day in October. The boat sailed past Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. When I got home my mother told me her dad went through immigration proceedings there! I decided that we wouldn't get off the boat. Why bother? We couldn't go up and look out, so from the boat, I'd already seen all that I wanted to see. That helped to speed up our trip. Plus, Jessica had already been there before earlier that year. Getting back to shore we started wandering up to the site of the World Trade Center. I had my hiking boots on so I was prepared to trek all over New York. It was pretty sad when we got to the world trade center. They took up an entire city block. New York City block! Wow, those were some mamouth structures. It was packed with tourists and New Yorkers. After the viewing, we started wandering to china town. The neat thing about New York was the fact that there were actually designated areas for different cultures. We got to china town after a nice walk and I had to drop a duece. The only place that didn't look scary was the chinaized Subway. We had a little snack there and then wandered off to look for purses for Jessica. I had my name written in Chinese so I could put it above my karate belts. Even though the karate that I'm learning is Korean Style - not Chinese. Jessica didn't find anything that she liked so we took a cab back to the 'shopping' area that we learned of in our Sex-And-The-City tour. Bought some stuff from J-Crew and French Connection. I got a shirt that said: I'm HUGE this season'. Gotta laugh. It was getting late and we had tickets to go and see Rent at 8:00 so we boogied home, changed, and tried to hail a cab in the cold that would get us there on time. We got to the theater district just in time for the show. We walked in, sat down and then the show started. Man, that's what I call timing. It was a excellent show. And in retrospect, seemingly fitting for going to New York to see. Reminicient of struggling actors and life struggle for that city. Afterwards, we wandered through Times Square on a gorgeous night to a small Italian restaurant where we had a nice dinner. The food was fantastic and we had a great time. Something funny that happened was when I tried to pour some more wine for Jessica (trying to get her drunk :) ) the waiter came over and pulled the glass of wine from my grasp and scolded me for pouring the wine on our 'special occation'. He said this all in Italian good thing that I knew a little spanish. Though I felt a little embarassed, I did pour her some later - looking around for the waiter first. That night we went back to Tao and drank much adult beverage. Getting back to the hotel around 2:00 - we packed so that we were ready to leave at 5:00 - our flight left at 6:00 or so. Sunday We crashed for an hour and a half or so. Getting up - it wasn't too bad finding a cabbie to take us to JFK airport. We were both dog tired when we got to the airport, but I think happy to be heading home to sleep. In chinatown we had used an internet cafe to look for a place to eat on saturday night, and pre-checkin for the flight. In the pre-checkin we found that they were looking for people to 'bump'. We requested to get bumped for the flight to detroit. Unfortuantely we were not. Fortuantely we were promoted to first class just for asking! Nice. Comfy seats that I promptly fell asleep in. Found out later that we could have drank ourselves to oblivian if we wanted to - free booze in first class. Getting to detroit we volunteered to be 'bumped' again. This time we were demoted to a puddle jumper and a $300.00 travel voucher. Which paid for our tickets (they were $270.00). I looked at my ticket when we got at the plane and joked that my seat assignment was 'co-pilot'. The plane was small! The plane flew us to Wausau which I didn't know had an airport. We sat there for an hour - had some lunch - which was horrible - and made fun of the local 'non-city' folks. After an hour we went through security again and hopped on the next plane - which was a jet. Touching down in the Twin Cities only two hours later than we had initially planned. We took a taxi back to my place and unlike NYC cabbies here are expensive! I think I spent more on the cab ride back from the airport than I did the whole time I was in New York. But heading to sleep was so nice - I was tired. Hope you liked that little escpade - I know that I did. I would gladly go to New York anytime! |
