Graduation trip journal (part 1): New York, New York

September 18, Thursday – We took a bus from southern California to Las Vegas, because we got a good deal on a flight from there.

On the bus

My first taxi ride was that day, from the bus stop to the airport. At the Vegas airport, we had several hours till the fight so I read “The Hobbit.” We tried to sleep during our red-eye flight …it kind of worked 🙂

September 19, Friday – Reached Philadelphia in the morning and were picked up by my cousins.

Good morning, Philly!

Stopped at Dunkin Donuts to get breakfast. The day was spent relaxing, chatting, playing a Lord of the Rings game with my cousin, cooking, and shopping for an outfit as a gift (thank you Victors!).

September 20, Saturday – Graduation day! In the morning, we attended a ceremony for an award I got, and then after a light lunch, the Thomas Edison State College 2014 graduation ceremony in the afternoon. We were also able to visit the college nearby and take pictures. Since my idea of a great evening is pizza and a movie, we ordered veggie pizzas from Papa John’s and watched a cool futuristic movie called “Day After Tomorrow” 8)

September 21, Sunday – First day ever in NYC!! My oldest cousin treated us to a showing of the “Les Miserables” musical on Broadway. Thank you Sarah!! I’d seen a couple movie versions, and I like the story, so to see the stage production was really neat! It was a wonderful performance! I love the songs and the actors were great! Afterwards we met some of the actors and got autographs.

Javert

Student

Enjolras

Marius

Thenardier

Times Square

Next we walked to and around Times Square, and spent time walking lower Manhattan. It was so busy! Cars and people shared the road. Truth be told, I didn’t expect it to be quite so chaotic, but it was all good. A different pace altogether, from Los Angeles. Stopped for dinner at a restaurant that sold several kinds of food and did a little shopping. The night was pretty warm. The lights and number of people still moving about the street and sidewalks made it seem not quite so late. We planned to come back the next day, so we left around midnight. I was already anticipating tomorrow 😀

September 22, Monday – Having driven the day before, this time we took the bus from our cousins’ place in Philly to NYC. First stop: Wall St. There was a protest going on over global warming; environmentalists were intending to #FloodWallSt, many were sitting around, the Bull was unreachable, Wall St. was closed off, and there were police everywhere. It was kind of disappointing to not get to see the Bull up close, but this was an interesting experience. We walked around more… Then, the highlight of the day (well, kind of the whole trip 😉 ): the Statue of Liberty! We took the Staten Island ferry which travelled to the Island, and on the way gave a view of the Statue, Ellis Island, the Brooklyn Bridge, and more. The ride back I spent on the deck of the ferry, instead of inside, which was fun. My new zoom lens came in handy as I was able to get quite good close-up shots with it. 😀 And then the Statue against the backdrop of the city looked awesome! Next we headed to Ground Zero. There were two huge holes in the ground, where the Twin Towers once stood. They’d been turned into fountains and water kept running down the holes. Forever down. The holes were ringed with the names of all who perished. It was sobering. But directly behind was the new World Trade Center, the tallest building in New York; quite a demonstration of overcoming. We rode the subway back up to mid Manhatten, and our last stop was Hershey World at Times Square. We looked around and bought a few souvenirs for the chocolate-lovers in our family 🙂 And to cap the day off…we took a taxi to the bus station! That New York City taxi ride was way cool. You really have to know your stuff to drive down there…with pedestrians all around, squeezing and streaming though…in the dark…on wet streets. And that was the end of our time in NYC. I thank God for this amazing experience! And, one day, I want to go back 😀