The final stretch. We’re heading towards New York City! An amazing feeling was coming over me on the trip up to the city. I mean, this is NEW YORK CITY that we were going to!
We drove from Boston to New York City in the morning as we wanted to get there to do some tourist stuff before Katie and Miguel came into town in the evening. On my drive in, I realized that I must have become acclimatized to big cities…I had imagined that New York City would be 
huge and something that would make my jaw drop, but in the end, a city is a city. They still had buildings the same size and the traffic was the same. It’s a strange feeling to describe…years ago I would have been in awe during the whole trip, but now I see the little differences each city has and not just the grand scale of it.
We ended up in gridlock when driving through the highway through the Bronx. This was not a good start to our day. It was FREAKING HOT when we got to the city also. Say goodbye to the cool days and nights along the East Coast! I think it was 40 degrees with the humidity.
We finally ended up in Manhattan at a parking garage I had found a few blocks away from where we were staying. We are staying at Katie’s manager’s apartment (which he still owns, but lives in Toronto). It was an amazing opportunity to stay in Manhattan and I am sending out a big thank you to him for letting us stay there! The parking garage was my best bet for staying in the city all weekend long and in the end, it only cost me $120 to spend the weekend there. While I could argue the finer points of charging me for an entire day of Monday when I left at 5AM, I figured the money was well worth it.
After ditching the vehicle, we headed to the subway to go out to the Statue of Liberty. I’m glad we picked up that handy guide book for $2 at that flea market in Moncton because it had a bunch of maps within it. The subway was uneventful (other than this amazing person who came in with jeans with cargo pockets on it. It was like a scene from Vice Magazine’s Dos & Don
‘ts.) and we arrived in the sweltering heat to get in line for the ferry to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.
We got in line and went through the metal detectors before boarding the ferry. This ferry was a rocking from the waves! We had to hold onto something while walking down the hallways to make sure we didn’t crash into a wall! We managed to get a great seat on the top and when we pulled out there was an amazing sight of the Manhattan skyline. Pretty sweet if you ask me.
Approaching the Statue, we realized that it was smaller than we both imagined. I was imagining something as large as a skyscraper and it wasn’t nearly as large. The photos we took don’t really explain our perspective, but we so kind of disappointed…to the point where when the ferry was letting people off, we decided to just keep going to Ellis Island. We didn’t have tickets to get into the Statue anyhow so I didn’t see much sense in walking up to it.
Ellis Island is where all the immigrants landed when coming to the States from parts unkn
own. This was home to the immigration centre and from there they hopped on a boat to the city of New York. It was pretty amazing to walk through the building and imagine tens of thousands of people lining up to get a chance to come into North America. We went up to the second level which was home to the original lineups of people and the hall was vast. There were pictures of it full of people and luggage and I couldn’t get over the amount of people. There was a jar of jellybeans somewhere which indicated it was the equivalent number of people who were processed in the highest processing date in their career – over 10,000 people. 10,000 people?! I don’t think a team of a hundred could process 10,000 emails in one day, let alone actual people speaking in strange tongues!
We walked around a museum of old rooms with artifacts which told the story of Ellis Island – how you were marked on your coat if they suspected anything physically/mentally wrong with you, how translators were on hand to try to figure out what language you were speaking to help you answer some questions. The translators would have to just speak all the languages they knew until the immigrant recognized a word!
There were three levels of the complex and we spent our time in the second level and decided it was too much to go to the others. We had already spent two hours there and it was time to catch the ferry back to the mainland. I stood in line to get an ice cream for the both of us (which was melting fast by the time I got it to Vero in the ferry lineup!) but the funniest thing happened while I was waiting in line.
This boy was walking away with his hot dog and this seagull made a dive for it, scared the bejeezus out of the kid and made way with his wiener and sat on top of a wall! Then a bunch of employees of Ellis Island who were taking a break on a picnic table started yelling at this seagull – “Jared, dang it, leave those kids alone!” “Oh, Jared’s done it again!” “Jared, when you going to learn?!”. I was having a good laugh considering this bird must be notorious for these attacks. One of the employees came to the counter and said “Jared did it again! Give this kid a hot dog, will you?”
After getting back to the mainland, we grabbed a slice of pizza which didn’t live up to my New York City pizza standards, toured around the downtown area, saw Wall Street, the former site of the World Trade Center, a giant bull statue (I have no idea what the significance was). We then headed back home as it was getting late and we had to meet up with Katie and Miguel.
We had great timing as we got there five minutes before Katie and Miguel arrived by taxi. We grabbed stuff from my car (which was strange as the car was not locked inside this parking garage. This freaked me out a little but I suppose the place is secure (aka, secure like the parking garage in Ferris Buehler!). We checked out the great pad we were staying in and relaxed a bit before heading out for dinner at a great Italian restaurant which was recommended by Katie’s manager. I enjoyed the Italian restaurant thoroughly as it was a small place with some great atmosphere and tons of action going on with the waiters scurrying around and taunting each other. After an excellent bottle of wine and a great meal, we grabbed a few bottles of wine, toured the area, went to a pub for a few more beers and headed home for the night in anticipation for the next big day. M
iguel did introduce us to the great show of Flight of The Conchords on HBO however. This was an amazing show and I ended up falling in love with it in the coming weeks from downloading the first season.
At this point in the trip to New York City, we noticed that there really wasn’t that many people in the city. I was imagining being overwhelmed and bumping into people constantly but this was not the case. Perhaps everyone was away for the weekend?
Yes, that is me with Spider-man.