Friday, March 25, 2005

Adventures in Wonderland (I mean, the City)

On Tuesday, we went to NYC on the train. We only got lost once on the way to the train station. About an hour later, we were safely in downtown Manhattan and trying to find the way to Chinatown. First, we bought tickets for the wrong rail system, had to go up and down numerous tunnels, and eventually found our way to the right terminal, where we purchased some more tickets. We rode the subway for awhile and ended up, amazingly, right where we wanted to be. We wandered up and down streets, trying to find the cheapest t-shirts, and then some food.

After a very filling meal, we went into Little Italy and got lost while trying to find an entrance to the subway. We asked a nice looking traffic cop, who gave some confusing and potentially misleading directions. We tried to follow them, but had to ask a street vendor where to go next. He got us as far as the next corner, where there was a little park and we took a little break to attempt to decipher the map. Unsuccessfully. I thought we were going the right direction, but the nice officer on the steps of the court building told us exactly where to find the subway. (He told pity on us cuz we had someone from Idaho with us.)

So we finally made it down the subway and found the one going to Central Park. We got off at 76th, or something like that, and miraculously found the Guggenheim, which we had been talking about only that morning. We took pictures outside of it to prove that we were there, then crossed the street to get to the reservoir. More pretty pictures. Then we wandered up to the Great Lawn, which is closed for the season. Across the field, I saw a pretty castle, so we went that way. The Turtle Pond was closed, too, so we sat and tried to warm our frozen extremeties while pondering which way to go next. We came across a statue of a Polish king on a creepy looking horse and took pictures of him, too.

It was getting pretty dark by this time, and Sarah got ahold of her dad on the cell phone. He was supposed to meet us somewhere for dinner. We settled on Penn Station and going back to New Jersey to find a restuarant. So that left us walking the few blocks (over 5th and Madison Aves.) back to the subway, riding to some unknown place, switching trains and getting lost again, and finally arriving at Penn Station at least half and hour later. But where in Penn Station were we to meet her dad? In the main part. But where was that? The guy from the newspaper stand, a nice man on the train, and a security guard later, we found him where he had been waiting for the last 50 minutes. Oops. We made it on the next train back to NJ and had a 50 minute nap.

The restaurant he chose was close to the train station and had a racing theme. We all had calzones and frozen citris fruits filled with sorbet for dessert. We stayed till closing time, and then walked the wrong direction away from the restaurant, so we had to retrace our steps to find the car we had left on the roof of the parking garage almost 12 hours earlier. So yeah, NYC was fun. And we only got lost, what, 11 or 12 times?

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

That was a very in dept description of exactly what happened. You are soo funny! Hope you enjoyed the trip though.

10:15 AM  
Blogger wplmom said...

Sounds like a fabulous adventure. And NYC really is kind of a wonderland. Memories like getting lost a dozen times are the best part! Hope you share your pics with your Mom!

8:24 AM  

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