New York City Day 3 - The Longest Day EVER!

When I woke up at Tom's place, I realized that I left my cellphone on the whole night and to my surprise, it died. Stupid me didn't even think of packing the cell phone charger in my backpack, but oh well. I figured it was just a minor set back. So I gave Jim a call from Tom's house and asked them where they were and what were they up to. They were on their way to the Statue Of Liberty and he asked me to come down. So I asked Tom how to get to the Statue Of Liberty. He said the following.

"Take the PATH to Christopher St. When you exit the station, make a left and after 1 BLOCK you will see the entrance to the subway. Then from there, you take the 1 train down to South Ferry Station."

Easy enough right? Yup, IF YOU'RE FROM THERE! So knowing I had no access to a cellphone, my lovely cousin sent me on my merry way to find my friends.

So the first task of taking the PATH to Christopher Street. That was an easy one. It was funny though because when I went down to the platform, a train had arrived and I was looking at my map to see if that was the right train and this lady who makes sure everyone gets in the train looks at me and says

"YOU WAITIN' FO SUMTHIN?!?!"

Right when I was about to ask her if this is the right train to Christopher St. She said..

"TOO LATE!"

and closed the train and it took off with out me. LOL! I figured it would only be a 5 min wait for the next one but it fucking ended up being 20 MIN! Finally the train came and I was on my way to my little adventure. The train stops in Christopher St and I exit the train and Tom was right, there is only 1 exit to this place so I followed everyone and as soon as I exited the station, I made a left.

To my surprise, the area looked very different from what I've seen so far in NYC. Thats when I realized I was in Greenwich Village. As I adored the scenery, I realized that I was walking for more than 1 BLOCK (as Tom stated) and still no subway entrance. So I figured that I would just start walking south since thats the way I had to go anyway. But which way was south?

Now I'm really fucking lost, no cellphone and I knew that those guys were waiting for me. I didn't want them to wait too long since I knew they wanted to go to the Statue Of Liberty and if you don't line up early enough, you'll never get in. As you can see from the picture, this was the line up when they arrived there.




So as I was walking in Greenwich, I decided to make a left on a street, thinking it would get me closer to where I had to go. As soon as I made a left, all I said was "OH FUCK, NOW WHAT". Next thing I knew I was surrounded with a SLEW of rainbow flags. YES, RAINBOW FLAGS!! Now I'm not homophobic or anything, but I haven't even been to the gay area in Toronto, let alone NYC! So just being in the area made me REAL uncomfortable. Now I'm not dumb, I know what everyone thinks when they first meet me so the last thing I wanted to do was get picked up LOL! I saw this asian family with a stroller and I decided to follow them, close enough so it looked like I was with them, but they thought I was trying to rob them. So the first cab I saw, I jumped in and said "GET ME OUT OF HERE!"

So I got in the cab and I asked the driver, "Was that Greenwich Village?". He said "NO, thats on the other side, you were in West Village, lots of gays there" LOL! Now I wouldn't have gotten all freaked out if my fucking cousin just told me thats where I would end up. Then again, this is the same guy that let me roam NYC without a cell phone so fuck, whatever!

So off I went to South Ferry Terminal. Keep in mind at this point I had no sense of time since I don't wear a watch cause usually I check my cellphone for the time. I get to South Ferry Terminal and I realized something. Ground Zero and the Statue Of Liberty are basically in the same area! Now, how was I going to find 4 people in a crowd of thousands?!?! I asked the information guy for the pay phone and he directed me to it. On my way up the escalators, there were 10 NYPD cops on the right side and another 10 on the left. None of them paid any attention to me until I got to the pay phone. Now here I was on the phone, with a backpack, black jacket with the collar up, black shades and as I was talking on the phone, I was suspiciously looking from left to right, trying to find those guys. Well wouldn't you know, this caught the attention of the 10 cops on my side and they all started to stare me down and I got paranoid and didn't even ask any questions when Jimmy said "Meet me on the street". I just wanted to hang up the phone and leave. As I was leaving, I was shitting bricks cause they were all just staring me down and I wanted to run, but you know if I did that it would be totally over lol!

After another phone call from another pay phone, I finally saw Jimmy and Darryl and ran to them and screamed "I don't ever want to do that again!!" and gave them the gayest fuckin hug ever! LOL!!

So after this, we met up with the girls at Century 21 and went on our merry way to visit Ground Zero. I didn't want to take any pictures of this place when I got there. I just find it really grim knowing that all these people died in one spot. It was just sad and I didn't want to take anymore time in there so off we went to CHINATOWN!

We get off and then here we were, Canal St. I remember Canal St. from back in the day cause thats where we would always drive coming up from Jersey. It was that one street that really stuck out to me. The main purpose of us going down here was so that Cless could get her good bootleg purses. We found a store and Cless and Darryl walked in and 15 min later Cless came out and said "Fucking Darryl!" LOL! So it turns out, D had tried to negotiate for a bag, and when the opportunity came for him and Cless to see the real good ones at the back, the lady turned to him and said "You not want to pay full price, you not come back here!" LOL!!! SHUT DOWN! There goes that!


So off we went for lunch. We were starving at this point and using Jimmy's trusty Blackberry with GPS, we found Nyonya! A restaurant my cousin in law Marilen told us to go to. You can see the food we ate here. The food was great! I really enjoyed it. Especially the Sting Ray. Yes we ate Sting Ray. It tasted just like regular fish!



After that, off we went to find dessert. So we walked and went to another one of Marilen's recomendations, Chinatown Ice Cream Factory! I had the Green Tea and Lychee. It was quite cold to eat it, but whatever we were there and we just walked around and ate it still.

It was Clecia and Darryl's last day so we tried to squeeze in as much things as we could. So after Chinatown, we went "On the 6" train to go to the Upper East Side to have some frozen hot chocolate at Serendipity 3. By this point my feet were aching so badly. Keep in mind I walked roughly about 85 blocks the day before and I wasn't wearing comfortable shoes so I was struggling by the time we got to the Upper East Side. We walked to Serendipity only to find out that it was a 90 min wait to get seated. All I really wanted was the frozen hot chocolate but I guess we had to sit to get it. Off we went to Bloomingdales to use the washroom and Jim and Adaiah went back to the apartment since Adaiah wasn't feeling well and Darryl, Cless and I went to shop some more.

We decided that this is a good time for them to see Grand Central Station. So we took the train there and stopped for a bit to take some pictures. A funny comment that Clecia said was, "Wasn't this place in a romatic movie or something?!?!" I quickly said uhhhh before I tell you, lets get out of here first. Then when we were away from the place I said "Ummm remember Independance Day?!?!" LOL! After this we started to make our way to The Rockefeller Center.

If you have been reading my blog, this was one of the places that reminds me of NYC. I just love it. Since it wasn't Christmas time, I thought I would see it anyway since I love the place. When we got there, it was even better than what I remembered. I seriously love this place, the whole skating, the building and just the energy in the area makes it special.



I wanted to see NYC from "The Top Of The Rock" so we went in the building and made our way up the elevator. The view was just spectacular as you can see in the picture. Seriously, for the cheezy tourist factor of it all, this was worth the $14! So after this, we thought we would try to hit up Daffy's which is basically Winners but better. I was told that we had to go here by Stfne so we did. We took the train to 34th street and as we got to the street, we realized it was just across the street. Cless and I freaked out and ran towards it leaving Darryl behind LOL! I found a nice casual blazer for $30 with an additional 30% off but I left it. I didn't need it. I'm kicking myself for it now but at the time I was just tired and I wanted to go home and eat. We had reservations at Ayza Chocolate and Wine bar at 7 and at this point, we missed it. After shopping we finally made it back to the apartment.

Noone wanted to go out since everyone was just exauhsted from the day so we decided to order in. Now this may sound weird, but we ordered wings from a Korean Place. It was called BonChon! Trust me when I say this, THESE WERE THE BEST WINGS I HAVE EVER EATEN!! Even Jimmy said it and Mr. Frat boy himself has eaten some wings in his time, so these were DEFINATELY a MUST when you go to NYC!!

So there you have it. The LONGEST DAY of my life! My feet sure paid the price, cause the next day, I couldn't even walk!