Yeah, I know, the trip was three weeks ago. I'm horrible and slow and the world's greatest procrastinator (somewhere, I still have a half-finished con report from Shoujocon '03. I someday may actually finish it) so it's getting done now. I'm also cutting it to spare all of you that don't want to read it's massiveness, because I know I have a tendency to ramble, and we did lots and lots. I'm also likely to forget big important things that happened beause my memory fails at life, and it's almost two am. So there may be a secondary NYC post later.


We got up early Tuesday on about four hours of sleep apiece, and luckily got a ride to the bus station with my next door neighbor, who's car smells rather overwhelmingly of dog. We bought round-trip tickets with the assurance that we could use it on any scheduled bus through the end of the month. We both actually managed to get a little sleep (classic rock = soothing), and then, we were in New York. Our first stop was to get coffee and tea, and then we picked up a somewhat over priced, and, as we were to later discover, rather out of date NYC travel guide in a bookshop before setting out into the city itself.

We found out that bus station is all of two blocks or so from Times Square, so we decided to get cheap tickets for a Broadway show first, as we'd agreed in advance that it was one of the things we definately wanted to do. Our first plan was to see Avenue Q, as I truly, desperately want to see that play just having heard songs from it, but alas, it was sold out. So we got tickets to Rent instead, which I had heard was good from many, many people. From there, it was off to find somewhere to stay that night, mostly so we could dump our huge backpacks somewhere. Called a bunch of places, and finally decided to give the Jazz on the Park Hostel a try, and headed up there on the subway (a brief aside: NYC has the nastiest subway system I've seen. I thought the T was a little skeezy, but not compared to NYC). They had six-person dormitory style rooms, but we got lucky, and there was only one other person staying in ours.

This particular hostel is right next to the uptown end of Central Park, so we decided to spend the afternoon walking down through Central Park to get back to the Times Square area and our theatre. Central Park is surprisingly nice, particularly compared to the rest of New York. If you go far enough in, you can almost forget you're in one of the largest cities in the world. We also noticed a strange trend of people walking matching sets of tiny dogs. It was a bit bizarre. The walk was long - about sixty blocks, total - but it was a nice day out, and we arrived at the theatre in plenty of time.

We ended up with surprisingly good seats, given that our tickets were only fifty apiece - we were in the center of Orchestra Left, maybe ten rows back, with a pretty good view of the stage (it would have been perfect if this tall guy wasn't sitting in the row in front of me). The show was more or less what everyone had told me it was like - excellent, although a little depressing. The ending also felt a bit forced, but hey, it's a Broadway musical, it requires a little bit more suspension of disbelief than usual. Loved the set (can we say Asher and Ally's place?), and there were some great songs and moments.

We were going to go up the Empire State Building afterwards, but they had stopped selling tickets, so we wandered around Central Manhattan, grabbed a bite to eat at Wendy's (BBQ cheeseburger = surprisingly good) before heading back to the hostel around midnight and accidentally awakening our roommate (who luckily wasn't very upset by this).

We ended up getting up early again, although this time with a little bit more sleep, to get as much sightseeing done in one day as possible. After packing our bags, and having a quick breakfast, we decided to hit some museums, starting with the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Met was...stunning, really. I'm generally not huge on art museums - after a while, all the portaits of rich and possibly minorly famous people look the same - but this place had everything, pretty much. My favorite bits were probably the displays of antique armour and weapons (which lead to an impromptu lesson on swords from Jo, and then firearms from me), and the exhibit on Hatshepsut (who is made of awesome, pretty much), but there was a lot worth seeing, and we probably could have spent the whole day, or possibly days, plural, there.

That, however, was to be something for another trip. After a few hours at the Met, we headed on to the American Museum of Natural History. This was, after the Met, a little dissapointing, unfortuantely. The dinosaur skeletons were cool - you really don't get a sense of how huge they were until you're standing next to them - but a lot of the rest of the museum looked like they hadn't changed displays in the last thirty years, and kind of fell into the 'diorama' school of exhibit design.

Our next couple of stops were outside. We headed down the Battery Park with the intent of taking the Liberty Island ferry out to the statue and going inside, but they had stopped selling tickets for inside, and the ferry was $16 apiece. So we took the Staten Island ferry instead, which goes by the statue and is free. After traveling to Staten Island and back, we walked up to the site of the former World Trade Centers, mostly out curiosity. What we discovered was more or less a massive hole in the ground, and that a lot of people had come to look at the massive hole in the ground. We also took advantage of a nearby building's AC, because it was starting to get pretty hot out, before moving on.

From there, we kind of wandered up through lower Manhattan for a while, passing through Chinatown and the edge of Little Italy along the way. We went into a couple stores, but mostly just kind of took in the atmosphere. We also ended up walking part way out on the Manhattan Bridge, because Jo wanted some good photos of the Brooklyn Bridge, and in the process, we passed over one of the really skeezy neighborhoods in NYC, complete with tons and tons of graffiti. We also learned of our guidebook's out-of-dateness when it lead us to a restaurant that had moved somewhere new several months before. So we ended up settling for some massive slices of authentic New York pizza, which I wasn't able to actually finish, and discussed various characters' tastes in music. We also decided that NYC is possibly the city most like Midgar that actually exists in the real world at some point.

At this point, it was starting to get dark, so we took the subway over towards the Empire State Building, so we could see the NYC skyline at night. Unfortuantely, lots of other people had the same idea, so not only was it $16 apiece to go up, the line was an hour and a half long. And yes, we shelled out and stood in line, and yes, the view did end up being pretty spectacular, but once is enough.

We had planned to do some more walking and exploring, but it was late, and we were begining to crash. So we just headed over to the bus station, ensured that the woman at the bus station back home hadn't lied to us about being able to use the tickets any time, and then sat around trying to figure out what to do for the next couple of hours until our three am bus left. We ended up playing hangman with video game characters, mostly because we're too unevenly matched to play biology hangman like Anthony and I did once. I apparently have obscure character-remembering skills, or something. Particularly with FF7.

This bus ride, we both managed to actually sleep a little bit more, no thanks to the guy behind us who kept talking, and got in around seven-thirty or so. Our original plan had been to take the bus home, but when we actually got to the bus station, we kind of said 'Screw it' and got a cab instead, making it home around eight, and then totally crashing until four-thirty or so.


And for anyone who doesn't want to read that, but just wants the photos, they're up here, although intermixed with Boston and Salem.