Saturday, June 12, 2010

Visiting the Big Apple

A month has passed now since my trip back east and I’m finally putting up my last post from that trip. New York City. A land of iron giants, business suits and endless lights, where dreams can come true or be crushed. There’s something exciting to see around every corner and that’s why I LOVE IT. I would move there in a heartbeat if I had an opportunity.
Although having at least a weekend to explore the city is ideal (I went twice during college), on the tight schedule of my east coast adventure a day trip to the big city was all we could manage. We looked into a couple bus options going from either DC or Baltimore but the hours were just not ideal for us with them either leaving DC to early or NYC to late. In the end Monica was such a trooper, volunteering to drive all the way to Princeton, NJ (where we caught the train) because of my inability to drive stick.

* On a side note, a funny thing happened at the train station. Monica went to pay for parking and gave me her $20 to pay for her ticket. So I walked to the ticket vending kiosk, chose our destination and then put in the $20 bill to pay for the $14.75 ticket. Then the change began to rain down into the return slot, and it kept coming, and coming and coming. Instead of seeing how much change had come down I just shoved the handfuls of coins into my coat pockets to count later, and used my card to buy my ticket. When Monica and I got to the train platform I pulled out all the change to count it as we waited for the train to arrive. Expecting tons of quarters I was surprised to find golden dollar coins in a quantity that equaled much more than $5.25, which was the change she should have gotten. After all was counted I had $42 in coins sitting on my lap. Who knew a ticket machine could double as a slot machine? Only in Jersey. After talking we decided to turn the extra money back in. We waited patiently in line and when we reached the front I dumped the pile of coins into the pay slot under the Plexiglas window. The man looked totally shocked that we turned it in but even more he desperately wanted to know what machine was spewing out the extra cash. “Um… on the other side of the tracks take a right and it’s the one on the right….” There were a few misunderstandings as to which right was right but I think he figured it out. Good deed for the day done and a good story to go along with it.*

So what do you do in New York City in 7 hours? We headed out from Penn Station, through Times Square and on to Central park, one of my favorite places in the city. It was a bit crowded from the AIDS walk that had happened that morning but we still enjoyed ourselves.






After that we went in search of Monicas great Aunt Gerties old apartment on the east side. Once we found it we went in search of New York Pizza followed by a visit to Dylans Candy Bar.



 
After stuffing ourselves with Pizza we jumped on the subway and made our way to the Brooklyn Bridge where we got amazing ice cream cones and I learned Monica is afraid of heights. She was a real trooper though and made it all the way out to the first tower.







Then we walked across the island, past ground zero and along Battery Park.






 
After our little walk we still had an hour before we had to catch our train back to NJ so walked back into the city to Wall St. We didn’t manage our time very well though, we made it back to Penn Station with seconds to spare to make the train.




It was a fun day in New York. I’m surprised how much we got to see and was so impressed by the weather, sunny and warm (I’ve always gone in fall before). I definitely have a list of things I want to see when I get back again, hopefully sometime soon.


1 comment:

jaredstorer said...

You got some great shots of NY. I can't wait to go there... and can hardly believe I haven't been yet.