There’s nothing like going on vacation that gets me to clean my house really good. Well, except knowing we will be having company. As if the bathtub needs to be scrubbed and the kitchen floor needs to be mopped while we’re away. It adds more stress to my planning and packing but I hate coming home to a messy house!
This past weekend we took a bus trip with 54 other people to New York City! We left Friday morning at 10 am, spent Friday and Saturday nights, and then traveled all day Sunday to get home.
I had to drop the girls off before 8 am on Friday and we didn’t leave the house until 9 so I had to come back without them. Being at home without your dog is weird and I don’t care for it.
You know what else I don't care for? People being unable to follow directions and be on time. That's all I'm going to say about that. When you're in a large crowd, there's always someone who has to be the center of attention. Don't be that person. I contemplated buying sedatives for everyone on board but I wasn't sure if they sold them at a gas station. Roofy smoothies all around! (I'm kidding, if anyone needs that clarification.) Can you vote people off of a bus? If not, the bus people should definitely rethink that policy. People started freaking out because a bee got on the bus so someone killed it. It was a carpenter bee that most likely didn’t have a stinger. Only males do, which are the ones most likely to approach people. The females have stingers but will typically only sting if handled. He said, “DIE! DIE! DIE!” as he stomped it and while I know he was just being dramatic, I couldn't help but find him pathetic for killing an insect that couldn’t even defend itself 😒. Oh, and, the bus was FREEZING. We stopped at a gas station and I spent 6.99 on a blanket and it’s the best investment I’ve ever made in my life. Okay, all my complaining is done. Glad I got that all out🤪.
We stopped at the Flight 93 National Memorial. It was the sight of the crash of American Airlines flight 93 that crashed on September 11, 2001. The passengers and crew thwarted an attack on Washington DC by terrorists who hijacked the plane. They pulled together and caused the terrorist pilot to take the plane down on an abandoned coal mine field in Shanksville, PA. A boulder in the field marks the point of impact and the trees behind are the final resting place of the 44 passengers. It’s a very solemn memorial and pays tribute to those brave people very nicely.
We got to our hotel around 10 pm. We stayed at the Courtyard by Marriott in Herald Square, which is right across the street from the famous Macy's, one of the world’s largest department stores. You've heard NYC be called the city that never sleeps? It's true. I bought a shirt at H&M at 11 pm, in person. I've only ever shopped for clothes that late online. We didn't do much our first night because, well, it was late, we didn't know where anything was, and we weren't sure if it was safe to be out at night (totally is, although EVERYONE comes out at night. It's 10 times more crowded than in the daytime).
We could see the Empire State Building from our room
I was excited because I slept until I woke up on my own on Saturday, and while it was weird not having a Sophie kiss at 6 am, I enjoyed the extra sleep. We decided to start uptown at Central Park so we set out on our walk and were asked for money from a homeless man within the first five minutes. We told him (honestly) that we didn’t have any cash and he replied, “You white people, you rich, can’t help out a homeless vet.” You feel bad but insulted at the same time. We came to Bryant Park first, which is a cute little space where you can enjoy a bit of nature with the tall shade trees and charge your phone at the same time. Win win.
We came to Times Square next and got there just as some people who were gathered started yelling and marching and we weren't sure what they were saying, only that it had something to do with Jesus.
If you’re easily offended by partial nudity, scroll quickly past my next photo.
Three women wearing thongs and body paint and The Naked Cowboy are there for you to get your picture taken with, for a fee. I heard it was $5 but I didn’t care to get one 🙄.
Coming into Central Park is funny because you like literally come to a point where there are skyscrapers right behind you and massive trees in front of you.
Leaving Central Park
People do whatever they want there. There were lots of sunbathers laying out on their towels in a field, many people walking their doggos (that I wanted to pet), people racing mini sailboats in a pond, people paddling around rowboats, people running, horses pulling carriages, and several
bikes—normal bikes, 2 person bikes, bikes you power with your arms instead of your legs. It is very much a tourist attraction though, people were trying to give us “information” at every entrance. When someone says “Hey guys” you know they’re trying to sell you something. We just said, "No, thanks" and they left us alone.
Zoom in for sunbathers.
Mini sailboats racing
Horse drawn carriage
Action shot, as captioned by Phil
We walked around the park for quite some time and then decided to get lunch. We had to get some NY pizza so we found a little place called Bella Vita on the way back to our hotel. There were ten thousand people there and no seats so we got it to go. One slice is about equal to half of a medium pizza. We walked back toward our room and stopped at Bryant park to eat. I guess I looked like a local carrying that pizza box because I got asked for directions. Luckily, the street sign was directly in front of me so I was able to tell her the correct way to go and seem like I knew what I was talking about 😂.
Afterwards we decided to take the subway downtown because we had already been walking for about 4 hours at that point. Getting a Metro card is easy and finding the right train was pretty simple on the way down. It took about 7 minutes to get to the 9/11 Memorial. We saw the One World Trade Center and it's height is simply amazing. The endless pools with the names of those who lost their lives on 9/11/01 engraved on the edges are beautiful. We walked toward the ferry and saw the Statue of Liberty from a distance and got ice cream cones that cost $8 each 😳. The line for the ferry to go see the statue up close was ridiculously long and they pack hundreds of people on it. That didn’t seem like a fun thing to do so we got some beer instead. As we were sitting, enjoying our drinks, we noticed an old couple going around offering to draw caricatures. The woman was holding a huge poster that had several creative drawings of celebrities on it. We called the lady over and she didn’t speak much English but when asked “How much?” she said,
“Five dollars. Two minutes.” We said, “Okay,” and she asked, “Together?” and we
said, “Yes.” A few minutes later he came over to draw our picture and she collected money from the previous customers. He sat down on his folding chair and pointed to Philip and motioned for him to
cock his head. He looked up and down, drawing, and pointed to his mouth once and gave a big smile to instruct Philip to do the same. He isn’t very good at holding a fake smile but we were pretty amused by the whole thing. He drew “me” and then moved onto the next victims..err, I mean customers (there’s some foreshadowing for you). The lady came back over and took our picture and put it into a cardboard frame and slipped it into a plastic sleeve. She then showed Philip the back of the poster, where the prices were located. One person is five dollars and two people is fifteen. I’m not sure how that math adds up but we were like, “Whatever,” and he gave her a twenty, figuring there wouldn’t be any change because we know how these things work. However, she then pointed to the right of that list of prices where it states, “With frame-$40.” Bahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah. Ummmm, no. Philip said to her, “I don’t want the frame. You can take it out,” to which she replied, “No frame, no good.” So he countered, “I’m not going to
pay you $40 for this picture. I didn’t ask for a frame. You can take it out and keep the frame.” She said, “No frame, no good. Smear.” He said, “I don’t care. I’m not giving you anymore money,” and laid the picture beside him on the bench. She pushed the picture toward him and walked away. We’re all for
supporting people in their craft but COME ON! That’s a scam if I’ve ever seen one. I really wanted to go warn the next people, who were having their kids' picture drawn and would most likely just pay them $40. I think there must have been an altercation with the people before us too because she came over while he was drawing he asked her a question in their language and, without knowing what that language is or what he said, I am 99% sure it was, “How much did they pay you?” The pic is posted below. Let me know if you think it is worthy of $40….
One World Trade Center
Endless pool
Statue of Liberty
Good beer.
Poster they were carrying around for advertisement
Sketching us
$40 picture.
The bad part about commissioning a drawing of yourselves that measures probably 16”x20” when you’re several miles from your hotel room is that you then have to carry the stupid thing around with you 🙄. We started on our way back to the subway to take it to our room but wanted to see the Brooklynn Bridge and Wall St. first. I know, in the right light, and from the right angle, the bridge can be a beautiful picture. I didn’t have either so it’s not all that impressive. I was really excited to see the Charging Bull and, more importantly, the Fearless Girl statues on Wall St. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one because holy wow, there were like 60 people crowded around them! I got a good shot of the girl but didn’t get “in” to see the bull. It was nuts there.
Brooklyn Bridge
Wall St.
Fearless Girl
The Charging Bull..kind of.
I really enjoyed Wall St. That may have been my favorite part because I love the movie Die Hard with a Vengeance (Philip has been saying it’s my favorite movie for years and I always laughed it off but it might
really be) and the whole movie was based in NYC but a big part was on Wall St. So it was cool to see it in person.
We wanted to go to the top of the Chrysler building to take a pic of the skyline around dusk so we headed back toward our hotel on the subway (or so we thought). It’s not difficult to figure out which train you need to be on, especially with Apple maps…however, you should make sure you know which DIRECTION the train is headed, uptown or downtown. We needed to be on a Manhattan bound train and got on a Brooklynn bound one instead. We knew something was wrong when we didn’t stop anywhere that the map said we should be going. When we got to the final stop we just sat there and a nice person on the train told us we were at the final stop and had to get off the train. She asked if we needed to go further and I told her that we needed to go back. She asked which stop we needed and then told us to go downstairs and the right train to get on. She also said that the train was “running local,” which meant nothing to me
until I googled it. That was unfortunate because that meant we were going to hit every single stop on the way back. Twenty-seven stops later we were where
we needed to be 🤦🏻♀️. Oh well 🤷🏻♀️.
By that point I was getting hangry so we skipped the Chrysler building and walked back through Times Square to get to a place called Juniors’ for dinner. The food was good and the strawberry cheesecake was delicious! I got a pulled pork sandwich and Philip got an open-faced roast beef sandwich, which was just a huge pile of beef, on top of two slices of bread, drizzled with Au Jus. He won’t eat mushy textures so that bread was way too soggy for him. It was all that was left when he finished and I was amused that his bread
looked like cat food 😂.
Pulled pork
Roast beef
Cat food 😂
Yummy strawberry cheesecake 😋. Finger for size reference.
We went the wrong direction when we left dinner, making for the second time we got lost. We literally looked like the tourists you see in old movies, except using a map on our phones instead of a huge paper one. It’s really not that hard to navigate once you figure it all out. The streets and avenues are sort of like a grid for most of uptown. If we spent more time there I think it wouldn’t be a problem to get where we wanted to go. Let me tell you something about crossing the street there: pay attention to the crosswalk signs 😳. At home, if you want to cross the street you push the button to change the lights but more than likely you’ll get to cross before you get a walk signal and then you just piss off all the drivers that have to wait for nothing. In NYC, if there’s no walk sign, it’s a good idea to stay on the sidewalk. There are crazy drivers. They will honk at you if they even think they’re going to step into the road but I really can’t blame them because it would be easy to hit a pedestrian with the way people dart across the street there. Save yourself and wait for the walk signal.
Anyway, we talked about going to a comedy club but I was so tired and my legs were chafed from my shorts rubbing that we decided to skip it. The bus picked us up at 11 am on Sunday and the trip was going as planned until we were about 1:40 away from home. We got a flat tire and when the bus driver went to check it, she discovered fluid leaking from the axel. The bus company said that the bus wasn’t safe to drive so they would send a new bus, the only problem was that bus was 2 hours away 🙄. We decided to ask my very awesome friend, Kim, to come pick us up and she did because she’s the best 😁. We got home around 11 pm, three hours after our scheduled time, and I heard the second bus showed up at 10:15 to pick up everyone who had waited for it. The bus company was nice enough to buy dinner for everyone at Pizza Hut that was close to where we stopped.
Stupid tire!
We plan to visit NYC again and see some of the things we missed this time, such as a Broadway play, the Chrysler building, the New York City public library, the other islands, etc. We’ll drive ourselves and not take a bus again though, not because of the tire issue, that was unavoidable, but just because it’s faster in a car, you don’t have to listen to other people talk if you want to nap, and pee breaks can happen whenever you want and won’t take a minimum of thirty minutes. I’m glad we took the bus this time though. It was a good experience and I liked having the security of knowing there were other familiar people around if there was any trouble. We felt safe enough there that we could go on our own next time and be fine. There were police officers on every corner. I’m sure there are places you don’t want to go but sticking to the touristy spots should be okay!
Here are a few more pics of other things we saw:
The New York Times
Funny parking garage
Another shot of the Empire State Building.
Radio City Music Hall
The only pic I got of the NYC skyline, from the window of the bus when we were leaving
5 bajillion people walking in Times Square
NY Stock Exchange
2 travel tips:
1. To keep necklaces from getting tangled when you travel, put one end through a straw and then close at the clasp. I saw this on Pinterest a while back and have done it several times. I actually forgot to do it when we left and end up with two necklaces wound together. When we were packing to leave I found an extra straw in our room so I used it to get them home.
2. If you travel with a water bottle, clip a carabiner to it. It was nice being able to hang it from the window (and then the seat in front of me on the way back) and not have to worry about it rolling around.
There was so much to do and so much to see and I can’t wait to go back!
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