NYC Recap!

June 2, 2011

As you probably could have guessed, NYC was amazing. My whole life I’ve always thought D.C. was the greatest city in the United States, but NYC could quite possibly take that honor. On the first day, my sister on several occasions compared to D.C. to NYC, but really they are very different cities, culture wise. Everything is a lot freer over there, where as, even in the touristy areas, D.C. is always a bit more contrived. But, I must say, the tourists here are a whole lot nicer, courteous and just plain not as stupid.

My trip started at 4:15 a.m. on Monday, May 30. I was taking the 7 a.m. Bolt Bus express to 33rd and 7th in New York, and even though it was a holiday and no one would be on the roads, my father made me get up absurdly early. I arrived at Union Station 45 minutes before my bus was to leave, and as you can imagine, there wasn’t a whole lot to do at 6 in the morning. After sitting in the terminal for a while we boarded the bus and ended up having to sit next to the toilet. It was pretty gross to say the least, but it did make for some good jokes.

Four and a half hours later we were in the beautiful city that is New York. My sister, my friend Marcela and I grabbed a taxi, only the second one I’ve ever been on in my life, and headed to the Milford Plaza Hotel near Times Square. Although the lobby looked pretty nice, the room was incredibly tiny. I suppose you get what you pay for, but it was pretty absurd. We also had a beautiful view of a trash heap. Nonetheless, you don’t go to New York for the hotel, you go for the city, and boy did it deliver.

The first day we spent a great deal of time in Times Square and Manhattan in general. We went shopping on Fifth Avenue and took a plethora of photos of giant billboards in Times Square. We ate New York style pizza (good, but can’t compare to Chicago style) and just enjoyed the Empire State.

The second day was the big day of our trip–our only full day. We woke up bright and early and took the Subway to Central Park. Riding the Subway was quite an experience. I liked the low prices (only $2.50 fare) and the extensiveness of the railway, but compared to D.C.’s metro, it was confusing. There are so many lines that take you to such random places, and the way transferring lines works on it was very second nature to me. Although I would love for the D.C. metro to be more extensive (and cheaper!) like New York’s system, I really do like it.

Central Park was pretty amazing. It’s incredible that such a vast amount of forest, playgrounds and fields could be right in the middle of the concrete jungle! I was also fascinated with how rocky NYC was. I was very surprised to see gigantic rock formations throughout the park and city. I suppose it has to do with glacial-receding post-Ice Age, but I wasn’t expecting to see tiny mountains all over the place.

After Central Park we hopped on the Subway again and made our way to Canal Street. I’m not a huge shopper, so cheap, poorly made merchandise didn’t really appeal to me, but my sister and my friend wanted to go. It was unbearably hot, but we made our way up and down Canal Street and looked at lot of stuff. I really couldn’t believe how much people tried to get you to go into their stores. It was a bit too aggressive to be honest.

Afterward, we went into SoHo and then Little Italy to try Lombardi’s Pizza. It’s obviously a tourist trap, as a small cheese pizza cost over $16, but we wanted to try it out anyway. It was good, and it was nice to have reprieve from the high temperatures. Post-Lombardi’s we stopped by Rice to Riches, a rice pudding specialty store in Little Italy, where my friend tried some of their berry flavored rice pudding. Icky to me, delicious to her.

We still weren’t done with Little Italy, and thanks to good fortune, we happened to be there during a St. Anthony celebration. There were street vendors, games, food, decorations and lots of people. They had a big St. Anthony statue on one side of the street where people could pin dollar bills to it. It was really, really cool.

We then headed over to the Brooklyn Bridge where I was able to get some beautiful photos of the water. It was a pretty long walk–I didn’t realize the bridge was that long! After that we headed back to Times Square where we spent the rest of the night.

On our last day we took a trip on the Staten Island Ferry. We didn’t particularly care about Staten Island (we didn’t stay very long on it) but we wanted to get a nice view of the Statue of Liberty and the City from the water. It was a pretty crappy boat, but it was fun! We even saw our first fight in New York, which was pretty epic.

The rest of the trip winded down after that. We ate at Chevy’s near Times Square (and had a fabulous waitress named Vicky “Salsa Queen”) and ate a giant cupcake at Europan Bakery nearby. We then headed back to 33rd and 7th, but unfortunately got lost and had to run 15 blocks in 20 minutes so we wouldn’t miss our bus. In 80+ degree weather. You can probably tell that we weren’t looking our best our last few minutes in New York. But all was not lost, we had a fabulous view of a Greek god on the bus.

It was a wonderful trip. I definitely want to visit New York again this summer, and funds willing, I hopefully will. For now, I’m spending some down time at home before I leave for the IHS seminar on Saturday in Bryn Mawr, Pa. After that Harrisburg. Crazy how fast life is going by.