NYC!!!

Friday

After a FIVE HOUR bus ride, we finally made it to DC around 1pm. We took the Subway to our hotel without any problems. It helped having several girls with us who had been in NYC before and understood the system. The Millennium Hilton was directly across the street from Ground Zero, and our view from the 24th floor of the hotel was priceless. Although it is still just a big hole in the ground, we were able to put it into perspective a little better having seen it from above.

We walked around the financial district in downtown NYC...we got to see Trinity Church (where the treasure was found in National Treasure), Wall St., the NYSE building, the bull statue, Battery Park, and the bay. The Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island were tiny from the distance, but we had missed the last ferry out for the day.

New York pizza was our food of choice for dinner. It was pretty good, but the garlic rolls were even better. I suppose I can see why David was raving about it, but I couldn't really tell that big of a difference. After eating, we headed to Times Square. We got off at Grand Central Station, just so we could see it all. Everything was all lit up and crazy. Just like you see it in movies or on tv. Some guy tried convincing us to come to his comedy show, but we opted to go to the Laugh Factory where we already had tickets reserved. Although none of the comedians went on tirades like Kramer did in Hollywood's Laugh Factory, a few of the audience members caused just about as much drama. They were a little too drunk for their own good, and they eventually got kicked out. However, it was only after they had ruined nearly everyone's acts. The final comedian was the only one who didn't have to deal with them, but he got caught up in conversing with a lesbian couple in the crowd. It wasn't the greatest experience for me, especially as I was not feeling the greatest, but everyone else seemed to enjoy the night.

Saturday

We got up bright and early to make it out on the first ferry to see the Statue. Although it took us a while to figure out where the free commuter ferry to Staton Island left from, we did finally make it (no thanks to the mean policeman on the pier). I'm so glad that we decided to do this, because we went right out past the Statue and Ellis Island. Our journey to Staton Island took 25 minutes, but we were able to get off the ferry, make a U-turn, and get right back on to head back to downtown NYC.

Everyone went shopping together after we got home. Nearly everyone purchased designer knock-off bags and sunglasses for knock-off prices in very shady circumstances on Canal Street. The whole thing way too sketch for me, so I bought a cute hat for $10. I was happy with my purchase!

After our shopping extravaganza, we all split up. Kristine and I got tickets for Rent from the TKTS stand, but only after quite a lot of trouble trying to withdraw cash from ATMs using cards we couldn't remember the pin numbers for. This seemed like such a small issue though, especially after I couldn't get a key into my hotel room to change my clothes and when we took the Subway off the map. You'd have to have been with us to fully understand the story, but I'll give you a short recap.

We tried taking the 2 or 3 train, but that line was closed. We ended up getting on an E train, but it went the opposite direction we thought it would go. By the time we figured this out, we went over, under, or through the water and into Brooklyn. Kristine was convinced we'd never find the correct train, so we headed out to call a cab. We figured this would be easy in the city of cabs, but we were very wrong. It had gotten dark since we left our hotel, we had no idea where we were, there were very few lights and moving vehicles outside the Subway, and we only had 25 minutes to make it to the Theatre District for our show. We ran up and down the streets searching for a cab with nobody in it for at least 10 minutes, and then were forced to have our cab driver risk our lives to make it to our show on time. Kristine and I literally had to sprint several blocks to the theater, but we made it half way through the opening number. What a relief! If we had missed our show after having spent over $80 on each ticket, we would have cried for weeks. Instead, it was definitely the best experience of our trip to NYC!

Sunday

Several of us got up and went to mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral. It was gorgeous, but we definitely had a drive-through mass. That was ok, because it allowed us to eat breakfast at a diner, stroll through Central Park, make a few last souvenir purchases, and visit the church used for relief efforts after 9/11. Then it was back on the bus for our long ride home. I was able to get some sleep, even though there were some extremely loud, annoying passengers behind us, and I was so glad to be *home* in DC at the end of the day. Although we had a great weekend trip to the city, it really made us appreciate how nice and clean DC really is. I'm happy to call this home.