NYC '11;: radiationpoison

radiationpoison

NYC '11;

Mar 15, 2011 04:24

WARNING: Extremely image heavy! 200+ images!

As you may already know, I took a semi-spontaneous trip to New York City for Spring Break this past week with my best friend and another totally awesome friend ♥ Let me just tell you know, that this trip far exceeded my expectations and then some. We were not killed, mugged, or raped; which, by the way, seemed to be the concerns of nearly every adult when we were going on this trip. And since your going to read this (and see it!) later in this post - I MET DANIEL FREAKING RADCLIFFE, GUYS! You have no idea how excited I am to be able to say that to every person I meet. I want to make a t-shirt saying, "I went to New York and all I got was this Daniel Radcliffe autograph".

MONDAY;;
First and foremost, we made it to New York with all of our luggage! Thankfully, Delta did us good and we were able to have all of our belongings with us. We arrived around 5 o'clock and survived our crazed cab driver to make it to the Belvedere Hotel (thank you orbitz!). After taking far too many pictures of our view from our window, we wandered out for some "New York Pizza" aka Papa Johns, haha. We got loads of crap for that move, but it was good and it was cheap!

TUESDAY;;
Now into the day of the thousand mile walk! Up and out by 9 o'clock, we opted for walking to Central Park versus taking the subway. Mind you, Central Park is 30+ minutes, walking, from our hotel, but we figured if we got tired, we would just take the subway back later. Hitting up a Dali exhibit & Starbucks, we wandered toward the Natural History Museum (you may recognize it as being the museum from Night at the Museum)! On the way there, a friendly, elderly door man told us how the hotel we were taking pictures of was used in the Ghostbusters movie, which was totally awesome.

The Natural History Museum was HUGE! It was six floors with far too many flights of stairs and dead ends. We actually were too tired to finish the whole museum and even skipped an entire floor. Food, while delicious, cost an arm and a leg there, and all I managed to buy from the gift shop was a post card. Big spender, I am! Already worn out, we went across the street to Central Park in search of Belvedere Castle, which ended up being on top of a large slope that nearly killed off two members of our three member group. I was included in that two! We finally found it, though, took a load of pictures of one another, and then wandered back through Central Park to hopefully find Strawberry Fields (my best friend is a major Beatles fan!). After walking past it twice, we finally found a sign that led us the right way. While we were sitting in the memorial, a band by the name of Riff Raff settled in for a little concert. We ended up staying for 3 songs, picked out which ones we wanted to marry, and then bought one of their cd's. I can never resist a cute british boy with actual talent!

Taking the Subway back - because, yes, we were too tired to walk all that way - we hit up Times Square, which is like its very own night light - actually, the whole city is a major night light! We went to the 4 story tall Forever 21, nearly died from all the walking inside of that giant store and then left to go rest our sore feet at a Jamba Juice - which was like my life blood, they are so amazing and so evil for not having any stores in Florida!

We then shuffled back to our hotel and found ourselves full of energy again and had a photoshoot with our cell phones acting as lights and the window as a back drop!

WEDNESDAY;;
On the way to the MoMA, we saw: Radio City Music Hall, Rockefeller Center, the Lego store, Pylones, and St. Patrick's Cathedral. Needless to say, we were already fairly tired from our first day of full out walking and then wandering all over the place before the museum. I have discovered museums are fun in small doses, but not every day for the entirety of the trip! Regardless, I had heard that the MoMA was known for their food, so thinking the first restaurant we saw in the museum was the only one, we were seated at the The Modern Bar Room, where the cheapest thing on the menu was $12. We got these amazing flat bread pizza's that had bacon, onions, and Gorgonzola cheese, omg, yum! We felt so fancy there, it was crazy.

Afterward, we wandered all over the 6 floor museum. Totally skipped the 6 floor, by the way, we were exhausted just doing the first 5. I loved being able to see Van Gogh, Dali, Warhol, and then several fantastic photographers. Not to mention I actually found some work by Picasso that I actually liked!

After the museum, we visisted the 3 story H&M (I include how many floors because I realized there are practically no stores in New York that aren't obnoxiously large!) and ended up finding absolutely nothing. Seriously, first time that has ever happened for me - and just when I was planning on spending a load of money there, ah well. Subway was our meal of choice for dinner - which ended up giving me a terrible stomach ache due to the long lull in between meals for me that day. Thankfully, by the time my best friend and I walked Nicole over to American Idiot and walked ourselves over to How to Succeed, I was feeling just fine!

THE SHOW WAS ABSOLUTELY AMAZING, GUYS! Seriously, so worth every penny. They have one song/dance number called "Coffee Break" that just had me laughing hysterically. Daniel Radcliffe is such a little power house! He had a fantastic American accent, singing voice, and such amazing dance moves! We were 2nd row up in the balcony and had such a fantastic view of the hilarity that is that show.

THURSDAY;;
Thursday, the day originally scheduled to be a relaxtion/take it easy kind of day turned out to be the most stressful day of all! We took the subway to the World Trade Center - which is currently under construction to turn it into a beautiful memorial park/building. The museum dedicated to 9/11 was beautiful and we didn't stay too long it in for fear of getting too depressed. The other two members of our group wanted to go see the Statue of Liberty, so I was dragged along a good mile or so to Battery Park to see the dinky little statue. Seriously, I always pictured her as being a bit bigger than that.

Hungry and exhausted, we hopped back on the subway and wound up eating at Applebees in Times Square, where we discovered the law that was passed in New York that makes chain restaurants have to tell you how many calories are in each meal. I now know what meals to AVOID at Applebee's, dear god, most things were over a 1000 calories! But the Kiwi Lemonade was so delicious! Relaxation time over, we found another subway and took it to the edge of central park in order to make our way over to Park Avenue. Totally opposite direction from where we were that morning. We hit up F.A.O. Schwartz, played on the giant piano, and just generally acted like 5 year olds with very sore feet. Afterward, Nicole really wanted to visit Dylan's Candy Bar, and while I was cursing her for wanting to visit things only a good couple of miles from everything, we found the art sculptures by Will Ryan, where they are large flower sculptures in the middle of intersections. So awesome! We hit up the candy bar, where elevators did not exist and nor did chairs.

This was the day where the subway turned against us. We had grown used to just asking the man or woman in the booth how to get to places; however, this time there was no one to be seen in the booth. We bought our tickets and decided to try and figure it out ourselves. Needless to say, we didn't do such a good job. It was rush hour in the subway, so it was packed to the gills, and we ended up wandering up and down staircases trying to find the right platform. Thankfully, a man whom I wanted to kiss right then and there, told us the right subway to be on and we quickly made our way to it and vowed to never take the subway again for the rest of our trip!! Jamba Juice afterward made it all better!

That night, after being dragged out to dinner with Nicole's cousin (the resturant, Vnyl, was amazing and had some really good food, though!) we made our way over to the Al Hirschfeld theater, where How to Succeed was playing. Still raining, we waited outside of the stage door, were told we'd have to go across the street, and then having to run across the street again just to make it into the second row behind the barricades to meet the cast. I will say, this is the calmest crowd of people I had ever seen. They didn't scream and shove and they were all very polite to Dan when he did come out to sign autographs. Perhaps the threat of "If you shove, just once, he is going straight into the car" by the security guard was enough to deter us.

FRIDAY;;
After having gone to bed at 3 am the night before - still hyped up from meeting Daniel Radcliffe - we dragged ourselves out of bed with a little bit of grumbling and went out for another long day of sight seeing. We went to the Toys-R-Us in Times Square first, which proved to be far bigger than I expected, as usual. We paid $5 for a 10+ minute Ferris wheel ride, and then I wound up buying an I &heart;s NY cup as my one token tacky tourist item! Next up, we wandered toward the New York Public Library & Bryant Park, spotted the Chrysler Building on the way there and almost debated not fighting with the stairs in the library. We discovered the elevator after we had gone up two flights of very long stairs. The Library is so gorgeous! The architecture is fantastic and just the grand scale of the study rooms is ridiculous!

Afterward, we sat in Bryant Park until we began to freeze in just our sweaters, and then wandered in the direction of the Empire State Building, which we almost didn't recognize as it didn't look as spectacular as we thought it would. Did a little bit of shopping and then trudged back toward Times Square in search of the Sanrio store. Thank god, Sanrio was the first and only one story store we had been in! All of us were exhausted by this point. After everyone made their purchases, we made our way back to the hotel, opted out of trying to stalk Daniel Radcliffe again, and just ordered some super yummy Japanese food before watching a George Lopez marathon!

SATURDAY;;
Our last morning in the city :[ We were absolutely exhausted and weren't too thrilled about getting up early and doing some last minute shopping. But we made it to the Nintendo World Store, M&M's and Hershey's before limping back to the hotel to check out. The taxi ride to the airport was definitely less frightening then the one to the hotel! Our driver was sane and didn't sing to us. We ended up in an aiport or an airplane from 12:30 in the afternoon to 11:30 at night. We were so glad to be hope, but so depressed that we had to leave the city where we all felt so independent and excited!

Off to New York! The plane ride to NYC > the plane ride back. Pretty much the difference of 6+ hours in the airport, oi!

We get to our hotel and are greeted by this amazing view of the city from our window ♥

We were located on the 10th floor and we did a whole lot of people watching, impromptu photoshoots, and goofing about in front of these windows.

Throw three photography majors in front of a new site and we end up taking about a hundred pictures of just the buildings outside of our window.

The edge of Central Park over by the Time Warner Center.

Speaking of the Time Warner Center, it had a Dali exhibit (omg, something free in NYC!) spread all throughout the first floor and then a small gallery upstairs.

Salvador Dali has to be one of my favorite artists in history. I have a thing for the crazed, tortured artists, I suppose, as Van Gogh is also one of my favorites.

Outside of the Time Warner Center, the buildings went around in a curve and the sky was this amazing blue all day. Perfect for our first major stroll around the city.

From L-R: Me, my best friend, Angela, and then my friend, Nicole, with our starbucks cups, of course!

You'll be seeing a lot of skyscrapers due to the fact that I, as a Floridian, am not used to such high building elevations. We have a lot of grass and shopping malls, nothing like these buildings.

Nicole has a whole bunch of photos of us in front of these red doors. I only brought my little camera, she brought her huge Canon, so when she gets those pictures uploaded, I'll probably share a few ;3

Natural History Museum! The museum that made us not want to do all of the museums we had planned. We ended up wandering around for over four hours in there, it's huge!

Teddy, what's up!?

I'm still not sure if that one dinosaur has a missing head or if its head really is that tiny!

These were so beautiful - they were wood carved prints.

I wish the gift shop had some of these critters - adorable!

The museum had this round room where you could see the skyline all over the city, it is just so amazing how I had never really thought of NYC as beautiful until I visited.

One of my favorite "creative" shots that I took on the trip :3

I have about a gazillion dinosaur pictures on my phone, that I uploaded onto facebook as the week went on, I may share those pics later on.

A ginormous jelly fish!

The wall of mushrooms!

Some seriously awesome pine cones . . .

and more mushrooms! Although, now that I look at this picture, that mushroom at the top looks a little, uh, questionable.

The HUGE Blue Whale!

And now onward into Central Park, which is far more hill-y than I was expecting it to be. Let's just say, after walking around that monster of a museum, any time of walking uphill was like slow torture, haha.

Belvedere Castle!

I got excited every time I would see grass or flowers, as it was the first signs of spring for the city ♥ Florida only has one season: Summer.

You will also notice that I get distracted by birds. A lot.

More spring!

Marionette Theater inside of Central Park

Some guy was getting his portrait taken near one of the bridges - we, naturally, had to comment to ourselves on the sad equipment they were using.

My best friend, Angela!

Yep, I was the only one not to bring my professional camera. I just didn't want to lug it around with me all throughout the city.

Strawberry Fields | Memorial to John Lennon.

A British band, Riff Raff set up shop next to the John Lennon memorial. They were all so adorable and talented! We ended up buying their cd.

Did I also mention that they were also very cute?

AND BRITISH!? :D

The subway system - started off good, ended up terrible! We also saw our first New York rat. Not as frightening as I thought they would look.

Time's Square!

Radio City Music Hall! Apparently, Bright Eyes was performing that night.

Lego vs. real life. Outside of the Rockefeller Center.

St. Patrick's Cathedral is just absolutely gorgeous!

MoMA! I have decided to quite photography and just become a modern artist after this museum.

The photographer of the first photograph has come and talked to my school before; the second image I just found really neat!

Starry Night! One of my favorite paintings in existence ♥

We picked just about the most dreary day to visit the World Trade Center and the Statue of Liberty. My best friend is terrified of boats, so we just walked to Battery Park and snapped some pictures of the statue . . . and some more birds.

Yeah, it was pretty windy out!

F.A.O. Schwartz was Uh-mazing!!

Giant chocolate bunny!

THEY HAD AN ENTIRE SECTION DEVOTED TO HARRY POTTER ♥ I almost bought a talking Ron figure, he was pretty awesome.

All along Park Avenue, artist, Will Ryan, had these rose sculptures. They were amazing!

Nicole's cousin took us out to dinner at a restaurant called Vnyl. They had themed bathrooms where each of the four had a mosaic, barbie, and music of said artist playing in the restroom. I went into the Dolly bathroom.

And later that night. . .

DANIEL FREAKING RADCLIFFE! ♥
He was so polite and his porcelain skin was so lovely. It was pouring buckets outside and my friends and I decided to go out there before the play let out (we went on the night before!) and wait by the stage door. Regardless of the weather, he made sure to sign everything and even made sure to switch pages in the playbill if the one page was too wet. Guh! I've been in love with this boy since I was 11, adore him and his fantastic show! I highly recommend everyone go and see How to Succeed if they happen upon NYC. I have never laughed and smiled so hard in my life!

Seeing all of the Broadway shows with BIG name actors/actresses in them was kind of neat. Just knowing that the actors were in New York somewhere was cool.