NY Day 2

We got up in the morning and decided to check out the continential breakfast. We got up to the cafeteria and there was a long line to wait in just to get in, so we decided that we'd rather find somewhere on our walk to the subway station to eat. I still had to finish getting ready, so we went back to the room and I finished up. We decided to go by the cafeteria once more to see if the wait was better and it was, so we snuck in. They just had fruit and breads, but it was enough and tasted good. The view was great and we could see Central Park (from our room, which was a few floors lower and a few rooms further in we couldn't see the park).

After breakfast we headed to Times Square to get on the subway to go to the South Ferry area (Battery Park, Statue of Liberty, WTC). We bought all day passes. The subway was very clean and not crowded at all. We got to the South Ferry and decided to head to the area along the river where we could see the Statue of Liberty. The area along the river was very pretty and the weather was great, so we sat and watched the boats for a while.

Then we headed into Battery Park and walked around a bit and watched some street performers, the mile long line to the ferry to the Statue of Liberty, and lots of pidgeons. It was a fun area and full of so many interesting things. From there, we walked to the World Trade Center site. It was my first day of a lot of walking and I was getting tired pretty quickly, so we stopped a couple times on the way, even though it was a fairly short walk. It was a bit of a bummer that I was so worn out because I don't think I took the time to think about the site and what had happened there and was more focused on wanting to sit down and get a drink. Aaron did get a few good pictures of the progress thus far. While he was doing that, I squatted down for a minute to rest my legs. As soon as I had bent down, a security person hollered and me and told me to stand up. I understood, but man I wanted to rest my legs! We moved on into one of the World Financial buildings, which had a better view than the first place we were out (still no seating though) and Aaron took a few more pictures.

After visiting the WTC site, we walked back down to Battery Park via a different route that was along the river. There were benches every 100 feet or so, so we sat down a few times and watched the river traffic. Aaron even stopped for a long while to watch an Asian family who was fishing in the river. They never caught anything while he was watching, but it looked like fun. I certianly wouldn't eat the fish from that river though! Yuck!

When we got back to the South Ferry area, we decided to take the Staten Island Ferry, which drives right by the Statue of Liberty (we didn't want to wait in the mile-long line to visit it and Ellis Island). The ferry was huge! As we made our way near the SoL, everyone moved to that side of the boat and it was hard to see. But, folks were nice and moved out of the way to let everyone have a view. We moved over the other other side of the boat and could see the Brooklyn Bridge. When we got to Staten Island, they made us disembark and then reimbark. We thought we'd hop off, go through security, wait about 10 minutes for the boat to be cleared, and then get back on. WRONG! We ended up waiting in a huge group of people for about 45 minutes, most who were European (i.e., they stood way closer to a pregnant lady than she wanted them to!). We finally got back on the boat and decided to ride on a different level than we had on our first trip and it was much less crowded, so we had a very nice ride. Here's Little Miss Cain as we went by the SoL. The picture makes it look a lot farther away than it really was.

After the ferry ride, we headed to China Town and Little Italy. The subway stop was right at the point where they meet. China Town was EXACTLY like I pictured it.

There were lots of fruit and fish markets (yes, they smelled horrible) and tons of merchants on the street. You'd walk by someone on the corner and they'd say "Coach purse? Watch? Or DVD! DVD! DVD!" Designer purses aren't my thing, even if they are super cheap, but we did look at some watches for Aaron and had to get some DVDs (more on them later). The watches weren't as cheap as I would have expected, and we passed on them. Aaron later found one at a vendor on the street by our hotel for $5 and it looked nicer than most of what we had seen in China Town. We bought a few I love NY shirts and headed to Little Italy for an early dinner. There were so many places to choose from and the entire area had the wonder aroma of Italian cooking. We finally decided on a restaurant that had a host outside who had been talking to us. We went in and waited and waited and waited. After 10 minutes without service (there were only 2 other people in the restaurant and the waiter wasn't doing anything) we left. Of course as soon as we got up the waiter and host ran over to us, but it was too little too late and we decided to find somewhere else to eat. Boy was I glad we did! We found a place called Benito's II. It was small and quaint and appeard to be "family owned" (if you know what I mean). But, the food was amazing and the staff was super friendly. We both had tortellini, mine with cream sauce and Aaron's with red sauce. We shared and neither of us could decide which was the best.

After eating we headed back to the subway stop to head back to the hotel. My pass wouldn't work, but the guy working buzzed me through and off we went. We got to the station where we needed to transfer lines and my card still wouldn't work. There wasn't anyone working in that area, so we headed above ground and I called customer service. Of course they don't have a 24 hour help line (even though the subways run 24 hours...), so we had to find the nearest station with personnel. Luckily it was only a few blocks away and we didn't mind getting to check out another area of town (this time it was NoHo and SoHo). We didn't get any pictures, but it seemed like it would have been a fun area to explore. We made it to the station and tried my pass again and it still didn't work, so we went to the guy working. They sit behind a huge glass window, which is probably nearly impossible to penetrate and I now know why. :) When we asked him to look at my pass he grabbed it and said "there's nothing wrong with it." I swiped it in front of him and he said it must be the machine, so I said that I had tried it at 2 other stations in multiple machines that many other people were using. He still said it wasn't the card. I asked he could just get us a replacement and he shrugged his shoulders in a very rude way and said no. I went on a bit trying to get him to help us and finally got so mad that I stomped off and threw my card across the station. I don't really have much of a temper, but it was unbelievable how rude he was! I asked Aaron later if he'd ever seen me so mad at someone besides him and he laughed and said no. I went over to the ticket machine and was getting ready to buy another ticket when the woman who had been in line behind us came up to me and gave me her old pass (she had been buying one for the next month and had enough for a couple stops on her current card). It was so nice of her to do and I let her know how appreciative I was. We hopped back on the subway and rode back to our hotel. We stopped by an ice cream shop and then headed back to our room to watch one of the DVDs. We turned it on and I immediately started cracking up! It was everything I thought it would be -- it was obviously taped by someone at a movie theater, the camera was angled crooked, and once during the movie you could see someone stand up in front! Ha! Ha! Yes, I felt bad for buying a bootlegged movie, but it is just one of those things that you have to do if you visit China Town and it was well worth it. So, the movie wasn't nearly as good as we had hoped, but the bootleg factor made up for it.