The plan for now was to go back to the apartment to get ready for dinner. We owed Carl a nice steak, and he knew just the place. He's actually a regular there, and usually goes every Thursday night with a co-worker.
While I was waiting for the other two, I checked out my pictures for the day while admiring the view from my bedroom window:
We walked to a little place a few blocks away for dinner. Since Carl is a regular here, they treated him right. We got free drinks while we waiting for his favorite table to become available.
Dad and I split the 45 ounce streak for two, which was cooked Tuscan style with different spices and seasonings. It was delicious, and very different from a regular old steak.
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| Along with some mashed potatoes, creamed spinach, and green beans. |
After we finished dinner and I came back from the bathroom, I found a dessert waiting for me.
I have no remembrance of what Carl said he ordered for me. It was chocolate and vanilla ice cream with either coconut or almonds frozen in the middle. I wish I only had to eat half of it, because I had a hard time fitting it all in after eating my half of that steak.
By this time, I was tired of taking pictures. That said, I didn't take many of my surroundings; just the important stuff. We went back to the apartment, then over to the boat tour headquarters to see what time they opened on Sunday.
While we were over there, we took an interest in looking at the USS Intrepid. It was used in World War II as an aircraft carrier. It was decommissioned in 1974, and renovated to become a museum in 1982. It was renovated again in 2008, and now holds the 'Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum' inside.
To put it simply, it was larger than life.
I can't even tell how how scary it was to be standing right in front of this thing.
Before we headed to the Empire State Building, I turned around and saw something so ridiculous, and all I could do was laugh.
There wasn't anything that could be doing that by itself. That way was uptown; away from lower Manhattan and Times Square. What you see is the collective light pollution of the entire city. That's just not natural! I'm sure Chicago has some of this, but I've never seen it. It was probably just the clouds doing something funky. It looked like an optical illusion up there for the rest of the night.
In five years, Carl had seen every tourist attraction, day and night, about ten times. We dropped him off at the apartment and he went up to finally get some rest after being up for quite possibly more than 24 hours.
Since it was already 10:30, and we thought the observation deck would only be open until midnight, we hailed a cab to save us some time. The ride from 43rd and 10th to 34th and 5th only took a few minutes. It dropped us off right outside, and we made our way into the lobby.
(All I could think about was Buddy the Elf trying to get past the front desk to see his Dad.)
We turned a corner and went up some stairs. We found out the top level was open until 1 AM. We were glad to hear that we wouldn't be rushed; it was only 11, we still had plenty of time.
We were greeted by a nice, fat line of people in after just one flight of stairs. Well, this didn't look good at all.
We asked the employee at the end of the line, and were told it would be at least and hour and a half to make it through. Now is when we realized it was still Saturday, probably the worst possible night to see the building. Everyone was willing to stay out later, too. Not only would we be up until 2 AM if we were to wait, but we would have to make it quick when we got up there. Unfortunately, it was a no-go. I guess I should count my blessings, this was really the only thing that went wrong on the entire trip.
Since I had some extra pictures allocated for the top that weren't going to be used, I took more than the necessary amount of pictures of the lobby. Here's one right up next to that ...mural? I don't even know what it is, really. But it looked really cool up close:
If you noticed, the surrounding states were down below on a map sort of looking thing. I thought that was cool; signifying that their building is the epicenter of the city and the entire northeast United States.
Even though we didn't get to go up, I was glad I got to go inside, and at least see the lobby. (Now, instead of Buddy the Elf, I kept thinking about the episode of How I Met Your Mother where Robin's little sister comes to visit).
Since we had extra time to kill, it was now cooler outside, and we wanted to see the city at night, we started to walk back instead of taking a cab. We crossed 5th, so I could take a picture of the outside up close:
On out walk back, we spotted a NYC Public Library...
I stopped and picked up some photos from a hipster Asian fellow...
And we made our final walk through Times Square, this time at night. Although, we would have thought it was 2 in the afternoon had we not known better that it was almost midnight.
We just started to laugh when we had to squint from a 200 foot tall Walgreen's ad. It was insane. It's much more noticeable at night to see all the lights there. (There was also an ad for '"The Dark Night Rises" that took up about 500 square feet on the side of an apartment complex, but I can't find the picture.)
I recommend stopping by here once during the day and once at night if you ever find yourself in New York. You really get different vibes at a different time of day.
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| Right below the NYE ball. |
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| Beginning of the theater district, called 'Hell's Kitchen', just a block away from Times Square. |
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Sunday morning started much the same as Saturday. But instead of heading to the park early, Dad and I opted to go see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Yay, America! (This is much more important than a baseball I may not even catch.)I personally got a quick reality check when we walked West on 43rd for less than a block, right past the fire station of FDNY Engine 1:
Why did it deserve a picture? You can see a little display in the window, and here's a closer view:
All of these men rushed to the World Trade Center on 9/11...and never came back. All but 3 men stationed at that firehouse died that day. The scary thing is that dozens of other stations around the city had stories all too similar. I took a minute to think about the events that happened in real people's lives that day. It all happened just a few miles from where I was standing. It was the first time I really tried to imagine what it was like to be in the city when it was happening. There would be no other way to describe it besides a disaster.
We continued to the harbor, where most of the best boat tours took off from.
They had two and three hour tours that left at 10 AM. We didn't exactly have that much time to kill. They had one more option; a half hour ride that sped out to Liberty Island, stopped for 6 minutes, then sped back. We picked the quick one. We chose to ride...
THE BEAST!
The captain explained he had one job, which was to get us all as wet as possible. I was a little angry about that at first, but there was no going back at this point.
We were going close to 50 miles an hour, and hanging my camera over the edge was VERY risky since I had no type of strap to hang on to. I grasped it so much my hands hurt, and kept my arms as close to my body as I could.
Here's Jersey. Jersey sucks. I know that even though I'm not from New York.
Some people on the other side of the boat were already soaked:
Here's a bad, semi-half view of lower Manhattan:
Here's the actual Ellis Island, where millions passed into our wonderful country:
And then we finally made it to the main attraction of the tour; Lady Liberty herself.
My first thought? "That's it?!"
For one of the most patriotic and American images, I expected it to be at least a LITTLE bigger.
Here's some better pictures of the skyline:
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| The building being built on the left is One World Trade Center- the first of four buildings that will make up a complex on the Ground Zero site.  |
Now, this picture isn't as much for scenery as it is for purpose. The captain of our boat slowed down and mentioned this is almost the exact spot where Captain Sullenberger landed his plane on January 15th, 2009.
This was almost lined up right with our boat's dock. When it happened, the same company that was giving us our ride sent boats out to pick people up. I couldn't even take a boat ride in the river without learning about something historic!
As I mentioned, we would get very, very wet. Our captain did plenty of turns and abrupt stops to assure everyone got a little taste of the Hudson.
After this, we hustled back home, got on some dry clothes and hit up the subway for game two.
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