A Big City-Style Weekend

So in my defense, I haven't written about my adventures in New York City yet because I'm still catching up on sleep from that trip and editing photos and...blah blah blah. Enough excuses, more stories!

So for me it all began last Wednesday. I left for a 2-night camping and rafting trip with the camp. Overall it was a pretty unbelievable trip. I had tons of fun rafting and got unbelievably bitten by bugs! I've never been more surrounded by bugs in my life and I came home with mosquito bites ALL OVER my body. No joke. Bug bites in places you don't ever want to have bug bites. But the rafting was awesome. It was a full day affair including stopping for lunch and waterfall jumping! Fortunately this camping trip was for rafting, otherwise I would have died from the heat and humidity. Thank goodness for cool rivers! Overwhelming heat and bugs gave me a true taste of a Maine summer and appreciate Colorado's dry climate more than I ever have before.

So Friday afternoon I got home from camping and promptly set out to unpack, shower, then pack for New York. I also went to see Despicable Me with Jess and Ben which was an AWESOME movie! I highly recommend everyone go see it. It was hilarious. Then Saturday morning Jess and I woke up early and finished packing for the city - a big contrast to packing for camping so I've pretty much gone through an entire spectrum of packing and clothing and shoes and such. We left Wells in my car (as we were leaving Zach asked if we were driving to New York in "that thing", referring to my trusty car Baxter) so yes we drove to New York in my car and yes it did get us there without fail! We arrived in Port Chester, NY which is right on the border between Connecticut and New York where we planned to catch a train into the city so we didn't have to drive into the city and figure out parking and face the wrath of NYC traffic. So we parked, paid $4 to leave the car over the weekend and sat at the train station for....2 HOURS. The train was supposed to come every half hour but all trains in and out were delayed due to overhead wire problems. Who knows what that means exactly but what it did mean was no trains in Port Chester. We gave up on ever getting a trian out of that station so we asked a cab driver that was sitting around waiting for people to give up on the train if they knew where we could catch a different train or bus or something (because it was $100 to take a taxi into the city from our current location which was a bit out of our budget) and we were recommended to the lovely city of White Plains, NY where there was indeed a huge train and bus station. So we paid a hefty fee of $19.25 for a weekend of parking (after already wasting $4 at the disappointing Port Chester) then we went into the train station and had to change around our already purchased tickets since our tickets were for leaving Port Chester, not White Plains...after some negotiating with the ticket lady we finally got our correct tickets and then stood in the blazing New York sun (similar to the Maine sun in intensity) for another half hour or so until finally our train arrived and we were ecstatic to find out the train was air conditioned. After an hour on the train we arrived at Grand Central Station in Manhattan, purchased Metro cards for the subway and headed to our hostel uptown. By the time we arrived at the hostel it was 7:30 and we were sweaty, tired, and hungry...but SO excited to be in New York City! We'd both been there before but had planned some new things we'd never done there and the fun was about to begin!...as soon as we could check in. The guy working at the hostel checking people in seemed to be a little shorthanded and it took another half hour or so before we got into our room, set down our stuff, figured out the bed situation (we were staying in an all-women dorm-style room with 6 other girls who I will discuss later), got changed for going out in the city and set off.

Now I should mention that our hostel was really really great! It's called Tone on Lex (it's located on Lexington Ave. and East 94th) the employees are super nice and the hostel itself is well-kept and in a really nice neighborhood. It's a fairly young crowd who seems to stay in the hostel, mostly age 20-35 I'd say and everyone is SO nice. Anyways if you're ever going to NYC and want to spend only $33 per night in a really great hostel, stay at Tone on Lex! :-)

Anyways, it was finally our turn to check into the hostel and the guy is very nice and funny. We asked him how big the lockers were in the rooms and he said "you could fit a 6-year-old boy inside one. Or a medium sized dog." We said oh...great, thanks!" Why a 6 year old boy anyways? Has there been an instance where a 6 year old boy was found in one of the lockers? Well we got to our room and he was just about right, the lockers were 6-year-old-boy-sized (aka big enough to fit my backpacking backpack) and the beds were bunk bed style but pretty comfy and our roommates were very nice. We met three of them upon arriving, two were French, one was Irish. The other three girls we never officially met due to varying sleep and awakeness schedules but everyone was nice. Sometimes a little noisy but hey, it's a hostel and there's 8 girls staying in a very small room, it's hard not to wake someone up at some point. After settling into the hostel we set out for the city, finally, and in search of a long-awaited dinner! Not so fast Jess and Jennie...what would be a trip to New York without further inconveniences and delays. We get to our subway station which is a satisfactory 2 blocks away from our hostel and find out that for that weekend only, for some reason unknown to anyone, that particular station isn't running trains downtown (which is of course where we were going) so we got to walk 10 blocks north to a different subway station...but wait, no, there is a fire in a building about 5 blocks into our trek and the entire block is inaccessible so we have to walk an extra couple of blocks out of our way to go around the fire situation. We finally arrive in Times Square, our chosen destination for food and hopefully some drinks too (I'd say after the day we had we deserved a couple of drinks wouldn't you??) so we start playing the "what do you want to eat?" game and eventually settle on a cute little Italian restaurant with reasonable prices and an outdoor patio and, best of all, FOOD! By the time we sat down to order our dinner it was 10pm and we hadn't eaten in about six or seven hours I think. Needless to say I may have drooled on the menu the second I looked at it. Hehe.

After dinner we set out to walk around Time Square and maybe find a place to get some drinks and dance and have a fun first night in NYC! We found a great bar with lots of dancing and it seemed to be primarily populated that night by Indian people. A fun crowd who love to dance, so we were happy! Drinks, however, are insanely expensive in the city. Go figure. We paid an average of $9 per drink. Yikes! A far stretch from Boulder or Wells, that's for sure. But good times were to be had so we sucked it up, bought some drinks, danced a lot and had tons of fun! Later we wandered into an Irish pub-style bar with a juke box which Jess thoroughly enjoyed, as did I, and we made some new friends who were, in fact, Irish! It was fun to chat and spend a long time playing music on the juke box and getting to know our new Irish friends who were living in NYC for the summer. Fast forward to Jess and I getting on the subway to go home and we find ourselves around the 4:30am time. By the time we got back to the hostel the sun was on its way up.

Sunday late morning we woke up from 5 or so hours of sleep and got going, found some breakfast and proceeded to explore New York City some more! Our goal was to see some things neither of us had seen before and to see a few old favorites. So we explored Bastille Day (a French holiday I really should research a bit) which was a pretty awesome street festival with French food, music, and so on. We also wandered around Central Park, following the sounds of musicians playing and various other performers. It was another unbelievably hot day so there were hundreds of people laying out on the lawns in the park tanning, playing frisbee and football, picnicking (sp??), etc. we even saw a couple having their wedding photos taken at a fountain area in the park. A guy also came up to us and said he'd take our picture, then handed us a business card and said we could see the photo on his website. I decided this is a great way to advertise yourself if you're a photographer. Go somewhere pretty and touristy, take tourists' photos, then hand them a business card so they have to go to your website in order to see their picture. I did the touristy thing and looked up our photo on his website, he charges a pretty good amount of money for prints of his photos so I bet he makes a fairly good living. Perhaps I should look into that. After Central Park we were pretty exhausted from walking and getting hungry so we found a cute little restaurant/deli with delicious paninis. Also, Sunday was the World Cup final so every restaurant and bar we passed had the game playing, so we stopped every once in a while to check the score, which was 0-0 for most of the game.

After lunch we were still hot from all the sun and, well, heat... so we stopped in F. A. O. Schwartz to visit the Big Piano and watch the performance by the employees of the store, they play the songs that Tom Hanks plays in the movie Big. The nice air conditioned store was a great break in the afternoon. Then, a little while after that, we got down to business in finding our perfect spot for viewing the phenomenon photography nerds call Manhattanhenge. As I have explained earlier, this is a day in which the sun is directly lined up with the streets of Manhattan so that when you look west down a street in the city during sunset on this particular day the sun is perfectly framed by Manhattan's many unique buildings. After much research and deliberation, we finally narrowed down our choices and went to check out different spots to see which would be the most conducive to photographing the sunset and having a good frame. We finally decided on a bridge crossing east 42nd Street at 1st Street. The bridge was perfect because we could look all the way down 42nd st. and didn't have to run out into the middle of the road to take our photos. We staked out a spot on the bridge, but it was several hours early for the sunset and no one was there yet so we decided to visit the Empire State Building while we waited for sunset.

Now in the movies, like Sleepless in Seattle, all you have to do to visit the Empire State Building is walk in and get on an elevator to the top floor. No no no....this is not reality. There are miles and miles of velvet rope to walk through, people trying to get you to pay extra to go up without the wait in line, and they herd you through semi-unwillingly. There is no time to hesitate and consider your options once you make the commitment to get in line. But despite all the chaos and silliness, the view from the top is well worth the trouble and the $20. How strange though to be at the top of such a massive building and see nothing but other massive buildings all around you. In its own way it's beautiful, but it made me sad to see so few trees and other signs of nature. I was glad we got a chance to do the Empire State Building.

After the ESB we headed back to our bridge on 42nd and were distressed to find several other photographers all set up on the bridge with their tripods and large cameras ready. It worked out well though because since we were in the amateur category and of the rookie status for Manhattanhenge photographing we could sneak in right behind the first row of tripods and shove our way in between people and get some really great shots. I was skeptical at first that what we were about to witness would be a truly spectacular event but figured it must be if so many people show up for it every year. It had been a little cloudy and rainy the few hours before sunset so we were worried that the sunset would be less than impressive with so many clouds but as if someone decided to appease the silly photographers, the clouds parted leaving only a few little fluffy clouds that would make great background lighting for the sunset. We stood around for about an hour with everyone else who had chosen our bridge as their spot to view Manhattanhenge. Everyone was excited and chatting along. One couple brought a picnic dinner complete with wine and their cute little dog. Everyone was quietly and secretly showing off their cameras and checking out everyone else's cameras to see if they had the best camera. Get a bunch of photographers together in one place to photograph the same thing and what else could you get but big egos? Regardless of all the camera-envy going on everyone was very friendly. I was still skeptical at this point about the potential of that evening's sunset since I couldn't quite see the sun as I looked west down 42nd street but then the sky between the buildings started to change color from blue to yellowish to orange and finally, in a split second a burst of red came from the southern side and the sun (a red ball of awesomeness) moved into its destined spot, directly between the south and north sides of the street and oh how the shutter clicks did commence! Hundreds of people taking photos at once, and down below us the people who didn't make it to the bridge in time would run out into the middle of the street at each crossing signal, snap a few photos, then run back to the sidewalk and repeat this during the entire sun-setting process. To sum-up this Manhattanhenge experience I will simply say it was incredible and everyone should go see it at some point.

That was the majority of our trip to NYC. We got up early Monday morning and caught the subway to Grand Central, then a train back to White Plains, then picked up my car. I then had to drive Jess to the airport in Boston, a 4 hour drive from White Plains, so she could continue her travels with some work-related trips this week. So we drove to Boston Monday morning and got there around 1:30 in time to grab some lunch with Paras who was, conveniently, also visiting Boston that weekend from Colorado! It was fun to see him and we wandered around Boston for a little while that afternoon. How funny to see someone you've only known in one context (Colorado) in a completely different place. So I guess you could say I got my fill of big cities last weekend. New York AND Boston. But I kept thinking to myself how cool it was to live so close to both places! Maine is an amazing place in its own right, and then is made even more awesome by being close to other equally awesome places like NYC and Boston.

This blog has taken me absolutely forever to write (thanks for reading all this, by the way!) so it is really time for me to go to bed now. There's always more to say, but I'll have to say it another time. For now, here are a few more photos from this weekend: