JonathanLIVE

My Trip To New York City

Posted on March 22nd, 2007 by JonathanLIVE.
Categories: Personal News.

Four fun filled days in NYC could have been what my trip was like, but it wasn’t. Perhaps the more interesting moments of the trip took place at certain landmarks and in China town. The trip was arranged by my friends Sean and Shona, who also invited another friend of theirs Steph to come along. The first day we arrived there was a little after noon. We left our bags at the hotel and then went off to check on showtimes at Times Square for some Broadway show. I didn’t want to go to the show they wanted to, so I skipped it. We stopped in at Dave and Busters for a little entertainment. If you have never been to one of those, it is basically an adult game place. You play various games to win tickets that go towards prizes. I managed to win 530 tickets :). That was enough to get me a teddy bear and a mug. Yay. … While there, the power went out. Which was very strange considering we were right in the heart of Manhattan. We decided to leave while the power was still out. Everyone was a little freaked out not knowing what was going on. I managed to get a few pictures that day, but not much since it started raining. When we got back to the hotel which Sean arranged, it was nice to find that we would be sharing a washroom with the entire floor. The room we got had a nice stale smell to it, and was extremely small. After giving high praise to Sean for his quality choice, we managed to get to sleep.

Day 2 started with breakfast at this little Euro cafe that was around the corner from our (AHEM) Hotel. That day was filled with hail storms all day. We managed to buy some umbrellas and just got about shopping all day at various places. At Century 21 I picked up a casual pair of Nike pants and some jeans. It was a miserable day regardless. I believe that day we had dinner at a Chinese all you can eat place near Time Square. I could not take too many pictures that day because of the weather. Oh well. I can’t recall anything else happening this day except shopping and trying to survive the weather. The hail and wind was so strong that if it hit you at all it really hurt. We did manage to go through China town for a bit and pickup a few knock off items. … I picked up some more Swiss Army Altitude for myself, and a pair of nice sunglasses for $5. Gotta love the SOHO area. My friends picked up a bunch of other stuff. While at the hotel every time someone made some kind of complaint about something to do with the hotel I always sang out ‘In the ghetto’ from the song by Mac Davis. It turned everything about it into a big joke that we managed to just keep laughing about.

Day 3 was St. Patrick’s day. HURRAY! We got down there and got to see the parade. As you can see I got a fair number of pictures and videos of it all. That day there was no hail. However, we were up to six inches of snow then, and the hail from the previous day seemed to have flooded the streets. So every street corner we came to had a healthy 4-5foot moat all around it. So you either attempted to make your way across it and get a total soaker. Or you would try and scale 10-30feet down the street to trail over some snow to make it across without soaking yourself. My friends spent a lot of time going around each street corner. My personal favorite was making the long jump attempt. … which I did successfully every time. :). We went back to China town in SOHO and managed to find more stuff going on there. It was quite exciting. We also got to check out the Empire State Building that day. I got a lot of pictures that day. We seemed to spend most of the day just walking around pretty much lost most of the time with Sean at the helm. We finally ended the day with dinner at Chevys to enjoy some yummy mexican food. After walking all day and fasting, I was certainly enjoyed it. By now I was starting to get to know New Yorkers a little better. I could see that people were generally quite helpful. While everyone was generally in a rush most of the time, and there was not a lot of time for the common niceties that Canadians are used to even in Ontario, they are still quite decent people. I liked all the diversity I saw.

That day my friends went to the theater to see Pirate Queen while I went on my own journey around NYC. I also went about getting a gift that we all chipped in for Sean for his birthday which was the next day. I had dinner on my own at some pizza place (YUM). Shona was feeling sick after the show that night so we didn’t get to go to karaoke. Instead we just headed back to our ghetto hotel room and played another round of uker, which Sean and I won on every round.

Day 4 We are determined to go to the Statue of Liberty, Ground Zero, and Wall St. We started the day with breakfast at City Diner, which by my friends reviews was gross. The food was undercooked and they were not impressed by how the manager of the place was running it. We managed to pass through Wall Street on the way there and see a nice church. It was FREEEEEZING that day. A strong wind combined with the cold weather made it harsh. of course me being the husky lumberjack Canadian went through it all wearing nothing but my spring jacket with a sweater under it. Sean and Shona wussed out buying tooks. Steph had her winter jacket. So I was the only one properly representing for Canada against the cold. … Before getting on the ferry we had to go through a scanner like you would at the airport. That was fine. Once on the ferry we headed out. The wind was killer. As soon as we got across we headed straight for the shop on the island to warm up. Inside there was a robot that was talking about the history of Lady Liberty. While taking pictures I took a snap that appeared to capture some kind of glowing eyes. I showed it to my friends saying.. ‘CHECK IT OUT, THE ROBOT IS POSSESSED!’

After that we waited in another line to go up to the statue. After waiting a long while we found out we were actually going through yet another scan. This one blew air all over you. It would have gone a lot faster if they were using more than just one scanner. There were two others there and workers just standing around doing nothing. If they just got them working, the lines would have gone much faster. Regardless we got in there.

We got up to the top. Spent some time inside, then went outside. We were up there for no more than a minute when sirens started going off. A voice came on over loud speakers saying something along the lines of ‘Alert Alert, evacuate the building. The elevator has been disabled for your safety. You must proceed down the stairs.’ At first we kind of ignored it. Then as the sirens continued to go off, we realized we were going to head out, so I started taking pictures quickly before we were rushed down the stairs. As we were going down the stairs I decided to break out the video and record what was going on. When we got out of there I was expecting to see something happening, but I didn’t. Everyone there was really quite shaken by it all, probably because nobody knew anything that was going on. We were just being rushed out of there. Once out, 15 police officers went running towards the building. Nobody would tell us anything. Everyone headed for the ferry after that. I continued my ‘coverage’ of what appeared to be a terrorist attack on the Statue of Liberty. I was really entertained by it all really as you may tell from the videos.

After that we made our way eventually to Ground Zero. We got there and took some pictures. Didn’t spend that much time there. My friends commented that they felt almost like they were going to cry while they were there. You could only imagine what it must have been like being there when those HUGE towers came down.

That night we went to a nice Italian restaurant where I wowed my friends with my capacity to finish my meal while they could not. I guess nobody cared to remember that I had spent over 14 hours with no food or water that day while they ate and drank all they wanted. When I go back to NYC I would certainly like to have dinner there again and try some of their other dishes. Afterwards we were suppose to go to karaoke again, and were even in the same area, but once again it was cancelled. We went back to the hotel and played uker before going to bed.

Next day we woke up early to catch the plane back to Buffalo. We spent a good few hours in the airport waiting for our flight, which was once again late. Then once we were in the plane, there was another delay because of the weather in Buffalo. Eventually we started on our flight. But not before I started chatting it up with the girl sitting beside me. On the flight I was seated beside a nice girl named Jennifer. I started chatting with her and the time seemed the fly (nice pun huh? :)). We had some interesting exchange of ideas on various topics which my friends said they heard the whole way there. If you happen to visit my site here Jennifer, good luck with your studies and your future career. I am sure you will be very successful.

So there you have it. My four day trip in New York City. I would like to go back again. Next time I would like to go my buddy Brent and maybe even Jason and Robin. My gosh that would be scary fun. Those three have a particularly vivacious appetite for fun. I want to see more of NYC and meet more people while I am there. Not to mention stay at a nicer hotel. … All in all I managed to enjoy the trip in the midst of what seemed like one disaster after another as far as a vacation goes.

Share This

0 comments.