Central Park and Empire State Building

Yesterday we set out late because we were debating what to do that day: go to Central Park and save Brooklyn for when the snow melts (because we saw on the news that many parts of it haven't been plowed) or vice versa? We settled on Central Park because, even if we waited until the 2nd for the ground to thaw, we'd just be walking on muddy slush instead of ice, whereas Brooklyn should at least resemble roads. We got to Manhattan with relatively little incident ("relatively" because, from our experiences over the past few days, a train or two out of commission is a good day). We stepped off the train at the Museum of Natural History to give ourselves a nice scenic walk through Central Park.

In the preceding sentence, replace "walk" with "slide."


20 inches of snow + a million visitors pouring in for New Years = the largest metropolitan skating rink ever. On the plus side, I thought we'd just be walking through dormant trees, but we stumbled on some nice attractions. Like the "wildlife trail":



(These were the only active species we found; evidence of others were in tracks only)

And Belvedere Castle:


The roof was too slippery to go all the way up, but there were some very pretty views.

Sweetie asked me later if I'd ever seen an obelisk. Yes, I have, but no, I don't have any idea why they fascinate people.


Our primary destination was not the park itself, but the Metropolitan Museum of Art.


But first, we had to cross an item off our travel-food bucket list.


The man at the stand said a traditional New York style hot dog has saurkraut and mustard. I found out that I really like the taste of saurkraut and mustard, but detest the smell and aftertaste. Two jumbo hot dogs and a tiny diet Mountain Dew cost us $10, but it successfully kept us sane until 10:30 at night (more on that later).

In the museum, we were thrown off gaurd when we presented our student IDs and the lady at the counter said, "The recommended is $20; you can pay what you wish" and looked at us expectantly. Apparently it's not really admission, but a donation? We would feel awkward not paying, though, so I gave her the full "recommended" amount. After navigating the maze of displays to find a bathroom, we checked our coats and Sweetie made a beeline for the Greek and Roman rooms.


For his humanities electives, he took history and culture courses on the ancient Mediterranean, so he likes to show off in these places.

We walked through the African and South Pacific areas and made a startling discovery. You know how European art is all about death and destruction? Crucifixions, martyrdoms, mythical figures in the middle of mutilation...or at the very least some rich nobles standing around looking serious. But in the warmer Southern hemisphere, art is happy:



The most I've ever seen in typical "classic" art is a benevolent smirk. I think I would have preferred Mona Lisa smiling for real.

Sweetie and I dodged passed the medieval art because he said the aforementioned cloud of death made him uncomfortable. Then he spent an hour gleefully running around the rooms of Arms and Armory.


He likes guns and pointy things. Just not when they kill people.

On the second floor, we covered China, Japan, India, and the ancient Middle East. At the end of the day we tried to get through Egypt, too, but they shooed us out 15 minutes before closing.

We hadn't eaten since 1, but we were afraid of complications at the Empire State building and headed straight for the subways.


I had purchased tickets online to avoid the lines, but when we arrived we found a queue of people snaking around the building for "security." That line wound into the building, folding over itself in in a large room. After skipping the ticket line, we were herded slowly through another huge room, around the hall, and finally up the elevator. But wait, the elator stopped 6 floors below the observation deck. Another half-hour round of waiting and shuffling, and we finally reached our destination.

The entire time, of course, people in official-looking uniforms were trying to take more of our money. In the first two rooms they walked along pointing out how frustratingly long the wait was, and how we could skip them all if we gave them $45 per person. In the second they hollered about how nothing would make sense up there, and they highly recommend "picking up" a map and audio guide of the sights for $8 each. Oh, and they generously let you take the map home with you afterwards! They didn't install any drinking fountains so you would dehydrate and pay $4 for a bottle of water. And when we reached the top, after a very long day and hours standing in lines, Sweetie and I collapsed against on the floor to rest our swollen feet and aching backs (no proper seats were installed, of course). Another uniform promptly came around ordering, "No Sitting!" to us and the other exhausted tourists. Obviously, it would be best for their business if we were too tired to spend any time up there and came back down to let the next $$$-paying herd in as quickly as possible.

Well too bad for them, because we already sold our first born to get up there and we were not leaving until we sapped out every last bit of our money's worth. We spent at least 45 minutes on the first obervation deck, then went up to the 102nd floor where we were protected from freezing winds by a lovely glass window and didn't have to push anyone off the building to see the lights.





Around 9:30, two hours and a half after getting in the first security line, my body failed me. I had pecked at half a granola bar before leaving the museum, but it could only support my skeletal system for so long. We went back down to the street (a journey which unsurprisingly took only 5 minutes, versus the hour+ one up). On the way they tried to sell us a photo we had to take in front of a green screen while in line, but they couldn't find the picture and said someone else must have bought ours :o Apparently, somewhere out there, some stranger with bad eyesight has a photo of the two of us floating in space in front of the Empire State building slipped into a scrapbook.

We walked back to Penn Station, looking for food along the way, but it was all chains. We passed Macy's on 34th street, and were shocked by how enormous the building was.


And then a lightbulb went off in my head. 34th street. Like the movie with Santa Clause and Natalie Wood before she grew up and developed drug problems. I always thought the "34th street" in the title was where she and her mother lived, or something, not the Macy's itself. Now I know.

We decided to eat in the station before catching a train, and fortunately were presented with a plethora of options. Another travel-food bucket list item: genuine New York pizza.



Actually, it wasn't originally on the list. But when Sweetie took a few bites he said he was putting it on the list and crossing it off.

You can't tell very well from the photo, but each slice of pizza was about 3 slices. Its surface area was larger than my fully splayed hand. Earlier in the trip, I was confused when I overheard a large man on the subway on the phone saying he didn't need dinner because he had a slice of pizza, as if it were an entire meal. If this is the norm, a single slice around here is more than enough for anyone. Another first: trying canned mushrooms on my Sicilian.

Sweetie: "How can you tell they're canned?"
Me: "Because they don't taste like mushrooms."

They really don't. They taste like pickles with the consistency of mushrooms. But they worked on the pizza, and I have no complaints. Except for the mild tummyache I had while heading to the train, which is either from going too long without food, eating too much too quickly, or the outlet using fake mozzerella. I don't think it's the last because I saw the elderly cook shaping the dough from scratch, and they probably wouldn't cheapen it with the processed stuff.

We arrived back at the hotel in the wee hours of the morning, due in part to our lengthy adventures and in part to a traffic jam which resulted in our shuttle driver backing up onto the highway and zipping around an alternate route to get back. We slept late and have diddled around the hotel until mid-afternoon...soon we will head out to test our meddle in a throng of one million people. We have been told that we will not be allowed out of Times Square once we go in, and we probably won't be able to sit, eat or use the bathroom until the floodgates open after midnight. Here's hoping we make it out alive.

Ellis and Liberty Islands

Apparently, Sweetie and I built up enough karma points over the past few days to earn one day of good luck. As an extra lucky bonus, that day happened to be the one in which we visited the focal point of our vacation: the Statue of Liberty.

Since Sweetie and I stayed up later than intended processing photos and slipping down to the lobby to access the free internet (there is wireless available in the rooms, but it costs $10 per day), we dragged our feet a little in the morning. We tried to leave around 9, leaving 3 hours for travelling down to Liberty State Park on the super-slow New Jersey public transit. First, we boarded a shuttle from the hotel to the airport to access the train station. On the way, an accident blocked a key turn, and the 10 minute puddle-jump turned into a half hour amusement park ride. The shuttle putted down the highway at 30mph, cars blaring horns and passing on either side, and passengers back-seat driving while our elderly Latino chauffer wove in and out of lanes and loop-de-looped around the city. We miraculously ended up at our destination (Sweetie says the driver was just playing dumb and knew how to get there all along), and boarded a train to Newark about an hour after leaving the hotel.

When we reached Newark Penn Station we transferred to the PATH subway system, and then to a light rail system in Jersey City. For the record, though I have a sour impression of the rest of the state, I wouldn't mind living in Jersey City. The rail trains came frequently and ran smoothly, and weren't crowded or terribly expensive. Also, the coastline is gorgeous. One drawback: when we reached the stop for Liberty State Park, we found that the shuttle only runs during summer and we had to walk through a mile of this to reach the ferries:


Fortunately, it cleared out after the first 15 minutes of wading:


Thanks to various hold-ups (like when the door wouldn't close on the NJ train bound for Newark, and when we couldn't figure out how to use the light rail in time to catch our train, and of course there was that frozen tundera between us and the ticket booth) we arrived ten minutes later than our designated check-in point. But the attendant didn't give us any troubles for it and half an hour later we were chugging along towards Ellis island.


Sweetie insisted on staying on the upper deck, out in the open, to take pictures of the pretty Manhattan skyline.





I used his body as a shield against the freezing wind and whined a lot. When we docked at Ellis, I made a beeline for the exit and was one of the first off the boat and safely inside the museum.


The place was much bigger than we thought it would be...we were only able to cover one wing and pick and choose other sights before getting back on the boat to Liberty Island. That one wing was the best, though: the one devoted to the history of immigration. It seems my high school classes skipped some pretty important bits, like the entirety of Eastern Europe 1800 to present. The first floor had some nifty displays of trends and stats...and you know how I like my stats.



That flag, when viewed at an angle on the other side, showed the faces of immigrants (or descendents) on each of the squares. We also took a quick look at the Registration Room and sample dormitory upstairs.


When Sweetie mentioned it was already 2pm, we decided to hurry on to Liberty Island.


It was a good thing we hurried, because when we checked in with our crown reserve tickets and flitted over to the entrance, we were told it would close in half an hour. So we climbed those 275 steep, treacherous steps as fast as our weak little legs could carry us.


I used to think I was in relatively good shape compared to the majority of the American public. But apparently hundreds of members of that public ascend that death trap every day. Sweetie and I thought that since the statue was so big and high up, the head would be bigger than it looked from the ground, but after fitting in the staircase it was barely big enough to fit us and two park rangers. The view was so-so, but we were really there to see a unique perspective of the statue.


This is the top of her head.


The tablet.


The inside of her face.

When another family came up we crawled slowly back down and took some photos from below on the pedestal and grounds.


Then, because we were too hungry and tired to sail back to the mainland and scour Jersey City for food, we sold our kidneys to afford dinner at the on-site restaurant.




We ate by the sea at sunset.


The picture of romance...if it hadn't been 20° and Sweetie wasn't more interested in taking photos of that sunset than in me :p

In revenge I took his hat.


Islands are windy. And wind makes cold ten times worse.

On the way back to the station, I spotted a shiny pile of fruit in a storefront window. Fruit generally indicates groceries...and we needed milk. So we jumped off and entered an adorable local store called Liberty towers Gourmet. Prices were high, but the selection couldn't be beaten. Fresh produce, cheeses, in-house bakery, and my very favorite imports:



I've been looking for these two products forever. Two of the cookies were consumed with great glee while someone on the television dodged bullets and saved filthy rich damsels in distress.

I'm not sure what we'll be doing tomorrow. The Brooklyn Bridge was on the flexible itinerary, but we saw on the news that that side of town hasn't been fully plowed yet. And that New Yorkers take their city politics very seriously. I guess we'll figure it out when we wake up.

United Nations & Nintendo World

Manhattan is not like in the movies.

It's crowded and dirty. The people are rude. The subway system is a surreal dystopian nightmare of apathy and anarchy...and it's faster to walk a mile in the ten feet of snow the city government leaves piled up on the sidewalks.

Lest you think I exaggerate:



That said, it is pretty. When you talk to the locals one-on-one they're helpful and genuinely friendly--not artificially hospitable like you get in Indiana, but the confrontational "I trust we're on the same page so let's dispense with the formalities" kind of friendly. The architecture is gorgeous and the skyscrapers are impressive, but not overwhelming (though after Tokyo, I'm not sure Sweetie and I can be overhwelmed by buildings anymore).




Of course, even the most sophisticated of cities can't completely escape the tacky:


As I posted yesterday, Sweetie and I were supposed to visit the Statue of Liberty today. But the National Park Service didn't give the go-ahead to the ferry service, so we headed to NYC for our first day. The states of New Jersey and New York were in total disarray for the first half of the day, and as a result both Sweetie and I despised both and were in terrible moods until the afternoon. Trains were delayed left and right. We missed one stop and took half an hour at the next one to figure out that there was no way to cross to the tracks on the other side and go back without exiting, diving over snow drifts and around honking taxis to get to the other side, and entering through different stairs. After ending up seriously off track, we said "screw the subway" and walked an hour down 42nd street instead. The first half was stuffed with tourists who acted like they'd never seen snow before. But after fifth street, the crowds thinned out, and things started to look up. By the time we reached the United Nations headquarters, with a backdrop of bright blue sky over the ocean, NYC didn't seem like such a bad place.


We took a guided tour of the main building, lead by a beautiful and knowledgeable French lady. They gave us headphones to hear her magnified voice so she wouldn't have to speak loudly to the group; I think that's brilliant and should be standard for professional tours. After learning the ins and outs of the UN...their structure, directives, etc...we took a peek at the General Assembly and the impromptu Secretarial chamber (the real one was under renovation).



I also had my picture taken with the UN Secretary General.


He's awfully thin--those South Koreans have such frail frames.

There were a couple of other sights on our itinerary, but it was 3pm when we left the UN, we had skipped lunch, and we'd learned by then that any time estimate we made for getting from point A to B in New York City should be doubled. So we headed straight for the day-closer, Rockefeller Plaza. First we walked to Grand Central Station.


(We actually took this picture earlier when we walked by around noon, but we didn't see the core of it until later). While there, I got my hands on a Metro map, which magically made our lives much easier. We successfully navigated the trains to Rockefeller Center, from whence we escaped to 48th street to visit Sweetie's Holy Land: Nintendo World.




We eyed a lot of expensive merchandise, but just left with the standard Pokemon plushies for our growing collection. By the time we were finished, it was 5:30, and I hadn't had proper food in my body since 9am. In my low-blood-sugar delirium I gravitated towards giant balls of chocoalate in the NBC store window.


They tricked me. Those were just styrofoam wrapped in gold foil. But inside we found some real food at Hale & Hearty Soups.




Those tiny cups of soup and half sandwiches cost an arm and a leg, but they were indeed hale and hearty.

We intended to go the Top of the Rock after that. But when we arrived at the ticket center, we learned it would cost $21 per person, and there were dozens of people more than willing to pay that amount and waiting an hour in a winding queue to do it. So we took a picture of the Bottom of the Top of the Rock and went back to the hotel.

Saying it like that makes it sound like we just tripped our boring selves on over to the Hilton and slipped into bed early. Actually, we left the center after 6 and didn't arrive back until 8:30. A short sampling of the two hours in between (because I'm dead tired and my brain is starting to slip):

-We helped a mute passenger determine whether he was on the right train with lots of miming.
-We kept an eye on a pair of distressed siblings caught on the train to Times Square when their mother was left standing on the platform. Everyone in the car got involved and stood gaurd until the mother came in the next train. Cue chorus of "awww"s amongst hugs and tears.
-We learned that NJ Transit does not advertise where a train will be until it is actually there, and lets commuters battle to the death to get to the track before it's full.
-We learned that our hotel gives the worst service in the area, and we weren't the only ones "disconnected" when we called with problems. Standing outside the Newark airport waiting for the shuttle, we heard many others complain that they'd been waiting for more than an hour and were hung up on each time they tried to confirm one was coming.
-I was unofficially charged with keeping a stranger's snoring toddler safe on said shuttle because she wasn't belted in and her mother was occupied with a second baby.

As Sweetie says, we accrued enough experience points to level up today. I don't think the world can come up with any more surprises, but I'm sure it will prove me wrong tomorrow.