Day 16 – The Final Vacation Day

We awoke and grabbed some bagels from down the street and brought them back to the apartment to eat. We starting later in the travel day but this wasn’t a big deal. We are on vacation!

We hopped on the subway (which was hell for awhile because for some reason the ticket machine never took Miguels’ credit card!) and headed towards Brooklyn Bridge. After a few people offering us help to find the entrance, we finally climbed the stairs to the famous Brooklyn Bridge. The bridge is pretty neat in that you don’t walk along side with the traffic, you walk on platforms ABOVE the traffic on the bridge! It was pretty cool to see the engineering that went into making this bridge. It’s also a sight to see Manhattan from the middle of the bridge, very reminscient of the ferry ride to Ellis Island.

After crossing the bridge, we made our way down to a wharf to buy some ice cream and wait for the Water Taxi back to the other side. When the Water Taxi arrived, it was a quick trip across to Manhattan and we continued our trek towards Greenwich Village and little Italy in search of a list of stores Miguel wished to check out.

Let’s back the story up for a moment to speak of how the day before, I was in H&M and spied a great brown corduroy jacket but decided not to pick it up yet as I had the entire city to explore.

Well, considering it was the last day and I hadn’t found anything, I decided to seek out an H&M to pick up this jacket. We first went to the Vice Store (which was closed up) and then we went somewhere else to look at vintage clothing (which was ridiculously overpriced) and we hit upon an amazing, AMAZING clothing store called Uniqlo (sp?). Miguel was saying this store was from Japan and is just starting to make it big in North America. They had some amazing clothing items and I was really interested in a jacket they had a slew of t-shirts they had. I find I’m getting back into a t-shirt craze I had years ago. I can pinpoint my clothing line for the past decade: t-shirts, then button up shirts, then golf shirts, now the circle is complete and I’m going back to t-shirts.

In the end, I was screwed out of all clothing options because they had NO large or even medium sizes in ANY of the t-shirts I wanted (I gave them four choices!) and no good size on the jacket I was looking at. I was pretty miffed. I ended up picking up this sweet t-shirt designed by Yoshitaka Amano (of Final Fantasy fame) but felt kind of silly doing so as Miguel had also picked up the same shirt. However, I justified it considering it was THE ONLY CLOTHING ITEM IN MY SIZE! I still can’t get over the fact that they were out of medium and large sizes in all the things I chose. This became the running joke of the day. Strike One for Palmer.

We then stumbled upon H&M and we went in looking for my jacket but it turned out to be some store with no mens section! What the heck? Strike Two for Palmer.

At this point, we just kept traveling around the area, eventually stumbling upon Little Italy. I was getting concerned for Vero at this point as she was looking like she was going to pass out and we figured she had dehydration (which wasn’t uncalled for considering the hot weather and the amount of walking we were doing). However, I guess when someone is dehydrated, they aren’t too thirsty so she wasn’t accepting any of our water. I must admit that I just let her be during this portion of the trip as she was getting pissed off at the amount of attention she was getting. 😉

We stopped into a pub for a drink and headed towards the Virgin Megastore in search for some Pumpkins vinyl. Vero ended up looking like she was going to pass out any second so we got her some drinks from the corner store but she didn’t really feel like drinking them. We were all pretty concerned for her and knew we had to go take a break fast!

On the way to the Virgin Megastore, we stumbled upon a clothing market of up and coming fashion designers. We spied some excellent t-shirts. I really wanted one of this great collection of animals playing in a band. I thought it was amazing, but lo and behold, the clothing Gods were against me and they DIDN’T HAVE MY SIZE!!! Strike Three for the Palmer. So mad!

Katie and Miguel went ahead to Katz’ Restaurant for a pastrami sandwich while Vero picked out a few shirts to buy. They are pretty cool. I ended up mixing up the directions BADLY to get to this pastrami shop. Essentially I walked all the way to the area of the shop, thought I had gone the wrong way so walked a bunch of blocks backwards before realizing that we were in the right spot before! We were both not impressed with my navigation ability at that point. When we got there we sat down to find out that Miguel had paid $16 for this pastrami sandwich! (actually, I asked Katie how much it was and she wrote back the following: “I know it was $14.95, because I PAID!) Ludicrous! They are just cashing in on their fame (they were in the film “When Harry Met Sally”). I vowed not to buy a sandwich of such extraordinary prices so we hung out for awhile (the place reminds me of Nate’s in Ottawa) and then headed out to the Virgin Megastore.

I couldn’t find the Pumpkins vinyl but managed to grab an Arcade Fire album and then we were heading towards dinner when Miguel pointed out this great comic book shop called Forbidden Planet. It was pretty intense inside and I managed to grab a few other Fables graphic novels (as I had read a few on the trip and loved them) as well as the Making of Star Wars book which I had my eye on all the time on the trip as I would save $30 buying it in the States vs. Canada. Vero even noticed I got a student discount if I showed my student card! Bonus.

We went to an Asian tapas restaurant for dinner. Tapas (as far as I was explained) is where you order dishes which are shared amongst your table. The restaurant was very cool inside – had a good vibe and good lighting inside. I liked the décor on the walls. I also enjoyed the fact that this was the first time I had ever gone to a BYOB restaurant! I went in there with my six pack, they put it in the fridge and got me another bottle whenever I wished! Turns out they they didn’t have their liquor license at the time so this was the other option. I found that odd as I had always assumed having a liquor license allowed you to have liquor on the premises, not just sell it. Either way, the drinks were great (Samuel Adams!), the food was amazing and we all had a great time. Especially when they threw out some random rap song which had a booming “SAY HELLO TO ALL THE NIGGAAAASSS IN DA HOUSE!” or something to that effect. All the tables looked at each other and started laughing. What the heck? Who is controlling the music back there?!

Vero was feeling in top shape after a great dinner and we split up from Katie and Miguel to once again try and find Marvel Comics (I found the correct address this time around). Unfortunately for us, we STILL could not find Marvel Headquarters and I was pretty upset. Vero is a dear and cheered me up by taking pictures in front of a random building which we made-believe was Marvel Comics Headquarters. We walked over to Times Square which never ceases to amaze me. It was 11:30 at night and the signs light up the area like it’s the middle of the day. PLUS, it was this late on a Sunday night and the streets are still packed with people!

We took the subway home, gave our spare tickets to some people, went into the apartment and got ready for bed. It was going to be an early morning…we went to bed around midnight and had to wake up around 5AM as Katie and Miguel were leaving on a plane in the morning. Ouch.