i heart ny

i really do. i've always wanted to live there...i'm still concocting ways to do it. anyway, jc and i took a quick trip to nyc this past weekend. it was my fifth time to go. it really never gets old. it was jon's first time. our reasons for going were two-fold. one-one of us is a hardcore baseball fan and really wanted to see yankee stadium before it got torn down at the end of this season. and two-one of us is a mere few days away from turning 30. i'll let you guess which reason was whose. anyway, we decided a few weeks ago we wanted to go, so we just did it. i think that's what you have to do when you have semi-far fetched ideas...just buy the tickets. once you do that, there's no turning back. 

my uncle (tio juan) was gracious enough to allow us to stay at his apartment in queens. it was a somewhat short subway ride into manhattan, so quite convenient. we had grand plans of the things we were going to do for the two full days we were there. we were somewhat faithful to get up at the crack, but even with that some of our plans had to go out the window. everything took longer than we thought it would. we went to ellis island and planned on going to a museum and then tkts to get half-price tickets to a show for that evening. ellis island cut into museum time, so that was out and by the time we got to the ticket place, it was out of control. people everywhere! we had no idea about any of the plays and were going to have to choose at random (after we stood in a huge line), so we took a girl's advice and bought tickets to this play called "perfect crime" at the actual box office. no line there, and also cheaper. she made it out to be like law and order or c.s.i...a real thriller.

that night we went to the play (at jerry orbach theater...no lie). it is the longest running play in nyc at 21 years. the main character, a woman playing a psychiatrist who may or may not have killed her husband, has been in the play for 21 years. she has missed a grand total of 4 performances in those 21 years. yeah, it was pretty obvious. she needs to move on. it was pretty terrible. it's like she was just itching to get off stage saying all of her lines in fast forward. i don't really understand what even happened in the play, nor do i wish to. it was still a fun experience that we could laugh at.

next day was harlem for brunch. chicken and waffles. sounds strange, but it's so good...thanks d and m for the suggestion. we then caught the subway to yankee stadium. we sat in the section where the "bleacher creatures" are. very interesting. let's just say they love them some yankees. it was a lot of fun but kind of a bummer because we were quarantined to the bleacher section and couldn't explore the whole stadium. the atmosphere was great though. the yanks aren't doing so hot lately, and sunday's game wasn't any different. so after the 7th inning, the most unlikely thing of the trip happened...we left the game early. i was fully prepared to stay at the game for its entirety, but we decided to beat the subway traffic.

we met my uncle in chelsea for dinner and then decided to do the next thing on our list...go to the top of the empire state building. it costs something like $32 to do this...a little ridiculous, but that was a thing we wanted to do, so we were going to suck it up and do it. when we got there, the line was crazy long. it was going to be 2 hours. we still weren't ready to call it quits (i have no idea why not), so we went to the security line. we were taking some photos of the line when my camera decided to die. of course i didn't have extra batteries, so we bailed. a little disappointing, but really a blessing. we saved $64 and 2 hours. we'll go back. when it's not a holiday hopefully.

ok, so this is getting really long, and i haven't even put pictures yet. here they are.

jc and lady liberty

at the yankees w/ the crazies

in the line that killed my camera at the esb

(i never realized how crooked my teeth are)