Man oh man, what a weekend this was! Thank goodness for 3 day weekends, because trips like these can happen!
Friday after Dallan got out of school, I picked him up from the metro and we started our road trip to New Jersey. Our goal is to go to all 50 states and we got 3 new states this trip! When you drive to NJ from VA you go through the top corner of Delaware. Count it! We will probably never go to Delaware to visit so that counts right?
It was about a 6 hour drive with traffic (ugh), and about 5 miles from our hotel... our car decides to over heat. In stand still traffic. Yup, that was fun.. so we pull over to the side of the road, we are freaking out at this point because the last time this happened our radiator blew up. We turned off the car and waited until the engine cooled for probably an hour.We checked all of our fluids and everything was just fine. So weird... we said a prayer and hoped for the best and when we saw the traffic die down, we finally made it to our hotel.
We got settled and were so hungry we decided to try out White Castle for the first time. We've heard people rave over it so why not?! Well, as we were walking to the car... someone in one of the rooms nearby was smoking a joint. Worst smell in the world and I lost my appetite. (as I write this I get nauseated... I have strong feelings against weed). I knew I had to eat so we still went to White Castle. Upon ordering you walk over and can see them cook the food. BAD IDEA! The meat is so fake looking and they cook it in practically a whole onion! When we got our food, the bread was soggy, the meat patty was paper thin and onions were spewing out of the sides. I took one bite and that was it. Most disgusting burger I've ever had. McDonalds burgers are better and that's saying something... So I just munched on my fries and Dallan tried to eat the burgers and we went back to the hotel to sleep.
We woke up bright and early saturday morning... around 5:30 am to get ready and eat breakfast. I experienced Dunkin Donuts for the first time and my gosh, their hot cocoa is AMAZING! It's my go-to place now whenever I'm craving a local cafe in Alaska called "Jitters." But I have to say... their donuts are ehh... didn't knock my socks off..
We then got to the train station and took the hour ride to Penn Station!! YAY!!
"LET'S HEAR IT FOR NEW YOOOOOORK!!!" (Jay-Z anybody?! haha) That line of the song played in my head all day when we stepped onto Penn Station.
We asked some workers on the way to the Brooklyn Bridge if we were going the right way, and we got to hear a "real" New York accent! I was so excited to hear it! The guy said to us, "If it were a rat, it would bite ya!" because if we would've walked 50 more feet we would've seen it.
Now I must admit, after we figured out how to get to the Brooklyn Bridge and walked out onto the street... I was a big grump. It was pouring rain, I was worried all of our camera's were going to get ruined, our tripod bag broke, along with the tripod, and I was mad it was raining because I was soaked to the bone! It was also around 10:30 am and I eat every 2-3 hours... So yeah, our time on Brooklyn Bridge, as pretty was it was, wasn't the greatest.. Sorry D.. We ended up getting Umbrellas and that helped keep us dry and made me a bit happier..
Next stop was the 9/11 memorial which was only a few blocks away. The Freedom tower was so massive, that the top was covered in clouds!
People are probably going to be shocked when they read this... but I was a little disappointed in the 9/11 Memorial. It's just a huge water fall pit in the ground. I was expecting a statue in the middle or something! I think the picture of the firefighter's lifting the American Flag would've been a good statue to have in the middle. It was just kind of bleh. and to me it didn't do the hero's and victim's justice to me.
It was Noon by this point and I was STARVING... like Gremlin starving and even more grumpy.. 6 hours in between meals for me is a big no no! But we made it to Joe's Pizza in about 30 minutes. It was pretty good! I ate 2 slices and was happy as a clam after that! It's amazing what food will do to me. There is a sign in the store that said "Appeared in Spider-Man" so of course we looked it up and yup! Spider-Man worked for Joe's! Kind of cool.
We had a lot of things we wanted to see but ended up crossing 3-4 things off because it just wasn't realistic. So we headed straight to Central Park! This was my favorite part of NYC! Someone commented on Facebook saying something like, "You know you're from Alaska when your favorite part of NYC is Central Park.." SO TRUE! I'm not a city girl. The architecture of the buildings are amazing and all that, but it's nothing compared to nature. I probably have thousands of pictures of trees, mountains, rivers, etc. I guess that's the Pocahontas in me ;)
"Balto" was probably my top 5 favorite movies when I was young. So this picture was a must! Gotta represent my home state!
Probably my favorite picture of this whole trip! So dreamy and romantic!
As we were walking around the park, I noticed that almost everyone had brought their dog. I was "awhing" at every dog I saw and thought it was just a coincidence...but no. There was a HUGE dog festival near "The Mall!" My heart was extra happy but made me miss my pups back home. You can bet that I pet almost every single dog I passed. I'm seriously going to be a crazy dog lady when I'm old.... but I might be one now!
"The Mall"
We had to rest our feet so we sat at this beautiful fountain for about an hour and people watched... and I played around with my camera a bit.
As a Beatle's lover, Dallan had to see Strawberry Fields. A memorial to John Lennon. It was actually really cool. There was even some "homeless" guy sitting on a bench with a guitar singing "Imagine" and he sounded pretty good! Also, some guy snapped a photo of my legs while I was taking pictures of memorial... awkward...
Not far from the memorial is John Lennon's house. I guess Yoko still lives there at the top. It's also where he got murdered... Sad sad day.
Bow Bridge! Does this remind any of you of Enchanted?! (hint hint... we made a music video around this area... stay tuned)
We were walking along (and almost stepped on a dead bird) when we saw this tree! SO PRETTY!
"The Great Lawn"
Walking to the Deli and we see these SUPER nice town homes.. worth Millions of dollars. That's so crazy.
At Artie's Deli. It was really good and the prices weren't to shabby either. The waiter was funny though. When we got our receipt we noticed our waiter wrote on it and said "Recommended tip 20%..." and it had all the numbers calculated for us. Who does that?! So we gave him the 20% because we felt awkward and felt like we had to!
We stayed at Artie's until it was getting dark because I wanted to see Times Square at night and play around with the cameras! Man does Hollywood glamorize everything or what?! I was expecting so many lights and ad's and the whole sha-bang, but it wasn't any more lit up than Las Vegas. So if you've never been to Times Square but have been to Vegas, don't get your hopes up. In fact, I think the Vegas Strip is better!
