new york city!!!
dont bother reading unless you really like me, i just wanna get it all "on the record" so i dont forget any of it:) (PS- anyone who thinks i'm sooooooo lame for doing touristy things my first time in nyc can eat it- get over yourself)
FRIDAY!! brian and i fly into la guardia and take a cab to the city- get there at about 11. left our bags at the apartment, since my family wouldnt be arriving to open the room for us for a few hours. then brian and i had a fabulous time just walking around. our apartment was right in the middle of everything so we just strolled on over to times square first. holy moly. its so awesome and surreal to actually stand in times square after seeing it my whole life in movies and on tv. i couldnt really believe i was there. everything is just so huge and such a spectacle, especially the huge advertisements for broadway shows that towered over us. ahhh it was so cool.
we needed some quick, cheap comida, so we ate at mcdonalds (haha yeah of all places in NYC), mostly because a darn hamburger at the tgi fridays was 20 bucks. craaaaazy! then we just spent a few hours walking around being very cold without our jackets. we went into FAO Schwartz and had so much fun playing on the huge keyboard. i got a few pictures of that yayyyy! lets see we also cruised around rockafeller center to see the tree and the ice skating (20 bucks a person- what crap!!). but i had fun pretending to be kevin mcallister during the "reuniting with mom" scene in home alone 2- ("oh kevin, i'm so sorry!") we also just went in and out of the fancy stores like tiffany's and saks and all the places where we obviously couldn't afford anything. saks wins the award for most amazing window displays. gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous. we also spent some time in bryant park and i had my first candy apple for 4 bucks, worth every penny oh man.
then my family got there and let us into my mom's corporate apartment which she awesomely scored for us. WOW we really lucked out. 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, nice big living room, stocked kitchen, and really comfy down mattress pads and blankets. the whole place was enclosed by windows, so every room had an amazing view. my sister and i could lie in bed and look right up at the empire state building, which was all lit up red and green for christmas. we definitely had the best view, ohman it was great. anyway, once the family got there, we all headed back out to keep walking and taking pictures. we went into one of the beautiful cathedrals there which i loved, and just enjoyed walking around with the streets all lit up. then we went for some pizza which was very very good but not as good as rosa's pizza on the gsu campus. man nothing beats rosa's...
brian and i were dead tired. he ended up falling asleep at like 11 which is unheard of for him. mmmmm and i got that comfy down bed with my sister looking out at everything. great day.
SATURDAY!!! mom and i woke up early and got hot chocolate and croissants for everyone. yum yum. we eventually got our act together and got into two cabs to ground zero. we got there and looked around. at first i was kind of bored, i'll admit, but then i started reading some of the plaques and this timeline of the events of 9/11 and i ended up crying pretty hard. i'm not much of a cryer normally, like i don't often get choked up at the big events in my life or when i have to say goodbye, but i always end up crying really hard when i think about big groups of people being scared or confused. when i really started to think about where i was standing, it hit me, because all the news footage of people jumping from buildings and running in the streets and being pulled from wreckage started shooting through my head. when i think of those kinds of things i instantly start to cry. same thing when i think of the footage from columbine. just the idea of big groups of people being scared for their lives and not knowing what to do and being so depserate.... ay yay yay. i'm very glad we went.
after that we wasted some time in century 21. eh, i wont even dwell on that except to say that it was a huge over-crowded store that flaunted a weird combination of ghetto-brand merchandise and super-expensive designers. not that fun. but afterward i grabbed a caramel apple cider at starbucks so that made my afternoon. we spent some time at this huge beautiful harbor and took some great pictures with the water and brooklyn in the background.
then we got some taxis again to get to chinatown and little italy. chinatown is so cool, it doesnt feel anything like the united states lol. not because of the demographics of the people you see, but because of the outdoor markets and general setup of the place. so so interesting. brian and i split from my family so that he and i could eat at wo hop, this extremely coveted chinatown restaurant, while my family got italian in little italy. wo hop ended up being just what brian said it would be, a tiny, unremarkable hole in the ground beneath the street with some of the best food ever. we waited a long time to get in but eventually snagged seats in the 10-table dining room. i got awesome pork wonton soup, shrimp lo mein, and an eggroll for like 10 bucks. sooooo good and a cool experience.
afterward, we met up with my family in little italy and searched fruitlessly for gelatto in the 30-degree weather. it was getting dark by now and everything looked so cool. i wish we could have spent more time there but we wanted to get to greenwich village before the end of the night. by the time we got there it was getting so cold and so late that we didnt get to "soak it up" much, but brian and i managed to find this place called cones that ended up serving us the gelatto we'd been looking for. i'd never had it before but lets just say it was the best-tasting stuff imaginable. nothing compares lol. a quart of the stuff was 18 bucks though, just to give you an idea of how flippin' awesome it was.
when we got back to the apartment, brian and i hung around for a bit before deciding to go back out for a walk in times square again. we spent some time in the big toys r us looking at things and ended the night with some ice-skating in bryant park, which was unforgettable. then it was back to our fancy-as-hell apartment to watch jackass and fall asleep.
SUNDAY!!!! well as usual i was up before everyone else, so i took a shower and got all ready very early. then i woke up my slumbering brian and made him take a shower so that we could head out to the tkts booth in times square in search of discoutned PRODUCERS(!) tickets. we stood in the looooong line, but it ended up moving pretty quickly. plus, while we were waiting we got to see the naked cowboy. no pictures though:( we were able to snag 2 tickets to the matinee "producers" for 160 bucks total. haha yeah thats kind of a lot but we really wanted to go. anyway, we had to rush around to find a quick lunch (ray's for calzones.... SO awesome) and then back to the room to nap together a bit in the big comfy bed looking over the whole city and to get dressed for the show and head out. the show was so wonderful ahhhhhh!!! really funny and so cool to watch. our "cheap" seats ended up being really great, since the theatre was such a small space, and we could see and hear everything perfectly. brian laughed so hard and i loved it. we have to go see the movie now and compare.
after the show we searched for a while to find a good dinner for cheap, but ended up at this place called daniela trattoria. they totally saw us coming. the food was good, but there wasnt a whole lot of it, and ummmmm DRINKS WERE 2.50 A POP!!! so we got charged 2.50 for every one of brian's 3 cokes and my 2 waters. WATER. yeah that was lame, but eh what are you gonna do.
by the time we'd returned from the show and dinner, my family had left for the airport. we had to pack up all our stuff and leave the apartment for good to get on the train to our next phase of lodging-- brian's sister's place in new jersey. so yeah, we packed and got our shit together and left, but not before "making good use" of being all alone in a ritsy apartment in the middle of midtown. haha is that suggestive enough for you? FUN!!
we made the uneventful train ride to new jersey, where brian's awesome half sister robbie picked us up and let us sleep in brian's little niece's room, which was adorable and extremely pink. we crashed pretty hard in that bed, even though brian was too big for it.
(i'm getting pretty sick of typing at this point....)
MONDAY!!!!! woke up, got to the train station, went back to the city. we said monday would be our "museum day" and that we'd see the natural science museum and the metro museum of art, but we were sooooo tired from nonstop walking by then that we werent able to really enjoy the natural history museum. we ducked out of there early and opted to skip the metro in favor of a nice slow walk in central park.
the park was wonderful. very few people were there at all, and the lake was mostly frozen over-- so so peaceful. the geese were walking on the ice, and brian and i spent some time climbing out onto some rocks over the water and looking across to the city. i really really enjoyed central park. i'd like to go back there some winter morning with a picnic to eat and hold hands, or something cute like that. maybe sometime i'll get the chance. on the way out of the park, we saw the john lennon memorial thing. i didn't know it existed but it was pretty cool to see.
then we went back to the city to get some food and buy brian's little nieces some channukkah presents. we wanted to eat at the faaaaamous carnegie deli but didnt wanna wait an hour and a half to pay 30 bucks for a sandwich, so we went down the street to the also-famous stage deli. i got a flippin yummy-ass cheeseburger and brian got s huge corned beef sandwich that looked really boring to me, lol. then we split an 11-dollar piece of blueberry cheesecake the size of a shoebox. no joke. yum yum we somehow finished it.
afterward ti was back to toys r us in times square. its really much more fun to go there when you DONT need to buy anything. it was absolute chaos in there, but we ended up finding some cute toys for the little ladies.
the train ride home was a nightmare. first our ride got delayed half an hour, then we found out we'd crammed onto the wrong train. it was so hot in there and we were forced to stand up all squished and sweating and unable to budge. finally the train stopped so we could get off and get on the *right* train, but then some weird shit went down and the doors wouldnt open. i walked through someone's puke, and some guy pulled the emergency brake which is definitely bad news. what a psycho. when the doors finally opened, i was able to sneak out just in time to turn around and see the doors closing brian into the train. ummmm i instantly started to cry hysterically. it had been a really rough ride already, and now i was stuck at some weird new jersey train station (it's a very complicated system!!) int he dark with virtually no money and a dead cell phone. i dont think i've ever cried that hard or that fast in my entire life, i thought i'd be stranded forever or something lol. well, since that psycho had pulled ont he emergency brake, they had to open the doors again. brian jumped off the train, ran over to me, hugged me, and proceeded to call me a huge idiot for crying like such a baby. thanks a lot buddy!
when we finally got back to new jersey, brian's sister and brother-in-law took us to a great italian dinner that was totally wasted on us after lunch at the stage deli. it was good though.
TUESDAY!!!!!! we slept in late, had some fun, and then found out that the selfish selfish selfish NYC transit workers had indeed gone on strike. we'd already planned on spending the day with robbie and her daughters though, so it was fine. we played candyland and backgammon for a while...i am so so so in love with brian's little nieces, dani and andi. looooved those girls. and robbie and her husband stephen were so nice. what great people.
then started on our way back home, into the city then back to la guardia. ummmm i could go on forever about how chaotic the city was, because i'm sure the news cannot do it justice. people were disregarding sidewalks and walking in the streets. cars were turning onto sidewalks full of people. firetrucks with their engines sounding werent even able to make it down the street- no one would stop for them! it was so so so so so chaotic, i couldnt believe what i was seeing. thanks to robbie's good planning, though, we were able to make it onto some fo the only functioning buses in the city, and we made it to the airport with 3 hours to spare before our 9 oclock fligth back to atlanta. fucking transit workers all need to be slepped int he face and fined a billion dollars. they make more than fucking teachers do as it is, which really makes me mad, and they deemed it necessary to put their city in complete anarchy to get even more money and benefits. selfish selfish selfish. you'd agree if you saw the effects of it in person. ay yay yay people.
but overall it was the most amazing experience i've ever had. i won't ever forget it and i can't thank brian and my family enough for making it so perfect with me. <3 <3 <3
LONGEST. ENTRY. EVER!
FRIDAY!! brian and i fly into la guardia and take a cab to the city- get there at about 11. left our bags at the apartment, since my family wouldnt be arriving to open the room for us for a few hours. then brian and i had a fabulous time just walking around. our apartment was right in the middle of everything so we just strolled on over to times square first. holy moly. its so awesome and surreal to actually stand in times square after seeing it my whole life in movies and on tv. i couldnt really believe i was there. everything is just so huge and such a spectacle, especially the huge advertisements for broadway shows that towered over us. ahhh it was so cool.
we needed some quick, cheap comida, so we ate at mcdonalds (haha yeah of all places in NYC), mostly because a darn hamburger at the tgi fridays was 20 bucks. craaaaazy! then we just spent a few hours walking around being very cold without our jackets. we went into FAO Schwartz and had so much fun playing on the huge keyboard. i got a few pictures of that yayyyy! lets see we also cruised around rockafeller center to see the tree and the ice skating (20 bucks a person- what crap!!). but i had fun pretending to be kevin mcallister during the "reuniting with mom" scene in home alone 2- ("oh kevin, i'm so sorry!") we also just went in and out of the fancy stores like tiffany's and saks and all the places where we obviously couldn't afford anything. saks wins the award for most amazing window displays. gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous. we also spent some time in bryant park and i had my first candy apple for 4 bucks, worth every penny oh man.
then my family got there and let us into my mom's corporate apartment which she awesomely scored for us. WOW we really lucked out. 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, nice big living room, stocked kitchen, and really comfy down mattress pads and blankets. the whole place was enclosed by windows, so every room had an amazing view. my sister and i could lie in bed and look right up at the empire state building, which was all lit up red and green for christmas. we definitely had the best view, ohman it was great. anyway, once the family got there, we all headed back out to keep walking and taking pictures. we went into one of the beautiful cathedrals there which i loved, and just enjoyed walking around with the streets all lit up. then we went for some pizza which was very very good but not as good as rosa's pizza on the gsu campus. man nothing beats rosa's...
brian and i were dead tired. he ended up falling asleep at like 11 which is unheard of for him. mmmmm and i got that comfy down bed with my sister looking out at everything. great day.
SATURDAY!!! mom and i woke up early and got hot chocolate and croissants for everyone. yum yum. we eventually got our act together and got into two cabs to ground zero. we got there and looked around. at first i was kind of bored, i'll admit, but then i started reading some of the plaques and this timeline of the events of 9/11 and i ended up crying pretty hard. i'm not much of a cryer normally, like i don't often get choked up at the big events in my life or when i have to say goodbye, but i always end up crying really hard when i think about big groups of people being scared or confused. when i really started to think about where i was standing, it hit me, because all the news footage of people jumping from buildings and running in the streets and being pulled from wreckage started shooting through my head. when i think of those kinds of things i instantly start to cry. same thing when i think of the footage from columbine. just the idea of big groups of people being scared for their lives and not knowing what to do and being so depserate.... ay yay yay. i'm very glad we went.
after that we wasted some time in century 21. eh, i wont even dwell on that except to say that it was a huge over-crowded store that flaunted a weird combination of ghetto-brand merchandise and super-expensive designers. not that fun. but afterward i grabbed a caramel apple cider at starbucks so that made my afternoon. we spent some time at this huge beautiful harbor and took some great pictures with the water and brooklyn in the background.
then we got some taxis again to get to chinatown and little italy. chinatown is so cool, it doesnt feel anything like the united states lol. not because of the demographics of the people you see, but because of the outdoor markets and general setup of the place. so so interesting. brian and i split from my family so that he and i could eat at wo hop, this extremely coveted chinatown restaurant, while my family got italian in little italy. wo hop ended up being just what brian said it would be, a tiny, unremarkable hole in the ground beneath the street with some of the best food ever. we waited a long time to get in but eventually snagged seats in the 10-table dining room. i got awesome pork wonton soup, shrimp lo mein, and an eggroll for like 10 bucks. sooooo good and a cool experience.
afterward, we met up with my family in little italy and searched fruitlessly for gelatto in the 30-degree weather. it was getting dark by now and everything looked so cool. i wish we could have spent more time there but we wanted to get to greenwich village before the end of the night. by the time we got there it was getting so cold and so late that we didnt get to "soak it up" much, but brian and i managed to find this place called cones that ended up serving us the gelatto we'd been looking for. i'd never had it before but lets just say it was the best-tasting stuff imaginable. nothing compares lol. a quart of the stuff was 18 bucks though, just to give you an idea of how flippin' awesome it was.
when we got back to the apartment, brian and i hung around for a bit before deciding to go back out for a walk in times square again. we spent some time in the big toys r us looking at things and ended the night with some ice-skating in bryant park, which was unforgettable. then it was back to our fancy-as-hell apartment to watch jackass and fall asleep.
SUNDAY!!!! well as usual i was up before everyone else, so i took a shower and got all ready very early. then i woke up my slumbering brian and made him take a shower so that we could head out to the tkts booth in times square in search of discoutned PRODUCERS(!) tickets. we stood in the looooong line, but it ended up moving pretty quickly. plus, while we were waiting we got to see the naked cowboy. no pictures though:( we were able to snag 2 tickets to the matinee "producers" for 160 bucks total. haha yeah thats kind of a lot but we really wanted to go. anyway, we had to rush around to find a quick lunch (ray's for calzones.... SO awesome) and then back to the room to nap together a bit in the big comfy bed looking over the whole city and to get dressed for the show and head out. the show was so wonderful ahhhhhh!!! really funny and so cool to watch. our "cheap" seats ended up being really great, since the theatre was such a small space, and we could see and hear everything perfectly. brian laughed so hard and i loved it. we have to go see the movie now and compare.
after the show we searched for a while to find a good dinner for cheap, but ended up at this place called daniela trattoria. they totally saw us coming. the food was good, but there wasnt a whole lot of it, and ummmmm DRINKS WERE 2.50 A POP!!! so we got charged 2.50 for every one of brian's 3 cokes and my 2 waters. WATER. yeah that was lame, but eh what are you gonna do.
by the time we'd returned from the show and dinner, my family had left for the airport. we had to pack up all our stuff and leave the apartment for good to get on the train to our next phase of lodging-- brian's sister's place in new jersey. so yeah, we packed and got our shit together and left, but not before "making good use" of being all alone in a ritsy apartment in the middle of midtown. haha is that suggestive enough for you? FUN!!
we made the uneventful train ride to new jersey, where brian's awesome half sister robbie picked us up and let us sleep in brian's little niece's room, which was adorable and extremely pink. we crashed pretty hard in that bed, even though brian was too big for it.
(i'm getting pretty sick of typing at this point....)
MONDAY!!!!! woke up, got to the train station, went back to the city. we said monday would be our "museum day" and that we'd see the natural science museum and the metro museum of art, but we were sooooo tired from nonstop walking by then that we werent able to really enjoy the natural history museum. we ducked out of there early and opted to skip the metro in favor of a nice slow walk in central park.
the park was wonderful. very few people were there at all, and the lake was mostly frozen over-- so so peaceful. the geese were walking on the ice, and brian and i spent some time climbing out onto some rocks over the water and looking across to the city. i really really enjoyed central park. i'd like to go back there some winter morning with a picnic to eat and hold hands, or something cute like that. maybe sometime i'll get the chance. on the way out of the park, we saw the john lennon memorial thing. i didn't know it existed but it was pretty cool to see.
then we went back to the city to get some food and buy brian's little nieces some channukkah presents. we wanted to eat at the faaaaamous carnegie deli but didnt wanna wait an hour and a half to pay 30 bucks for a sandwich, so we went down the street to the also-famous stage deli. i got a flippin yummy-ass cheeseburger and brian got s huge corned beef sandwich that looked really boring to me, lol. then we split an 11-dollar piece of blueberry cheesecake the size of a shoebox. no joke. yum yum we somehow finished it.
afterward ti was back to toys r us in times square. its really much more fun to go there when you DONT need to buy anything. it was absolute chaos in there, but we ended up finding some cute toys for the little ladies.
the train ride home was a nightmare. first our ride got delayed half an hour, then we found out we'd crammed onto the wrong train. it was so hot in there and we were forced to stand up all squished and sweating and unable to budge. finally the train stopped so we could get off and get on the *right* train, but then some weird shit went down and the doors wouldnt open. i walked through someone's puke, and some guy pulled the emergency brake which is definitely bad news. what a psycho. when the doors finally opened, i was able to sneak out just in time to turn around and see the doors closing brian into the train. ummmm i instantly started to cry hysterically. it had been a really rough ride already, and now i was stuck at some weird new jersey train station (it's a very complicated system!!) int he dark with virtually no money and a dead cell phone. i dont think i've ever cried that hard or that fast in my entire life, i thought i'd be stranded forever or something lol. well, since that psycho had pulled ont he emergency brake, they had to open the doors again. brian jumped off the train, ran over to me, hugged me, and proceeded to call me a huge idiot for crying like such a baby. thanks a lot buddy!
when we finally got back to new jersey, brian's sister and brother-in-law took us to a great italian dinner that was totally wasted on us after lunch at the stage deli. it was good though.
TUESDAY!!!!!! we slept in late, had some fun, and then found out that the selfish selfish selfish NYC transit workers had indeed gone on strike. we'd already planned on spending the day with robbie and her daughters though, so it was fine. we played candyland and backgammon for a while...i am so so so in love with brian's little nieces, dani and andi. looooved those girls. and robbie and her husband stephen were so nice. what great people.
then started on our way back home, into the city then back to la guardia. ummmm i could go on forever about how chaotic the city was, because i'm sure the news cannot do it justice. people were disregarding sidewalks and walking in the streets. cars were turning onto sidewalks full of people. firetrucks with their engines sounding werent even able to make it down the street- no one would stop for them! it was so so so so so chaotic, i couldnt believe what i was seeing. thanks to robbie's good planning, though, we were able to make it onto some fo the only functioning buses in the city, and we made it to the airport with 3 hours to spare before our 9 oclock fligth back to atlanta. fucking transit workers all need to be slepped int he face and fined a billion dollars. they make more than fucking teachers do as it is, which really makes me mad, and they deemed it necessary to put their city in complete anarchy to get even more money and benefits. selfish selfish selfish. you'd agree if you saw the effects of it in person. ay yay yay people.
but overall it was the most amazing experience i've ever had. i won't ever forget it and i can't thank brian and my family enough for making it so perfect with me. <3 <3 <3
LONGEST. ENTRY. EVER!