I love NYC

~Read "I love Blue Man Group" first, I hadn't updated in a few weeks and wanted to make two posts for everything that's happened; one for the first two and a half weeks, and one for the NYC trip and all my pictures~

At RMHS, the 10th grade counselor planned a trip to NYC for the students. Eighteen people went, including me, Wheezy, superman, and Wall. The four of us hung out together for most of the trip, despite superman's tendency to disregard my existence. It started at 11 pm at RMHS, where we met to leave. We packed the bus and pulled out around 12. The bus had TVs, so we watched several movies, most of them movies that I didn't care about, but because of my distracted tendencies, I ended up watching them anyway. I also listened to a lot of music whenever I could ignore the movies. However, a couple movies that were actually interesting were "The Day After Tomorrow" and "Ray," although "Ray" wasn't really that great. At least, not to me. Here are some pics from the trip up.


Wheezy with hat, headphones, and hoodie, ready for a LONG ride.


Superman getting some sleep- who ever knew bus seats could be so comfortable?
I almost got a picture of Wheezy sleeping too, (no, he wasn't sleeping in the first picture) but he woke up when I took superman's picture.

I let Wheezy listen to my Blue Man Group CD and he loved it. I listened to some of his music too. I enjoyed the ride up, if for nothing more than a time to center myself. What I didn't like was the fact that we didn't stop at the hotel. We had breakfast at McDonald's, not a great start to the day, but it turned out ok anyway. Wheezy had the worst cup of coffee he had ever tasted at that McDonald's. By the way... has anyone else noticed that for each five McDonalds there are maybe two of the other fast food restaurants in NYC? Seriously, I saw about five McDonald's, but only two Burger Kings and two Subways. Why McDonald's? I hate McDonald's! (Oohh future blog post title) Anyway, from there we went to the Empire State Building. We got up to the top reasonably quickly. I noticed the lines were a lot shorter than they were when I went last summer. Here are some pictures from Empire State Building.


The lobby of the Empire State Building

The following pictures are a clockwise view around the top of the Empire State Building

Lower Manhattan and Wall Street area; Ground Zero is in this area.


I know you see it. That is the Statue of Liberty (looks, small, doesn't it?). The island slightly to the right it Ellis Island, where for many years immagrants were processed for admission into the US.


Looking toward New Jersey.


Look closely now: do you see a black building? Jk, but if you look just above and to the left of the very top of that building, across the river, you will see two blue buildings. Wheezy stayed in that hotel the last time he was in NYC.


Look in the very center, between the buidings. You will see an airplane and a ship. The ship is the aircraft carrier Intrepid, and the plane is one of the retired Concordes, the British mach speed passenger jets. I visited the Intrepid, now an aerospace museum, last summer.


I noticed a couple nice buildings in this area. One is the green building to the left where at the top it is gray and forms an interesting shape. The second is the second building to the left, not the one in the shadows of the first, that looks faintly orange. It was neat to see, because one side was a nice shade of blue, and the other was orange. The division was a curve along the middle of the building that carried the blue side up above and slightly over the orange side. That building is near Times Square; last summer our hotel was right beside that building, and our hotel was directly on Times Square. The hotel is not visible in this picture, but I believe we may have identified it last summer. Anyway I thought those two buildings were neat.


Look closely. If you notice the center of the picture, there is a break in the buildings that forms an enormous rectangle. That is Central Park. The large brownish-grey building blocking your view is the GE building. The white and black building at the bottom left corner is the Verizon building.


If you look to the center of the picture, there is a hexagonal greyish-brown building. That is the MetLife Building. To the right of that building, you notice a building slightly taller due to a beautiful spire that pushes it up above the buidings around it...


That is the Chrysler Building, which was once in competition with the Empire State Building to be the tallest building in New York. You can tell by simply the view of this picture that the Empire State Building won. I'd say Chrysler definitely won the beauty contest though.


The large greenish building you see is the UN Building, which I visited last summer.


Across the river here is Queens.


This area is mostly housing projects, if you notice the patterns. This brings us all the way around the top of the Empire State Building.


The tower as viewed from the 86th floor, which gives you an idea of where the viewing area is in relation to the height of the building. The two prongs you see at the top left corner (apologies for my lack of skill in taking photographs) are put there to keep people inside the viewing area, which is outdoors, and these prongs circle the area.

After we finished looking around outside, we went back inside to group up and leave, but we lost superman. After around 20 minutes we found him and left. From the Empire State Building we went straight to Battery Park. We took a subway, as if you know Manhattan, then you know Battery Park is just below the Wall Street area and serves as a base for the ferries going to Ellis and Libery Islands. We looked around there for a little while before getting in line to get on the ferry. Here are a few pics.


Walking from the subway to Battery Park.


There were around six people dressed up as the Statue of Liberty and either posing for a while and surprising people by moving or letting people take pictures with them. The ones standing still were not wearing sunglasses...


Castle Clinton, a fort that gave Battery Park its name.

As I said before, once we finished looking around for a little while, we got in line to go on the ferry. I will explain later, but our counselor did not make it clear whether we were going to Ellis or Liberty Island. By the way, it was really cold. I was probably the only person in a three mile radius wearing shorts. I wore my coat the whole time, needless to say, as I only brought shorts and short sleeves.


The line of doom when we first got in it.


The line of doom after 30 minutes.


The line of doom after an hour.


Liberty Island as seen from the line of doom.


Ellis Island as seen from the line of doom.


This was a memorial to the merchants of the US. It was, as you can tell by the view of Ellis Island to the left of the picture, right across from the line.

After around two hours or so, we finally got on the boat. I took one picture from the boat since we had such a view, but I mostly sat and tried to rest my legs. It was really windy and cold, so I stayed on the second floor of the boat, where it was slightly warm (the third floor had no roof) and sat down where many people got up and looked out from the boat. I just wanted to rest. I hadn't sat down in around three hours, when I was on the subway. Ouch. Well, here is that picture.


Guess Who. What a picture, no?

Well, the boat stopped at Liberty Island. I got off there along with two counselors and another student. We waited for a while to see everyone else get off, but no one came. After a while the counselor that did the trip got off the boat and came to tell us we were on the wrong island. We didn't have tickets to get into the Statue of Liberty, that I knew, but I thought we were still going to the island. Apparently two counselors thought the same thing. And a student. Anyway the boat left before we could get back on. Our counselor called the other group and told them not to go to Ellis Island but back to Battery Park. I would have told them to go on and that we would go back to Battery Park and wait for them to finish, since we would delay them if we went on to Ellis Island, but he didn't. So, after a couple hours of waiting for a boat and a long wait to get dock the boat (it took a long time for the boat to dock, around 20 minutes; I was sleeping so it could have been longer; for some reason). When we finally did group up again, I found out everyone was mad at ME. They only saw me get off, so they decided it was all MY fault. I explained that I was one of three people, the LAST of three people to get off, but they still needed a scapegoat, so they blamed me anyway. And thus, we managed to waste around four hours and do NOTHING. Despite pleadings to go to the hotel... notice I say go to the hotel, not back to the hotel; we STILL had not been to the hotel yet, our counselor insisted that we go shopping. So, we went to Pier 21. They had a few boats there including two tall ships, and the shopping was not that bad, so I wasn't too aggravated about not going to the hotel once we got there. Here are some pictures.


Resting after way too much standing up. Did I mention it was cold?


There was a little building near the pier with a few model boats inside, but you couldn't go inside, at least I don't think you could. Beautiful boats, aren't they?


Aren't the tall ships pretty? The little building I mentioned is to the left of the picture.


Here's a better- and closer- view. Can you see what would have been cannon holes? Or...windows...maybe...


The second tall ship. This one was much longer. It was called the Peking, by the way. Can't remember what the other one was called...


As I said, it was a bit longer. This picture only shows around half of the ship.


The Ambrose. Could someone explain this ship to me? It looks like a Tugboat, but it has two masts without sails. At the top of the masts were lanterns. What was this boat made for?


This is the mall we went to. It was three floors, as you can see here. Wall and I went to several stores, including EB, Brookstone, and Sharper Image. Actually, that was about it. I bought an adapter for the xbox for around $12, my only purchase for the trip. Except food. Food doesn't count.

Once we finished at the mall, we WENT TO THE HOTEL. Finally, we could rest. Our room had a few problems, but nothing important. Our view was... well... the worst possible, and we had a bit of trouble hooking up the xbox, but we made it through. That's right, we're survivors. As for the view, nobody cares. The xbox problem had to be fixed though. You see, there was some weird setup for the cable, and we couldn't get the cables out to hook ours in. Wheezy called someone from the front desk and asked about it. She hang up on him! After a while, we called back, but she told us that she had sent someone to help us. In around ten seconds, an electrician walked in. That is, he looked like an electrician. I don't really know, because all he did was take the cable out. If I had brought my knives I could have done it, since one of them has needlenose pliers, but I didn't. It was a school trip, after all. So, we hooked up the xbox. Later, we had a pool party (I didn't go, I stayed in the room and listened to music on my xbox- I downloaded all 42 of my CDs onto good old Stumpy). Our counselor ordered pizza and we ate in his room. Then we went to bed. We had two beds, and since Wheezy didn't want to share a bed with me because I'm his size and superman hates me, Wheezy slept on the floor. Here are some pictures.


The room.


The view.


The problem.


The solution. Dang that's hard to see, but Stumpy is all pretty and working.


Wheezy's picture of superman. This is actually a picture of a mirror. Interesting, no? Superman had a bit of trouble getting his calling card to work, but I don't know anything about that, because he won't talk to me.

Friday we went to IHOP for breakfast and got an actually decent start to the day. I took a few pictures, so here they are.


Waiting in the lobby. We did a lot of waiting throughout the trip.


Here is IHOP. This was my first time eating at IHOP. Not quite a good first impression; the waiters got everyone's orders mixed up. For example, as you can see here, Wheezy had coffee. He brought it with him, so he told the waiter he had coffee and didn't need anything to drink. Take a guess what she did. She brought him coffee. If tips weren't included automatically for parties...


Wow. Those were some good pancakes. Chocolate chip with whipped cream, that's good stuff. The first impression may have generally been bad, but the food was good [when whe got it].

After breakfast we got on the bus and went to St. John's University. The trip took an inexcusably long time. I slept through the trip so there's no telling how long it took, but I think it was around an hour. When we finally got there, we went on a tour of the campus. I decided I'm not going to that college. For one, it's Catholic. For two, there is NO engineering school. For three, [blah blah blah nobody cares I'm not going there]. It did have a nice campus though. Most colleges do though... at least better than what I've come to expect from schools based on my experience with public (and private for that matter) schools.
Here are some pictures of the campus.


This is the main building at St. John's University. It was a nice building, and as you can see they had a gigantic lawn in front of it for when the weather is warm. If you notice, there are NO people out there. It was quite cold, and realize who is saying that it was cold.


Walking around the campus. This is our group by the way, but it's hard to identify people from this picture.


This was a pretty fountain. It's a little hard to see from a picture, but it was well done. As I said, it was a reasonably nice campus.


This was a trailer that was painted all the way around (no dipstick right?). You can see the Catholic themes in both the style and subjects. I thought that was a neat idea.


This was a building on the campus. I think they said it was a store, but I was busy taking the picture and wasn't paying attention. Looks more like a restaurant to me...


This structure was directly in front of that building. It would've just made too much sense to put the name of the building on it...

After the tour of St. John's, we went to Jamaica Avenue for shopping. We were shopping for a few hours, but I didn't buy anything. They didn't have any music stores, and I was stocked up on video games and electronics. Wall did buy a game for DS, though. Oh, for you non-gamers, a Nintendo DS is the newest portable gaming system. On second thought, the newest is the PSP, but only by a few months. The DS and the PSP are in competition right now. We'll see which one comes out on top. I don't think there's room for two companies in the portable gaming business right now, but we'll see. Here are the pictures I took.


This is Jamaica Avenue. There is an uncharacteristically low amount of cars in this picture most likely due to the red light...


Wall noticed a subliminal message in this screen. Do you see it?


Now do you see it? Read the letters to yourself. Notice where the arrow is. PS: ASS. At least, that's what Wall thinks. I wouldn't put it past Disney.


Look what Wall and I found!


It's a Super Nintendo! Still IN THE BOX! That's a '92 Nintendo! Amazing what you can find in NYC...


What a booth. This guy had original Gameboy games, the Super Nintendo, all the way to PSP and DS. Now that's a great selection.


Wall went into a McDonald's to get lunch (he doesn't like Subway... I would take anything over McDonald's, personally...) and I found three Star Wars pictures. This one was my favorite; Yoda floating on Dantooine. Yes, I'm the dork that can identify the planet.


This was a great painting, but it had a glare when I took the picture. It's just your classic Darth Vader/Imperial forces painting.


Finally, here is Boba Fett in the classic suit. Not that great of a painting, but still pretty cool. Hmm... Yoda, Vada, and Boba... what are these people getting at?


Now, this is a thing of beauty. If you can't read the print, it says "PERSONAL DVD/CD/MP3 PLAYER." That is amazing. It looks like a walkman with a screen built in. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this baby plays CDs, DVDs, and MP3s. All for *only* $170. Cough cough... maybe when I actually have DVDs to play on it...

Once we were done shopping at Jamaica Avenue, we piled on the bus and headed back to the hotel. Strangely enough, I have pictures of that, so here they are.


This is Shay Stadium. Wheezy is a big fan of the Mets, so he had me take this picture. By the way, here's a trivia question for you. Why are they called the Mets? Wheezy said I was about the second person to get this. Now stop reading for a second and think. Blah blah blah this is boring so think about it. Ok enough of that. It's because "Met" is short for "Metropolitan." Did you get it? Or did you read the whole thing before you stopped to think? Oh well, I tried.


Here is a picture of the hotel we were in. It was the Mariott in Flushing, and I have no idea what the name was.

When we got back to the hotel, we got ready for dinner and left in around an hour. Actually, if you include the amount of time we waited for our counselor in the bus, it was longer than that. Anyway, we were going to go to Dallas BBQ for dinner, but we weren't able to (still not clear on why, had something to do with someone's April Fool's Day joke, it was April 1 after all). We went to Stella D'Angelo instead, a nice Italian restaurant. I had Veal Parmesan, a very good meal as it turned out to be. Wheezy had calamari and, despite my warnings, asked for a doggie bag because he only ate half of it. We both left a tip because our counselor paid for that meal for us after the meal. I wanted to leave around $3 but didn't have any ones, and Wheezy wanted to leave $5 but only had ones. I left $5 and Wheezy left $3, so it ended up ok anyway. However, another counselor went behind us and picked it up. She came back to us on the bus and said "I got this for you because there was a 15% tip automatically counted in the bill." I don't care! I didn't pay the bill, and I wanted to show my appreciation, because our waiters were awesome. But nooo, my kind counselor has to go and take it off the table. I knew there was a tip automatically taken, but our counselor was paying that, not me. Oh well, no one can say I didn't try. After dinner we rushed to Times Square in the bus and then into Palace Theatre, where we saw "All Shook Up." It was a great Broadway show that had several Elvis hits and a hilarious storyline. I even got my Playbill signed by one of the actors! When we went outside, I looked at the sign for the Toys R Us on Times Square, and saw that they were having "Midnight Madness for Star Wars: Episode III on April 2." That was an hour and a half away! There was an enthusiast group there and people all around were dressed up as stormtroopers, scout troopers, and they had Boba Fett, a few jedi, and Darth Vader. I soooo wish I would have brought my camera. I left it at the hotel because we were just going to a nice restaurant and then a play. Who would've thought there would be a Star Wars convention... The really annoying thing is that we ended up not leaving until around 11:30, and people were already going inside. I wish so bad that I could have gone... Oh well, I'll have to wait until May 15. That's the date Episode III; the final episode by the way; is released. Anyway, we rode back to the hotel in the bus. Wheezy opened up his calamari IN THE ROOM and nearly fell over! The room stunk horribly for a long while. We had a meeting in our counselor's room; he bought a birthday cake for everyone that had a birthday between January and April. Heaven knows why he did that, because everyone just wanted to go to bed and very few people stayed to eat. Even I didn't stay. Cake is the last thing I need to be eating. It was a bit tempting though, but I just wanted to lay down in my room and rest/play vid games. Wheezy and I ended up staying awake and playing Star Wars: Battlefront on Stumpy until around three in the morning. Here are a few pictures.


Wheezy and his calamari. If you can't see, this piece was actually about seven tentacles on one piece. Mmm mmm good, cold calamari.


The doggie tray of calamari. I warned Wheezy that would be a powerful smell, but nooo...


Here is the birthday cake. OOOH REAL NAMES, right?


Birthday boy couldn't stay awake. Our counselor actually thought that because it was midnight on April 2, that it was April 3, Wheezy's birthday. And we were stupid enough to not realize how wrong he was until about two that morning in the middle of a game...

Around three in the morning, Wheezy decided to go to bed. He was passing out during games and waking up for a few minutes whenever he felt an explosion (the controller vibrates, all you non-gamers). So, we slept for a few hours. Saturday was a miserable day. Rainy, windy, and overcast. We had breakfast at a Burger King and went to Canal Avenue to shop. It was horrible weather to shop, but our other choice was the Black History Museum, so everyone went shopping. After trying to shop in a few places, all the guys decided to hide in the US Postal Office instead and wait for the bus. After a little while we saw it go by and ran after it. Once we ran a few blocks and tried to get the driver's attention a few times, we finally ran up to the door at a red light and banged on it. He opened up and everyone piled in. We drove around for a while waiting for the pick up time. Wheezy bought three lighters on this trip (he is a professed pyro and wants to be a pyrotechnician for a living... I swear the world will not be safe that day), so he was playing with them on the bus. He was kind of freaking out and acting weird (ADHD kicking in) so I made him take his pills and he started to calm down a bit. We went back and picked up the girls at the time we said, and went on. Here are some pictures from that chapter of our adventure.


Wheezy loved this picture because it truly conveyed how he felt about having his picture taken: he despised it. By the way, we were waiting in the lobby (again) at the time.


Wall and I found these turntables in an electronics store on Canalk Avenue. As I said before, it's amazing what you can find...


The United Stated Postal Office. Do you see the water on the road? It was rainy, so this fine building served as a hideout for the guys for about 45 minutes.


Wall didn't wear a coat, so our counselor gave him his. It's not so easy to tell in this picture, but it was ENORMOUS on him. For example, the sleeves were about eight inches too long. This picture is from inside the US Post Office, by the way.

After we picked up the girls, we looked for around an hour for a place called "Crystal Castle." We never found it. I hear they serve old fashioned hamburgers, you know, the thin square patties on roll buns that are always served with onions. Too bad I NEVER GOT TO HAVE ONE. I did discover something though. Our counselor has NO SENSE OF DIRECTION. We gave up after a while and left NYC to go home. Here are a couple pictures from the trip home.


On our way out we went by Ground Zero, the UN Building, and several other famous places. Here is the only picture I got of them; this is the UN Building from a closer view.


The long trip home. Here you see Wheezy drinking his fourteenth- and last- cup of coffee of the DAY. He said it was the most coffee he had ever drunk in a day. I swear if he isn't addicted.

We made a few stops on the way home, which included two "dinner" stops at three and six, and a stop at Potomac Mills' mall and a gas station later in the night. I wanted to take a picture at the mall, but didn't get a chance. Our counselor decided to have a "talent show" on the bus that night. What a mistake. Of course, he thought it was great, but I just turned on the Walkman and cranked up the sound. Thank goodness I couldn't hear- or see- anything they were doing. I don't care if the window just showed black, it was better than watching that "show." We finally got home around 1:30 in the morning. It was a good trip, and I enjoyed it as much as you can enjoy a trip that included so much WAITING. I hope you enjoyed the pictures. I'll be posting pictures from trips more often now, especially if I get the digital camera to myself for the trip. Anyway, that pretty much sums everything up!