New York 2009
I just got back yesterday morning at like 6 am, so here's my really long post about our trip with lots of pics. You can click on most of the pics for larger images.
We left on the 21st at about 11PM and our drive was 10 hours through Michigan, Ohio (the Georgia of the north), Pensylvania (where we'd never been) and New Jersey. We stayed in Weehawken, NJ across the Hudson River from NY because hotels actually in the city were crazy expensive. All we had to do was take the ferry when we wanted to go over.
The view from our room.
Honestly, I didn't even care to go; it was my sister who really wanted to. My perceptions of New York before hand were: dirty, crowded and unsafe. Well, it's kinda dirty, it is crowded (especially coming from a city of 300,000), but I didn't feel unsafe at all. I had so much fun there, I'd go back in an instant ♥
The first day we did a ton of walking and it was really hot out. We first walked towards Central Park and looked for the Dakota, the apartment building John Lennon was shot at. That was pretty cool to see. You can stand right at the door where it happened :S
The Dakota
We then went into the park and went to Strawberry Fields, where his memorial is. My sister and I both left something there. Central Park is massive :O We didn't walk through it too much because you could probably spend a day just walking it.
Strawberry Fields
Central Park
We then went to Times Square and holy shit it was crowded. We went into the Hershey store (which sucked :(), the M&Ms store and various other stores. We ate at the Hard Rock Cafe there. I couldn't remember if it was Hard Rock Cafe or Planet Hollywood I didn't like; apparently it's both.
Then we walked over to the Empire State Building. My whole life I thought this building was black. Why did I think it was black? It's not black. I dunno. We saw the area where the World Trade Center towers were. It's a huge hole, but lots of cranes were in there. We could also see the Statue of Liberty from afar from there.
Empire State Building
That day we also saw the Rockefeller Center, the NBC building, where David Letterman shoots, Radio City Music Hall, Broadway, the Trump Tower. Lots of interesting archetecture in the city. We tried walking most places, but had to get a cab sometimes. I can not believe the NY traffic. How these people can drive in that mess is beyond me! And like every street is a one-way O_o
I loved just walking around and looking at all the buildings. There was this beautiful chruch we saw amoung office buildings.
It was such a long day. When we were eating at the Hard Rock, we decided to eat there for dinner, but when I checked the time on my phone it was only 2:30. I couldn't believe it lol.
View of NY on the ferry back to NJ.
The second day it was supposed to rain. We saw Tony Bennett crossing the street lol. We walked down Park Ave for a little bit and ate at a cafe type place. We went into Prada 'cause my mom saw a bag she liked, and not only did they have a doorman, they gave us little plastic bags for our umbrellas. My sister was like, "I'm gonna tell everyone I have a Prada bag!" lol. Well, she does. The bag my mom was looking at, the saleswoman said was "thirteen fifty". I kept trying to work this out in my head ($13.50? No. $135.-wait, not enough numbers.) until I realized she meant $1,350. D:
Gloomy day.
My sister's cupcake and my brownie.
Park Ave
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is massive and I'd be surprised if you could see it all in a day. You probably wouldn't even know if you saw it all, because there were so many rooms that didn't connect and went in different directions. That's my only complaint about it. We bypassed a lot of stuff that I wasn't interested it, like the Greek and Roman stuff and the American Wing. They had such an amazing collection. My favourite part was probably the Arms and Weapons gallery, the samurai and Tibetan stuff was really cool. That was fantastic, but nothing we did disappointed me at all. You weren't allowed to take pictures all the time though :( If you're ever in NY, I totally recommend going to the museum.
Native American exhibit, modern art exhibit
European sculpture, Arms and Armour
Samurai, Mongolian helmet
Egyptian exhibit
Asian exhibit
The rest of the day it poured, so we had to do our shopping in the rain :( We went back to Times Square because there were good shops in that area. It was actually pretty cold that day and the rain didn't make it any better. We ate in a 3-floored McDonald's lol. The traffic was also horrendous. It took us like an hour to get a cab. We just ate ack in NJ for dinner.
Just starting to rain.
Pouring :(
On Friday, we were initally just going to leave at our check-out time at 11, but we decided that if it wasn't raining, we'd ge up early and go back to NY for a few hours. We ended up leaving after 5PM lol. I'm really glad we went back. The weather was probably the best out of the days.
We went to the Soho area to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Annex. It's not a good location, because nothing is really out that way. But, the Hall was cool, although didn't allow pictures. You wore these headsets and walked around and were given information and listened to music and it changed where you walked to. They had a Jonh Lennon special exhibit there, which was small, but impressive. They had two of his piano's there, clothing, guitars, hand-written stuff, etc. On the last wall, inside a box, was a bag and and inside the bag was the clothes he was wearing when he got shot. I dunno, it was jus really weird to look at. There was also a working phone in there that Yoko Ono could potentially call. My sister says she does that in most of her exhibits though lol. There was also these panels of paper on the wall that you could sign if you were for stricter gun laws in the US and it would be sent to Barack Obama once the exhibit was over. I thought that was really awesome and signed it. There were signatures from people all over the world on it.
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Annex
Random awesome building.
We then took the ferry (which my sister called the SS Foreignator lmao) to Staten Island, but only to see the Statue of Liberty closer. You just get on the ferry, sail past the Statue, get off and get right back on to head back lol.
Brooklyn Bridge, the city
We decided to walk away from that area to catch a cab, but no matter where we went traffic was awful because it was near the Brooklyn Bridge and a tunnel. We ended up walking past the Trade Center area again and tried forever to get a cab and finally headed back.
Around Battery Park.
The grass was so perfect!
Where the Trade Center towers used to be. Mucho traffic.
From the ferry. Me and my sister lol-ing. My mouth is massive in this pic D: lmao.
I did not want to leave! It was so awesome ;__; I'm so glad we went. My sister loved it and my parents, who were like me about going, also loved it.
Last view of the city.
The stuff I acquired:
Two shirts.
A little piggy bank and two pins.
'Imagine' keychain, John Lennon pin, flier thing for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
The Met map and pin thinger.
We left on the 21st at about 11PM and our drive was 10 hours through Michigan, Ohio (the Georgia of the north), Pensylvania (where we'd never been) and New Jersey. We stayed in Weehawken, NJ across the Hudson River from NY because hotels actually in the city were crazy expensive. All we had to do was take the ferry when we wanted to go over.
The view from our room.
Honestly, I didn't even care to go; it was my sister who really wanted to. My perceptions of New York before hand were: dirty, crowded and unsafe. Well, it's kinda dirty, it is crowded (especially coming from a city of 300,000), but I didn't feel unsafe at all. I had so much fun there, I'd go back in an instant ♥
The first day we did a ton of walking and it was really hot out. We first walked towards Central Park and looked for the Dakota, the apartment building John Lennon was shot at. That was pretty cool to see. You can stand right at the door where it happened :S
The Dakota
We then went into the park and went to Strawberry Fields, where his memorial is. My sister and I both left something there. Central Park is massive :O We didn't walk through it too much because you could probably spend a day just walking it.
Strawberry Fields
Central Park
We then went to Times Square and holy shit it was crowded. We went into the Hershey store (which sucked :(), the M&Ms store and various other stores. We ate at the Hard Rock Cafe there. I couldn't remember if it was Hard Rock Cafe or Planet Hollywood I didn't like; apparently it's both.
Then we walked over to the Empire State Building. My whole life I thought this building was black. Why did I think it was black? It's not black. I dunno. We saw the area where the World Trade Center towers were. It's a huge hole, but lots of cranes were in there. We could also see the Statue of Liberty from afar from there.
Empire State Building
That day we also saw the Rockefeller Center, the NBC building, where David Letterman shoots, Radio City Music Hall, Broadway, the Trump Tower. Lots of interesting archetecture in the city. We tried walking most places, but had to get a cab sometimes. I can not believe the NY traffic. How these people can drive in that mess is beyond me! And like every street is a one-way O_o
I loved just walking around and looking at all the buildings. There was this beautiful chruch we saw amoung office buildings.
It was such a long day. When we were eating at the Hard Rock, we decided to eat there for dinner, but when I checked the time on my phone it was only 2:30. I couldn't believe it lol.
View of NY on the ferry back to NJ.
The second day it was supposed to rain. We saw Tony Bennett crossing the street lol. We walked down Park Ave for a little bit and ate at a cafe type place. We went into Prada 'cause my mom saw a bag she liked, and not only did they have a doorman, they gave us little plastic bags for our umbrellas. My sister was like, "I'm gonna tell everyone I have a Prada bag!" lol. Well, she does. The bag my mom was looking at, the saleswoman said was "thirteen fifty". I kept trying to work this out in my head ($13.50? No. $135.-wait, not enough numbers.) until I realized she meant $1,350. D:
Gloomy day.
My sister's cupcake and my brownie.
Park Ave
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is massive and I'd be surprised if you could see it all in a day. You probably wouldn't even know if you saw it all, because there were so many rooms that didn't connect and went in different directions. That's my only complaint about it. We bypassed a lot of stuff that I wasn't interested it, like the Greek and Roman stuff and the American Wing. They had such an amazing collection. My favourite part was probably the Arms and Weapons gallery, the samurai and Tibetan stuff was really cool. That was fantastic, but nothing we did disappointed me at all. You weren't allowed to take pictures all the time though :( If you're ever in NY, I totally recommend going to the museum.
Native American exhibit, modern art exhibit
European sculpture, Arms and Armour
Samurai, Mongolian helmet
Egyptian exhibit
Asian exhibit
The rest of the day it poured, so we had to do our shopping in the rain :( We went back to Times Square because there were good shops in that area. It was actually pretty cold that day and the rain didn't make it any better. We ate in a 3-floored McDonald's lol. The traffic was also horrendous. It took us like an hour to get a cab. We just ate ack in NJ for dinner.
Just starting to rain.
Pouring :(
On Friday, we were initally just going to leave at our check-out time at 11, but we decided that if it wasn't raining, we'd ge up early and go back to NY for a few hours. We ended up leaving after 5PM lol. I'm really glad we went back. The weather was probably the best out of the days.
We went to the Soho area to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Annex. It's not a good location, because nothing is really out that way. But, the Hall was cool, although didn't allow pictures. You wore these headsets and walked around and were given information and listened to music and it changed where you walked to. They had a Jonh Lennon special exhibit there, which was small, but impressive. They had two of his piano's there, clothing, guitars, hand-written stuff, etc. On the last wall, inside a box, was a bag and and inside the bag was the clothes he was wearing when he got shot. I dunno, it was jus really weird to look at. There was also a working phone in there that Yoko Ono could potentially call. My sister says she does that in most of her exhibits though lol. There was also these panels of paper on the wall that you could sign if you were for stricter gun laws in the US and it would be sent to Barack Obama once the exhibit was over. I thought that was really awesome and signed it. There were signatures from people all over the world on it.
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Annex
Random awesome building.
We then took the ferry (which my sister called the SS Foreignator lmao) to Staten Island, but only to see the Statue of Liberty closer. You just get on the ferry, sail past the Statue, get off and get right back on to head back lol.
Brooklyn Bridge, the city
We decided to walk away from that area to catch a cab, but no matter where we went traffic was awful because it was near the Brooklyn Bridge and a tunnel. We ended up walking past the Trade Center area again and tried forever to get a cab and finally headed back.
Around Battery Park.
The grass was so perfect!
Where the Trade Center towers used to be. Mucho traffic.
From the ferry. Me and my sister lol-ing. My mouth is massive in this pic D: lmao.
I did not want to leave! It was so awesome ;__; I'm so glad we went. My sister loved it and my parents, who were like me about going, also loved it.
Last view of the city.
The stuff I acquired:
Two shirts.
A little piggy bank and two pins.
'Imagine' keychain, John Lennon pin, flier thing for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
The Met map and pin thinger.