NYC, Part 5

Friday

With the parade finally behind us, I felt like the week (for all intents and purposes) was over. But we still had one more day ahead of us. All of us, that is, except for Sarah. Today was the day they piled a couple hundred kids, instruments, equipment, and luggage back on the buses to begin the two-day, sixteen hundred mile trip back to Austin. Oddly enough, that sounded like fun. I wouldn’t have minded hopping on a bus right there and then.

I found Sarah at breakfast and said farewell while everyone else slept in. Late. We barely made it down to breakfast on time, where I had my final made-to-order omelet. It will probably be years before I have another one like it. (Or, heck, maybe I’ll try one myself this weekend.) But soon we were all set and ready for the hourish long trip back to Manhattan. It was a beautiful morning:

During our painfully long public transportation trek to the Port Authority Bus Terminal, that first night in town, we walked past a Ripley’s Believe It Or Not museum. Rachel, like me, is attracted to the strange and therefore asked to go all week. We promised her we’d go today. It was twenty-five dollars for adults and maybe fifteen for her, but we had a four dollar off coupon for each ticket. So that sounds like $53, before sales tax. A bit steep, but again, we were apparently in for it all week anyway. It’s not like Christmas is around the corner or anything.

The woman at the register handed us our tickets and three guide books, themselves three bucks apiece, with a grand total of about $58. “Do we have to buy the guide books?” we asked. She explained that she gave us the $4 off, and then gave us an extra discount which actually got the adult admission down to $14. But that figure would have looked suspiciously low, so in order to avoid any problems, she threw the guidebooks on there.

Did you get that?

No, neither did we. After five minutes of trying to get it explained, I just figured we’d been took for something and wanted to get on with my life. Heck, at least it didn’t cost as much as two cheeseburgers and chicken fingers.

Here’s a goat or something with extra legs and no meat:

Here’s a person with no meat:

Here’s what I look like after a long night of drinking:

We stayed at the museum about an hour. I think Rachel enjoyed it. I had fun, but then again I like museums. Laura, on the other hand, was now set for life on Ripley’s museum trips, believe it or not. Cross that one off the list for good.

Next stop was something Laura wanted to see all week: Grand Central Station. We hopped on another subway and within minutes popped out at an amazing train station. As soon as we walked in the main room, Rachel looked around and said, “Wasn’t this in Madagascar?” Yes. Yes it was. And probably several hundred other movies.

After snapping several pictures, it was suddenly somehow about three o’clock and we were hungry again. We saw a sign that said “dining” and followed it downstairs to a food court of sorts. Want to know what they had down there? Pizza. For cryin’ out loud, I finally ran across some pizza.

I was a bit leary though. This was, after all, a food court in a train station. How would I know this was real pizza? Wasn’t it possible I was walking into a glorified Sbarro’s? Well, frankly, that didn’t matter any more. It was Friday. We only had hours left in the city. This was no time to be picky.

The place was called Two Boots and the pizza looked good. I like pizza. Scratch that. I love pizza. But I’m no expert. I take the “I don’t know much about pizza, but I know what I like” approach. And this stuff looked good.

While I’d had a hankerin’ for a thin-crust pepperonly pizza all week year, as I gazed at the array of pies before me, I saw one called The Dude. Pictured above on the lower right, it was some sort of cajun bacon and cheeseburger. And it cried out to me in its tiny, high pizza voice, “Eat me!”

So I did:

Rachel rolled hers up and ate it like this:

Within less than thirty seconds, we skeletonized these slices like human piranhas. Nothing left but the bones:

Happy and satisfied, we had just enough time to hit the one place on our list we hadn’t been: Central Park. We hopped another train, headed straight north, and got off on 86th. We walked west a few blocks and crossed Fifth Avenue:

And just like that, there we were:

It would been nice if we could have arrived a little earlier, but sometimes you just have to play the hand you’re dealt. Better late than never, right? Right!

We walked about fifty yards along the unexpected wall to find an entrance. And you’ll never guess what we found at the entrance. Hot dogs! And not only hot dogs but Nuts 4 Nuts. Oh boy! I gladly handed over six bucks for a hot dog, peanuts, and cashews. It may have only been an hour since I had that pizza, but I didn’t care. It was hot dog time!

Okay, I’m just having some fun. It wasn’t that bad. But frankly, it wasn’t that good either. I only had a selection of two toppings: either ketchup or catsup. The dog itself looked kind of lame and the bun was cheap. Oh well. You can’t win ’em all.

After we entered the park, remembering Rachel’s Madagascar comment, I tried to think of a movie filmed here. Elf came to mind first so we walked around looking for something that she might recognize. This was the first thing we found:

She got a kick out of it! From there we walked up to the reservoir and had a look around, strolled by the Great Lawn, saw a big obelisk, then ran across this little castle:

By now it was dark and cold again. I figured we’d probably seen all of the park we were going to see on this particular trip. There was only one thing left to do: hit Times Square at night.

I have to disagree with this sign:

But I have to agree with Times Square. It was picture-perfect this evening:

I’d guessed we might just stop by, snap some pictures, and then head right back to the hotel. After all, we still had to pack (and worse) we had to get up at three in the morning to catch our six o’clock flight. Ugh. But we got sucked in. I think we spent at least an hour and a half covering no more than a few blocks. The place was mobbed. I’m not sure if it’s always like this or if Black Friday had anything to do with it. Except for cars still driving along the streets, it might as well have been New Year’s Eve. The only thing missing was all the people wearing “2009” glasses.

But sooner or later all good things must come to an end. One last time we headed back to the bus terminal, back to the gas station, back to the shuttle, and back to the hotel. I may have even gone back to the fridge if the room had had one.

We packed. We slept. We woke up at three in the morning.

We definitely were not in the mood to repeat the three and a half hour return trip to the airport. So we called for a car instead and made it to LaGuardia in twenty-five minutes flat. We found ourselves in the check-in line at four o’clock, giving us plenty of time to kick off our shoes and enjoy a frisking or two.

At the gate, I munched on a bagel purchased at Au Bon Pain the night before. However, I was hungry again when we got to O’Hare. I stopped by a McDonald’s and grabbed a breakfast greater than any hand-made omelet could ever be: a Sausage McMuffin (no egg!), hash browns (if you can call them that), and a diet coke. I know. I’m pathetic.

We returned to Austin without a hitch. As we made that final lap home, I looked back on our week and pondered a good deal about it. I mean, what a ride. I thought of all the places we’d been, all the things we’d seen, and all the food we’d eaten, and I only had one thought:

Man, that was expensive.