Planes Trains and Automobiles

Oh, and we walked EVERYWHERE too...

So this weekend, the wife and I headed down to NYC for her cousins wedding. Since it was in New York, and we hadn't been there in a couple of years, we decided to make a long weekend out of it. Thurs and Fri in NYC, Saturday at the wedding, fly home Sunday..

Beautiful thing about Maine... small airports equal no lines at all. We arrived 15 minutes before our flight was to leave (someone, who isn't me, forgot their cellphone at home, so we had to turn around 20 mins into our drive and go get it), parked, got our tickets, went thru security and made our way to the gate with at least five minutes to spare.. gotta love it.

After an uneventful flight, we took a bus from JFK to Grand Central, and walked to our hotel from there. We stayed at the Millennium U.N., obviously right next to the United Nations. If marble and mirrors are your thing, then this is the place for you. Then entire lobby was marble and everywhere you looked, you'd catch your reflection. It felt so 80's, I kept waiting for Crockett and Tubbs to come walking around the corner. Even the bathroom in our room was mirrored out. All the walls had them, and so did the back of the door. And believe me, when you sit down for a minute to do your thang, and look up and see what I saw... it's not pretty. Not pretty at all...

We dropped our stuff and headed out to explore the big city. After walking around for a bit, we ate a bar, PJ Morans, where they served $9 Sam Adams and $8 Bud Light drafts.. I miss Maine already. The bonus was our waitress was a lovely Irish girl, and who doesn't love listening to that wonderful accent...

This is a picture from our hotel room window (32 floor), pretty nice view huh...
Friday we decided to hit the Statue of Liberty, cuz neither of us had ever been. We took the train most of the way downtown, then got off and walked the last 10 or so blocks. Security was tighter at the ferry terminal than it was at the airport. There's something that feels wrong with taking your belt off in public, not sure what it is, but it just doesn't feel right.. I've got a a million and one pictures of the statue itself, but I'll only bore you with two of them. This first one is from the ferry on the way over...
And this one is from behind the statue on the island itself. It's funny though, we've all seen it a million times on tv, in movies, in pictures, or whatever, but seeing it in person is completely different. It's really an amazing thing... Although I was a little disappointed cuz the wife wouldn't let me buy a mini statue to take home...
My darling wife enjoying the view of the city from the island...
You're favorite blogger enjoying the view of his wife from the island...
We spent the rest of the day walking around the city, everywhere...Up through the Wall St. area, where if you looked carefully, you could actually see some of the banks falling apart...through Greenwich Village...over to Canal St...and back up towards the Empire State building. We were going to go up to the top, but it was $20 each, and I'm not going to pay that much to ride an elevator.

This pic is down Lexington Ave. The street was closed off for some road race, so I got this pretty cool picture..
This is when we felt at home.. the smell of horses and their little presents totally took us back to Maine...
After deciding not to do the Empire thing, we headed over to Rockefeller Center where we eventually decided to go on the NBC studio tour. It was actually really really cool. The tour consisted of the wife and I, two tour guides and 12 Germans, only one of whom actually spoke decent English. At the beginning of the tour, they show a montage of famous NBC shows and the only time they perked up was when they showed Friends and Seinfeld. Otherwise, they sat silently watching. The tour is really all about Saturday Night Live, and these people had never seen it. So as we're standing there, pressed up against the glass watching Amy Pohler and Anne Hathaway rehearse a scene from 50 feet away, the wife and I are soaking it all in, loving it, while our German friends remained totally expressionless. I'm pretty sure they expected Ross Geller and George Costanza to be running the tour...

Towards the end, the two guides asked for two volunteers. One would get to read the news (off the teleprompter) while the other would do the weather (in front of the green screen). Since we were the only ones that actually spoke passable English, we got to play nightly news anchors. I read the news, and my lovely wife did the weather. I actually bought the dvd of us, but my computer doesn't have a dvd player, so I can't upload it for the world to see.. sad huh.. But reading off a teleprompter is actually not that hard. If I had a chance to read my script once or twice beforehand, I'm pretty sure I'm be working on the Today show tomorrow morning..

The rest of the evening was spent at dinner with the brother in law, and more wandering around the city. Lots of fun actually.

Saturday morning we walked over to Central Park (like another 20 blocks while we searched for breakfast too) and walked around there some. Eventually it was time to check out and off we went to meet the brother in law and take the train out to Queens for the wedding. (the wedding was in Queens, the reception on Long Island 45 minutes, which was only like 9 miles, away)

Jamie, the wife's brother, took this picture using the panoramic function on the camera. The picture itself is boring, but the panoramic thing is really cool. It essentially takes three pictures and sews them together as one...I think it's my new favorite thing...

The wedding was a blast to say the least. It was a big Long Island affair(i'm pretty sure half the people there were made), with an open bar and fantastic food. Hanging with the family we don't get to see very often is always great. Although, I do feel a little bad for them, cuz the more I drink (remember, open bar) the more I talk. So they got stuck listen to me babble on about who knows what for a lot of the evening.

The final picture.. the wife and I at the wedding. I wanted to do the standard prom pose, but that idea was shot down..
All in all it was a great weekend. New Yorkers need to smile more (there are sooo many miserable people looking people walking around), but for the most part everyone was friendly and we got really good weather. I don't think I could ever live there, but I really do enjoying visiting..