New York City. Ah, the hustle and bustle of the Big Apple. Stepping off the bus literally steps from the Empire State Building was hard to describe. First of all it was 5:30 pm on a Monday, serious rush hour foot traffic. Not to mention the bus had to change our drop-off point. Ok, so let’s see what we have here, two bewildered travelers… check, heavy awkward backpacks… check, shoulder to shoulder foot traffic… double check. Welcome to the City! We may as well have been from another country. All hope of not looking like the stereotypical lost tourist immediately went out the window. We were completely lost. I expected this to happen at least a few times on our trip but not our first big city. Once we got our wits about us and found Penn station I quickly downloaded Google maps. We luckily still had our iPhones at that time. We were then able to get to our subway station and got our Metro cards. A quick hop on the Q train and we were in Queens. We were fortunate to have my Aunt Charity put us up in her apartment for a couple of days. She lives in Queens in a trendy little neighborhood named Astoria. It was a great location for us to have free run of entire city. I have to admit with Google maps the city was rather easy to navigate. Although I did feel like I was cheating. Because of the costs we won’t have such easy access to our phones in Europe. But in my defense, the next day was our only whole day in New York City. I didn’t want to spend half of it getting un-lost. Plus it was my Birthday.
What a great birthday it was, coffee in central park in the morning followed by a quick lunch and a stroll to Times Square.
While in Times Square we were approached by a guy with a clip board. I was certain he had nothing we were interested in. Until he asked do you guys want to go to the Letterman show? My predictable response… “How much?” to which he replied “It’s completely free.” Yeah right I thought. I was about to brush him off until Amy inquired further with a “yeah we’d love to go!” After answering a simple question (what does Paul Shaffer wear during every show?) we got our ticket voucher. We would later find out we got more than we bargained for. When we picked up our tickets we were pulled aside and told that we would be “group leaders” this meant front row seats and we get to wait in the VIP area before the show. I remember thinking “what are the freaking odds?” they must’ve known it was my birthday but Amy never mentioned it so it must have just been chance. What was interesting was the informative meeting in the VIP area we got before the show. With about 75 other people we were instructed on the fine art of the proper late show laugh. There is no “canned” laughter on the Late Show. It is all 100% generated from the crowd. I say generated because they persuaded us to laugh at all of Dave’s jokes and to not think too hard about them, you could do that on the way home. That was the funniest part of the show. I have to admit though it would be hard to come up with good material every night like that. Regardless, we enjoyed the show and got a few real laughs out of it too.
After the late show it was time to get some Birthday dinner! We headed to Chinatown with Charity and her boyfriend for Joe’s Shanghai and some pork dumplings. I’m salivating just writing about them. If you ever find yourself in Chinatown in NYC be sure to order pork dumplings. That’s if you can get a seat. After dinner we took a walk over the Brooklyn Bridge in to Dumbo, Brooklyn. The bridge was humming with people and bikers and with the great weather it was a perfect night. Walkers beware, the bikers fly across the bridge some are kind enough to give warning others fly past you before you even know they were there.
Once in Dumbo we headed to the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory on the bank of the East River. We enjoyed the cool air and ate our ice cream and snapped a few photos while we were at it. We reflected on the day and I even felt a little proud that we traveled the subway system without too much trouble. All the while I contemplated our big adventure to start the following day. We were nervous and excited about what was to come. With a boost of confidence from being able to conquer NYC and the subway we felt ready to take on our next stop, London (minus Google maps). This time we would really have to up our game. I couldn’t remember the last time I pulled out a paper map.
source: Our Little Trip to the Big Apple
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