OT: Our trip to NYC

Planet Hollywood

Broadway Street

my husband and I on the Staten Island Ferry

Well, I did get lots and LOTS of exercise walking around the city. I was so sore from walking by the time we left I was walking like an old lady!

Our alarm clock was set for 3:00 am saturday morning to give us time to wake up and get to the airport. At 2:45am Northwest airlines called us with a recording saying that our flight had been cancelled and they put us on another flight scheduled to arrive in NY at 5:30pm! SEVEN hours after the original arrival time! I was irate and freaking out, so Roger called the airlines and told them that we were on a tight schedule and needed something else, so they got us on a Continental flight that would change planes in Cleveland and would arrive in NY one minute later than our original plane! Since we were put on new flights at the last minute we had separate seats on both flights. Luckily, the little puddle jumper plane from Toledo to Cleveland only had 4 people on it (all 4 were supposed to be on the one that got cancelled), so we could sit wherever we wanted. However, the big plane from Cleveland to Laguardia was full and the grumpy old man sitting with Roger refused to switch seats with me, so I was at the front of the plane and my husband was in the back! Anyway, we saw some beautiful scenery on the way. The plane flew right over NYC and we could see everything from the plane. All of the skyscrapers and the statue of liberty.

We get off of the plane and not even 2 minutes of walking from the gate we literally run into Mark Henry from WWE! He looked really pissed though so we didn't try to talk to him. We get a shuttle to our hotel and in the middle of all of the airport traffic we see like 7 cops surrounding a car, trying to break into it. Some twat left her little kid (small enough to be in a car seat) in the car and the kid locked the doors!

We got to the hotel and since it was too early to check in we went to Jen and Mike's room. Crissie was already there waiting in their room, too! I haven't seen Crissie since our wedding almost 4 years ago and I haven't seen Jen in like 7 years?? Crissie then told us the story from the night before when she was sitting in the hotel lobby in the middle of the night and heard someone screaming and someone came running in saying, "Get a towel".. Thinking someone was hurt she went to look and there was a naked woman running around the parking lot waving the towel over her head, LOL! Only in NY, right??

Once we got checked into our room we got ready to go. The hotel guy told us that the best way to see the city is to buy the metro pass for $7, you can use the bus and subway all day long as much as you want until 3am. Awesome! So we got on the bus and took that to the subway and then went on to Grand Central Station. The subway is a great place for people watchers like me. I love to watch people and you can find alllll kinds of crazy different people on the subway. On our first subway ride we had a man just take out his guitar in the middle of the train and start singing for everyone. The city was packed! We first found a place to eat and then walked around some taking in all of the sights. Then decided to go to the Empire State Building. On the way there I see Morgan Freeman standing on the sidewalk taking photos with people..but wait, he isn't moving? It was a wax statue of him! I thought it was really him at first! We were at the Wax Museum but decided it was too expensive to go into, lol. Then we saw Dave Atell (not sure of the spelling) from the show Insomniac just sitting having a drink but I think he heard us talking about him because he got up and walked away really fast.

So, we get to the Empire State Building. UGH! It was hot out to begin with and we had to wait in line for almost 2 hours just to get up to the top and it was soo damned crowded up there we could barely even get a chance to see anything! By the time we finally DID get up there we were all so pissed off we just wanted to go back down. But guess what? There was a wait to get OUT of the building, too! Oh yeah and they wanted to charge $25 for the group photo they took of us HAHAHA! No way! I had my own camera and could get a lot of pics developed for $25!

After we finally got out of the Empire State Building we had plans to go get the ferry around the statue of liberty but we ended up at Ground Zero. There was a very somber feeling being at ground zero. There was a fire department right across the street from ground zero who were first on the scene when 9-11 happened. They had all kinds of memorials for their fallen firefighters and some of the firefighters who were there when it happened were out there meeting people.

We walked around some more and then decided it was time to go back to the hotel and relax a little bit before going to Duff's. That was a mess. It ended up taking us an hour and a half to get back to the hotel because of construction and other things along the way. We got back to the hotel, had dinner and then realized that we were all wayyy too tired and sore from all of the walking and couldn't deal with more public transportation to get to Duff's that night, LOL! We all ended up falling asleep soon after we got back to our rooms.

The next morning, Crissie found out that some of her friends had come to NY to look for her at Duffs, so she got ahold of them to meet them in the city later on and go home with them. We had breakfast with Jen and Mike before they left back to PA and then we headed off to the city again. Our first stop was the Staten Island Ferry which was a beautiful ride! Went right by the statue of liberty and you could see all of the city from the ferry. It was very relaxing!

After the Ferry we headed back to the Subway to find Crissie's friends. We saw lots of crazy things in the subway stations! After Crissie left, Roger and I were going to go to Rockefeller Center but ended up just walking around. I saw a bunch of lights and something told me to go that way. The crowds were getting bigger and bigger. People coming up to us offering us Rolex watches and Gucci purses! We ended up in Times Square! MTV building, Hard Rock Cafe, Planet Hollywood, M & M World, Broadway..all kinds of things. It was crowded there. Oh yeah, we also saw P. Diddy in his limo (ack). There were limos everywhere, cops everywhere, swat everywhere, street performers, everything! We found some Irish pubs and went into O'Lunneys so Roger could have an Irish beer. We went into Planet Hollywood and saw all sorts of cool props from different movies. We had dinner at Famiglia Pizza which was authentic sicilian pizza and was very famous for their pizza and I know why! yummmm! We ended up just walking around Broadway taking in all of the sights until we were too tired to do anything else! Then we headed back to our hotel and crashed. Had another horrible experience with Northwest Airlines on the way back (dont fly northwest!) but we made it home safely Monday evening. Ohio just seems so quiet and..boring after being in NYC..nothing is quiet there, lol!

To see all of my NY pics, you can check out my myspace page and go to view pics!