The Great Adventure - Day 16

I'll try and keep the typing in this post short to offset the 50+ photos that ended up in it!

Today we reached the East Coast!  We have now travelled coast-to-coast across America.  My beyond-wonderful friend, Christine took us on a tour of New York City, but not before she made us a really healthy and really delicious breakfast!

Soon after, we were on our way into the city.  She drove us the entire way from her place in Pennsylvania.  So nice to have both of us not driving for a change:

Our first stop was the Empire State Building.  We didn't really want to pay huge amounts to spend hours in line, so we just took some photos of the building vs. from the top of it:

She spent time researching and mapping out our entire day to make sure we saw as much of New York as possible in our 8 hours there:

 Nick and Christine:

We wandered the streets taking in tour buses, iconic buildings, and Times Square:

Even the Statues of Liberty have iPhones apparently...

We grabbed some hotdogs from a street vendor and Nick got taken for $17 for three TINY hotdogs and two water bottles.  Lesson learned.  Ask and barter first before taking the food in hand.

I have to say that one of my FAVOURITE things about New York was actually the multi-story Toys-R-Us building.  We hardly explored any of it, but what we saw was fantastic.  A life-sized, animatronic dinosaur, lego structures to the ceiling, an indoor ferris wheel, and more:

Nerds....

We also popped in the Disney Store quickly, and I admired their Tangled-themed ceilings:

We also went to the M&M store, where you could get the candies in almost any colour and even print your own designs on them!

Shortly after, we took a foot-break and sat down at a coffee shop where Nick bought me this yummy drink.  It was so nice to be with another photographer who didn't look twice as I picked it up, set it on the floor because the lighting was best there and proceeded to hang off my seat to get this shot:

We headed out back on the streets to go see where they shoot 30 Rock:

 Then we got distracted by some beautiful churches.  Sadly, the one was under construction, but it's going to be gorgeous when they're finished!

In order to save time, we skipped going to Central Park and hailed a cab to take us down to Staten Island to see the Statue of Liberty.  Nick and I were debating over who got to use the camera (hard to share just one camera for both photo and video when on vacation) when we passed the Brooklyn Bridge, so I just got a quick snap out the window before passing it back to him for more video:

 We got to the ferry terminal right before sunset.  Most of my Statue of Liberty photos are pretty small since I opted to just carry one wide lens around the city with me, so everything was shot with my 35mm.

The city lights started to come out as twilight transitioned into night:

Our first official New York subway experience.  A LOT nastier than our Vancouver skytrains - that's for sure!

We got back near our parking garage as the night life of the city started to pour into the streets.  Friday night in New York makes for slow going as the sidewalks get more and more jam-packed.  Within half an hour of this shot, we had to hang onto each other to not lose one another in the crowds:

And of course, a quick stop to try New York pizza.  We had to compare it to Chicago's to be well-versed.  I just had a bite as my dairy allergy was giving me a hard time this week, but Nick stepped up to the plate for us :)

Then a quick walk back to the car and into the Lincoln Tunnel to head back to PA!

As far as a blitz, 8-hour tour of New York goes, I think we did well!  We didn't get to everything on our list and "sampled" various stores and areas verses getting lost in them for hours, but now we can say we've been to the Big Apple!  We could NOT have done even half so well without our tour guide, though!  She was a life saver!

The Great Adventure - Day 15

 Today was thankfully less eventually than the previous day.  We woke up in our nice hotel room after staying up way, way too late.  In my defence, 3:15am here is really only 12:15am back home.  I needed a number of car naps throughout the day to recover from that, however, since I keep forgetting I'm too old to stay up past 1:00am.  I'm literally racing the clock as I type this as it's 12:37am right now!  Before we headed out, we grabbed a few shots with the animals across the street:

Then it was back on the road to New York under sunny skies.  The bright skies contrasted with the very winter-dead trees all around.  I guess Spring comes late to this coast:

We continued on the silly "tolled roads" and at least got some cool tunnels to travel through for all our troubles.  I swear we've paid something like $50 - $60 in road tolls in the last 48 hours.

It was a pretty simple day.  Nick drove.  I napped.  We worked on our candy from the Popcorn Shop in Chicago.  I've wanted to try one of these little "burgers" since I was just a kid.  They're not bad!

We drove the speed limit the entire day.

Even in "work zones".  We eventually did find ONE work zone with real workers and real work being done.  I have photo proof.  And yes, you can see the large white truck driving faster and passing us in the next two shots....

We pulled off at a rest station and finally decided to do some research on this "E-ZPass" we keep seeing.  We saw an advertisement that said if we bought one there, they would pay for our next toll.   Since the Pass only cost $8 and our next toll was going to be $20, we got on board!  Now we also get at least a 35% discount on some of these super expensive tolls coming BACK to the West Coast.  Sheesh.

We arrived at my friend, Christine's, place around 7:30 that evening and she had a delicious supper kept warm for us.  We hung out and chatted for a bit and we found out that we're pretty much exactly the same in person as we are online and it was like picking up with an old friend vs. meeting someone new for the first time.  Though, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised after the amount of time we've spent chatting online since we first met in a photography group I don't remember how long ago now.  She was a large part of the reason we decided to extend our trip out to New York in the first place rather than coming back mid-country.  Here's Nick relaxing after driving all 8 hours today solo!

Also, get this.  Christine made me - sorry "us" - but mostly me I think ;) - a GIFT BASKET.  I have never, ever received a gift basket before.  You won't believe me if you know me in real life, but I actually had no words.  I was speechless.  I mean, I stammered around a bunch, but coherency was lacking.  (Yes, apparently that CAN happen).  All through college I would watch students get these care packages and I was so jealous.  I thought they were the coolest things.  The closest I've come to something like this is a Christmas stocking (which was not a tradition in my family, but happened once or twice and sometimes happens in Nick's family).  But this was a genuine basket of gifts!  For no reason.  Just because.  I'm still so thrilled!

Those pink things in the back are marshmallow peeps and I'm so stoked to blow them up in the microwave because apparently that's cool.  It sounds cool.  I'm going to do it.

Anyway, tomorrow is our big day in New York, so I better head to bed.  You know, since I'm getting old and napping isn't an option in the big city.  Goodnight all!