Catching Up

Since our last blog post, we have done...a lot. We just scrolled through our pictures and it almost looks like we travelled to a different country on each day.  this is our second last day in New York so we're about to dive in again, but here's a list and some pictures to let you in on what we've been up to:
Golden Unicorn Dim Sum, accidental encounter with the Metro Correctional Centre, fooling around on the steps of the courthouse from Law & Order, MetroCard misadventures, Central Park exploring (the Zoo, the Mall, the Carousel, the John Lennon Memorial), pizza in Little Italy, FAO Schwartz, FAO Schweetz, Pulaski Day Parade, sushi at Ruby Foo's, Wicked, M&M's store, Times Square at night, more Central Park, an architecture walk, Columbus Day Parade, discount ticket booth adventures, FDNY store, Top of the Rock, Newsies, more Times Square at night. Whew.
Today we hope to hit Grand Central, New York Public Library, the Met, and maybe another Broadway show if the tickets are cheap. Wish us luck!

All Glory to the Sesame Ball

Happy Thanksgiving!

Totally forgot it's Thanksgiving up in Canada! Just happened to take this picture in Battery Park yesterday. Turkey was just chillin.

Have fun, eat lots, and love to all!

<3 Emily and Moragh

Free Stuff is the Best Stuff

Yesterday, we tackled lower Manhattan. Following the Frommer's 24 Great Walks in New York guide, we started our day in front of the Museum of the American Indian (MAI), which used to be the US Customs house. It has some great statues depicting America, Europe, Asia and Africa as women but I neglected to get a good picture :( The museum was free so we went in and looked at some Native American artifacts and spent most of our time listening to interactive exhibits about successful American Indian musicians, including Taboo from the Black Eyed Peas.

The Charging Bull statue we're posing in front of is located directly across from the MAI, through a small park. Apparently it was an unsolicited gift from some artist who managed to secretly leave it in front of the New York Stock Exchange in 1989. How would you sneak a massive bronze bull anywhere?? Anyway, the thing was crawling with people taking pictures with both the front and (very impressive) back end so we had to settle for the middle.

After a small walk up Broadway (past some Occupy protesters in front of Trinity Church) we turned down Wall street and were floored by the size and grandeur of the New York Stock Exchange. The security around it is insane, with streets blocked off with adjustable ramps and the whole perimeter secured with a wrought iron fence so that the closest you can get to it is the opposite sidewalk. Certain vehicles are allowed through but only after being inspected by a police dog. I took this picture sitting on the steps of the Federal Hall National Memorial, where George Washington took his oaths as first President of the US.

The walk took us on a bit of a ramble through the financial district where tourists and suits alike came out of the woodwork at noontime. It was like an anthill. Thankfully, we were headed towards Battery Park, where we thought we'd find a bit of space and greenery to sit and relax in for a while. Right. Not pictured here: the INSANE amount of people lined up inside Castle Clinton and out on the pier waiting to board a boat to take them to the Statue of Liberty. We did find a nice place to sit though, in the Gardens of Hope (in memory of AIDS victims), where we had a snack and listened to a Rasta man play steel drums and shook our heads at the people sweltering in the huge lineup for the boat.

That's Moragh sitting on the steps leading to the East Coast Memorial, which is huge slabs of concrete depicting the names of all the US soldiers/etc who died in the Atlantic Ocean during WWII. And there's Emily, relaxing on the pier across from the memorial, with Lady Liberty in the background.

Sidenote: we're DYING of heat here. Really. We didn't bring nearly enough summery clothes to survive 30 degree weather in the city. If we comment on the weather to anyone though, we get mutterings about "Canadians..."

So after snickering at the people paying $20 and waiting in hours of lineups, we walked to the end of the park and hopped on the very full but FREE Staten Island ferry, and took a jaunt across the harbour. Got some really cool views of the city and of the Statue of Liberty, and all we had to do to get back was walk off the boat, turn around and get back on. For FREE. Excellent people watching as well, might we add.

Running out of time here this morning as we are heading out for dim sum and Central Park (eeeeee) but here are some pics of the rest of our day - will edit this post later and add details as needed!

Alan's Falafels - best $4.50 street food you'll ever find.

WTC site, with one new tower almost complete.

St. Paul's church, where rescue workers slept between shifts during 9/11, now turned into a kind of shrine to the efforts of firefighters/police officers/EMTs/etc on that day.

At the MoMA Free Friday! Contemporary art galleries and the Architecture and Design galleries were our favourites.

End of the day! Sitting on the steps of the Sculpture Gardens, MoMA. So, so, so tired.

Overload. Do not compute. Sleep.

Cat litter. Exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, NYC. They paid good money for this. Tell me again, why do we have degrees in neuroscience?
More pics and detailed update tomorrow. Too tired right now. zzzzzzz
Em&M

D ≠ B

We are writing to you tonight from the comfort of our bed, where we have the AC on full blast (29 degrees with humidity right now) and where our leg, butt, and back muscles can finally give up the ghost. Our day was awesome but nearly 100% walking and standing, and we are really going to sleep well tonight.

Our first attempt at navigating the NYC subway was mostly successful - yes, we did get on the wrong train on our first try but so did at least four other people trying to get to the Museum of Natural History. We all sat and watched as our intended stop flew by the window....as did the next five stations. Turns out the D train does NOT stop at all the stations that the B train does, even though it would appear that way on the map. So instead of 81st street, we had to get out at 135th and take another train back to the museum. Oh well (unlimited metro pass FTW, $30).

We spent the whole day at the museum, until it closed at 5:45 (six hours total). Too much to get into now but it was incredible. See pictures below :)

After the museum, we walked across the street to Central Park to regroup and rest our feet. What a gorgeous area to have in the middle of NYC! We'll be going back there on a nicer day to explore it further.

On Emily's mother's advice, we hit up Five Napkin Burger (5NB) for supper. So. Good. Whoever decided to put gruyere cheese and rosemary aioli on a burger is a genius. They also happened to have a huge selection of American bottled beer which was exactly what we needed at that point :) we chose to sit outside, which allowed us to people-watch, and count yellow taxis that went by (average 24 every minute = 1440 an hour - crazy). Still not used to the sensation of the subway being under our feet!

At the exact moment we surfaced from the subway ride home, someone ran over a soccer ball about ten feet away. It made a noise like a gunshot and scared the living hell out of us and everyone around us - funny in retrospect but at the time got us distracted enough to miss our street, and then turn in the opposite direction while trying to correct our route :s The eventual spiral we made to get home took us through Little Italy, where we picked up raspberry Italian sodas and hovered between giggling and whimpering as we climbed the stairs to our apartment. Our feet may never forgive us.

Can't wait to see what tomorrow will bring!

NYC Day 1/Sorry I'm SO Bad at Blogger.

Guys this post was frustrating. My apologies for the block of pictures at the end, I'm going to format them as soon as I work out how.

View from our fire escape! Center of Chinatown, NYC. 

Why did it take me half an hour to figure out how to write next to my pictures?? ARGH

Anyway. It was extremely difficult to choose only a few pictures to post on here in the interest of time and sanity, and we promise we will upload all our pictures to Facebook once we return to Canada! but for now, here's a taste of what our first day in New York was like!

We spent most of the day wandering around the neighbourhood surrounding our apartment (Chinatown) in an effort to orient ourselves and get comfortable in the city. We mostly succeeded in DISorienting ourselves but after a few hours we began intuitively knowing directions and landmarks. Which is an achievement when most of the signage is in one Chinese dialect or another.

This is Columbus Park, where we found a large number of Chinese people gathered to play music and play checkers and cards while they waited for their children to be finished at school. Each games table had its own cheering section :)

 

We stopped for lunch at a place called Lovely Day, which serves Thai food that is flavourful and light. Best dish: ginger fried chicken, ordered as 'crack chicken" by the locals. Seriously the best chicken we've ever had.

Moragh had an existential moment at Sara Delano Roosevelt Park, where we went to digest our lovely lunch.

NOTE: this Blogger thing either hates me or I suck at using it or both, and I have given up after a good hour and a half of trying to get text to wrap around my pictures and captions to not screw with the orientation of my pictures etc so HERE is just a bunch of pictures. The churchy ones are St Patrick's Old Cathedral, the skyline one was to illustrate the fog here today, the COOL ones are our apartment, and the last one is us enjoying a beer on our fire escape :) 

Until next time, 

Emily and Moragh