Today was my big day exploring the city, and my feet resent me for it. Here's the rundown:
- 9:00 Leave Tsz's
- Take F train to W 4th to find Rocco's Pastry shop. Get rained on.
- Find the shop. Best. Mochacchino. Ever.
- Take F train to Rockefeller Center for Top of the Rock.
(Rockefeller Center)
(Empire State Building, from Top of the Rock)- Get gifts at the NBC store.
- Try to withdraw money. However, my debit card expired last month. Crud.
- Figure out how to use traveler's checks!
- Walk 7 blocks to an American Express so I don't pay an exorbitant fee.
- Get cashmonies.
- Take E train to B train to Cathedral Parkway to visit St. John's Cathedral of the Divine, the largest Gothic cathedral in the world. Honestly, I've seen much cooler cathedrals. It was bare, and not in the ascetic, holy kind of bare, either. Just empty. The statue outside was fantastic, though.
- Take B train back down to 72nd st. for Central Park West entrance.
- Central Park: Strawberry Fields, Cherry Hill, Bow Bridge, Bethesda Fountain and Terrace, The Mall, The Dairy, Wollman rink, the statue of Balto, Conservatory Water, the statue of Hans Christian Anderson, the statue of Alice in Wonderland, the Metropolitan Museum of Art (I'll visit next time), Cleopatra's Needle (the obelisk to Thutmose III from Heliopolis), Beveldere Castle, Turtle Pond, Sweedish Cttage Marionette Theater, and then exit at 81st st at the American Museum of natural History (I went in the lobby, but I'll have to go through another time). My feet hate me. I ate the cannoli and croissant I gt at Rocco's while overlooking the Bow Bridge, though, and they were incredible.
(Balto, diptheria hero)- Walk 4 blocks to the 1 line at 79th and Broadway, take to Times Square.
- Times Square and Broadway.
(Times Square)
(Next time, Broadway, I swear)- Take the N line to Canal Street for Chinatown.
- Get asked to by a handbag by EVERYONE. I had a string bag, and so everyone assumed I was looking for handbag-handbag-louis-coach-dolce-and-gabbana? All the vendors all over NYC speak like this. Whenever it rains, it's always umbrella-umbrealla-you-want-to-buy? Nationality makes no difference.
- Take 6 train from Canal Street, line ends the next station because I should have taken the 5 train.
- Take the 6 train back to Canal, then take the W train to Whitehall (Battery Park, where we left for the Statue of Liberty yesterday) to find some art.
- See a really cool lightning strike, then see all the vendors I was going to visit finish packing up their booths for the impending storm. Then I got rained on again.
- Come back to Tsz's and shower.
- Eat tasty curry rice! Apparently, the talk of the meal again was how well the white girl used chopsticks.
Tsz and I watched last week's Colbert episodes (broadcast from Baghdad) and I packed. I have to get up in 4 1/2 hours to take the train to orientation, which is why this post is rather terse. Also, I would hve had a lot to write about. I'll post more tomorrow!
