Road Trip to NYC

It was long weekend so what better way than to plan a road trip. New York City is where we went, with a stop in Scranton so that we could take a picture of the Paper building seen on the opening credits of The Office.

We escaped the law - I had packed white peaches and plums for the road trip but I forgot to eat them before crossing the border.

Customs guy: Where are you going
Dennis: NYC
Customs: Are you bringing anything
Dennis: Just clothes and stuff................................to wear.

We took the extra long route to avoid paying tolls and drove through "Every-American-Town-Main-Street" - that is, the towns looked like the set of Gilmore Girls. Plenty of signs for antique shops.

Went outlet shopping and bought shoes, and more shoes because there were 2 for 1 deals.

Hit NYC traffic as we tried to get to the Holland Bridge - the worst urban planning ever. We went to Brooklyn where we checked into the Sleep Inn which is in the industrial side of town. I was disappointed with our bathroom as the TV remote control didn't work and the toilet seat had yellow crusties on it. It did, however have a king size bed that was super comfy. Oh yeah, we almost got our car towed.

That night, we decided to check out a ramen place that's called Ippudo at 8th and NYU stop. It's supposed to be pretty good and Zagat says "A mecca for mouthwatering and handpulled ramen". A lot of trendy asian people there. The ramen was expensive ($13/ramen bowl and $7 for appetizers such as avocado with caviar). The regular ramen was more flavourful than ajisen however I don't think it was worth the $13 or the 40 minute wait. Dennis gave it a 2.5 out of 4. The cool thing though is that everyone was yelling out japanese just like at Lick's...Including the restaurant manager who was speaking full sentences in Japanese and he was clearly not Japanese.

The next day, we took the subway (I was mistaken for a local as a Chinese lady asked me for directions in Cantonese) to Cadman Plaza Park where we saw men playing soccer. They were speaking all kinds of languages and I think the only time I heard English was with a thick Jamaican accent. We saw dog owners meeting dog owners, just like in the movies. We walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and noticed that most of the people who were biking on the bridge were these black men wearing spandex on racing-type bikes. That was Unexpected.

After the bridge, we went to Century 21 to buy me some shoes because the pair I was wearing was cutting into my heel and basically took off some skin. I ended up with these super comfortable house-type slippers which I'm sure looked super weird but I didn't care because I was in a lot of pain. We walked to the Financial District, took some pics in front of the NYSE, found the Bull.

We then walked to Ground Zero and I had already prepared Dennis by saying that it just looked like a construction site, nothing impressive. I had visited Ground Zero 4 years ago on Safeway Tours and I remember it not being much to see. Well, nothing much has changed except that they've started construction on a new building. I reminded him this is the second time in which I had to do something AGAIN and forewarned him that it was going to be boring. The first was watching Aviator a second time because Dennis hadn't seen it. The second time was going to Ground Zero.

We went to Battery Park and Dennis checked to see if any of our ancestors were on the memorials. No surprise, there weren't. But when I spotted a STARRED name (CIA agents who have died are listed as a star, instead of by name) he insisted it was his relative.

We walked to Chinatown (eventhough Safeway Tours 4 years ago said it was too dangerous to stop the bus and let us wander around) and we went searching for Joe's Shanghai which is supposed to be known for their Shanghai soup dumplings. They placed us at a table with these gay guys who were telling us how they didn't know how to eat the soup dumplings. They also talked about COACH bags and how you should be careful if you shop at CANAL street. This time we compared it to Asian Legend. I can't remember what we decided but the prices were decent and the service was quick. The place was full of a mix of asians and tourists. It was also hard to find. By the way, we saw Ajisen Ramen.

We walked to Little Italy, found the restaurant furniture district (a street with stores that only sell restaurant equipment), the indian restaurants street and made our way to Lulu's Sweet Apothecary which I guess caters to trendy people who like to eat organic, do yoga, and ride their bicycles. I ordered a ginger ale float with orange creamsicle and strawberry. I thought the guy behind the counter was going to use regular Canada Dry but he pours out some organic ginger ale and it actually tasted like ginger. I just went on the website and it talks about being vegan free and gluten-free. As I said before..it's for the yoga organic food people. Not the best ice cream I've had. The best still goes to Daintree Ice Cream in Australia.

From Lulu's, we took the subway to the Upper East Side, Park Avenue type area and headed towards the Guggenheim where Dennis declared, "This is where they filmed When in Rome". I didn't know that. We took a walk through Central Park where I would say "this is the area where the Nannies take the rich kids". The bathroom was pretty clean in the park. We walked all the way to Times Square because we needed to catch a musical called In The Heights which was the 2008 Tony Award winner for Best Musical. This musical features Corbin Bleu who plays Chad from High School Musical. He doesn't do much singing but he does a lot of rapping. We had second last row but I could still see everything since no one was sitting in front of me, and I was able to move up a few rows during the intermission. It was an enthusiastic audience. Dennis said it's like Avenue Q, but the songs are catchier. Or, it's like Rent, without the AIDS. I guess it's the PG-13 version? We missed some of the jokes as some of it was in spanish but that's okay. It was a fun musical. Below Wicked, above Evita. Equivalent FUN-ness to Mamma Mia.

Afterwards, we walked around Times Squares where there is this cool Forever 21 ad where they have a huge screen and you can see yourself on the screen, in Times Square! How cool is that? We walked over to Rockefeller where Dennis made me do the "Diamonds in the sky a la Roc-a-fella" pose. I was the only one doing it. I asked him if he could pose like that so I could take a picture but he said he was too ashamed to do it.

We went to this super expensive deli and ate cheesecake, and Reuben and a Jackhammer. Oh yeah, there were these two, well built shirtless black guys standing by the intersection and they had resistance bands and one of them was doing chin ups on the "walking signal sign". So I look at them and the one guy smiled and gave me the thumbs up. I think the guys were trying to get discovered for an exercise video because they didn't have a tin or anything to collect money for showing off chin ups and resistance band workouts. Then we headed back to the Inn.

Next day, we discovered the gentrified part of Brooklyn where we bought NY style bagels (yum) and then we also went to the costco in Brooklyn so that Dennis could get his cash-back which he could only redeem in the US. Good thing he got the cashback because we needed the money to pay the tolls on the way home. It tooks us 11-12 hours to drive home, mainly because of the ridiculous traffic to cross the border. We were in the worst line. For every car our customs guys let through, the other people were passing through 3 cars. Our guy didn't ask us how much we spent. He just asked us where did we go, where did we stay and to open our trunk (I suspect he was opening everyone's trunk - maybe it was his first day on the job? no one in the other lines had to open their trunks). I think he took one look at my trunk and decided there was no point wasting time going through the trunk because it was so messy.

Got home and passed out. The next morning, I threw up twice and Dennis did not feel so well but he can't throw up so he still went to work. He missed work today though because he still wasn't feeling 100%. We attribute this to the bad fries we had a McDonald's.