New York, Part One

so New York. It was great. We had a blast and froze our asses off. We woke up at 3am, like expected and made it to the airport in good time. Was all ready to go when we found out about the storm that hit the Northeast. We were delayed two hours. Ugh... it wasn't too bad, but any delay sucks, especially if you've been up since 3am. So we finally got there and began our adventure. We stayed at the Hotel Roger Williams, which was pretty nice! Very modern and stylish. (Marc and I even got a free upgrade - heehee). We went to Original Ray's pizza - the best pizza we had in NYC. We then went down the Canal Street, where I got a totally fake Coach bag, that looks pretty good and a fake Tiffany's necklace, that I just liked the look of. The back rooms we went to were amazing - we went into one through a hair salon for jeebus sakes. I only wish our shopping had been more thorough. I mean, really we just hit a very small section of Canal/Mott that was pretty much all in Chinatown. I would have liked to see more. Especially since the jewelry rip offs aren't anything like what we have in Houston. I mean, sure you can find great bags on Harwin (if you dig) but not really jewelry. At least not that I've seen.

Anyway, to get back on topic... We then started our trek back up to the hotel. We walked. For forever. It was cold. COLD. We stopped off at a bar and got a drink and tried to dry out a little bit, because it wasn't just cold, it was sleeting. So we got wet. Yuck. We walked like 30 blocks to our hotel. We ate at Veslaka (or something close to that) a Ukrainian cafe. The food was pretty good. We walked over to Times Square which was cool. I was a little disappointed from the angles we saw the billboards and lights at - it wasn't what I had traditionally seen Times Square like. Oh, well. For as much as we saw, there was a lot we didn't. We also went over to Grand Central Station to check it out. By that time it felt like we had walked everywhere and were exhausted, so we went back to the hotel and went to sleep. It was probably close to midnight or later. I really lost time of when we did what... it just all seems to melt together.

Saturday we woke up at 8-ish to meet for breakfast and experienced public transportation NYC style. We bought an unlimited day pass on the subway/Metro! It was surprisingly a lot dirtier than Moscow's. A lot. I was really pretty surprised. Moscow's stations are all individually decorated (and when I say decorated, I mean intricate mosaic tile, statues and busts; really beautiful stuff). The tunnels also weren't as deep as in Moscow. The elevators there were really steep and took forever. It makes me wish Houston had a better mode of public transportation. We have the bus and the light rail, which seriously so few Houstonians can actually ride, its pathetic. We need a train. Or something! I mean, Moscow had trains, the Metro and buses. NYC has buses, subways and (I don't know if this is technically considered public transportation) but taxis. Houston needs SOMETHING. Everyone drives their own car - how sick is that?!? Is it any wonder we're so fat and polluted down here? Get us some trains so people from the burbs can get to the city in a reasonable ($ wise) and environmentally friendly fashion.

OK, so rant over - and since I'm still very very tired, so ends my post for today.