Day 2 in NY

Day 2

I woke up at 6:15-6:30ish, got ready, and went down to breakfast. 7 hours of sleep wasn't what I was used to, but it was good to sleep....although I must admit I was pretty tired. I ate breakfast with some of my guy friends...Sam, Austin, and George. We were all pretty tired, and didn't talk a ton.....that and they didn't seem very talkative that early in the morning. :)

After Breakfast, we had like 8 hours of free time. I was going to go with some of my friends who were going to go shopping without a chaperon, but they took way too long getting ready, and waiting for a bunch of other people. So I decided to join Trevor's group....which meant that his parents went with us...which meant that we had chaperons, and had a way less chance of getting lost. :) So it turned out to be a good deal.

We went shopping in China Town (for those of you who don't know, that's on Canal St.) and had a ton of fun!! I bought 2 cute hats, and 3 awesome rings!! The bargaining with the shop owners is almost more fun than actually buying the stuff!! I was the first one in my group to buy anything, and from then on it was "Becca!! Will you please help me bargain for this??" I was more than happy to help since bartering is one of my favorite things....and I happen to be pretty good at it. :) So we all wound up with something fun at a really low price.

After Canal St., we went to M&M world. I bought Dad a really cool shirt, and a "hot" oven mit. There was every color of M&M you could imagine!! Every color of the rainbow, and then all the colors in between!! They even had black and white!! There were also different kinds of M&Ms you could get, from plain milk chocolate to peanut to mint flavored centers!! It was really and truly amazing. Three floors of M&Ms is quite a sight, I can tell you that for sure.

When everyone was finished at M&M world, we crossed the street and went into the Hershey's store. It was spectacular. Not quite as cool as M&M world, but still really cool. They had the famous 40 lb. chocolate bars, and the giant hollow chocolate kisses with normal sized kisses in the center. My friend got one of those, and they wound up all over the floor of his hotel room. :) LOL

Well, we were all pretty hungry by then, so we went to go get lunch at a little Deli. The food was really good....and the first hot food I had had in over 24 hours.....needless to say, it felt awesome to eat (kinda) real food again.

After lunch we wandered over to the Nintendo Store, which was just at the end of the street. 2 floors of Nintendo stuff....I'm not a big gamer myself, but even I thought it was awesome. Everything from Pokemon toys to rhinestone studded Nintendo DS handholds to the Wii to I don't know what else. There was this cute little table in the middle with little chairs around it that looked like it had come straight out of one of the games....it so looked like a mushroom!! We got some cool pix there, and played their games for who knows how long.

After all the technology, I guess we decided to go for some more. We went to the NBC headquarters. It wasn't that cool. Mostly advertising, and merchandise...but they did have some pretty funny bobble heads of characters from The Office, and Deal or No Deal.

Then we walked down to St. Patricks Cathedral. It was massive!! So many stained glass windows, and ornate places to worship. There wasn't a window in that entire place that didn't have colored glass in it. The stained glass windows weren't just patterns either, they were pictures!! There was one of the pope knighting a king, or a brave knight. Another was of Christ's Crucifixion, others were of Christ's charity, and others still depicted apostles preaching to different people. If you walked in about 50 ft., turned around, and looked up, there was a huge stained glass window made of different colors of blue, purple, and pink glass. It must have been at least 50 ft. in diameter, and so beautiful that you almost couldn't believe that a mortal man had made it. You could've fitted 2 of my houses in that Cathedral. It was also where the Pope held a mass when he came to NY. We were in NY at the same time as the Pope....and I actually left NY the same day he did. Criminy, having the Pope visit NY was more of a publicity build up....I'll tell you though....so many people sold so much merchandise....it was.....interesting (I'll leave it at that :))

After the Cathedral, we walked down the street a couple blocks (the short ones, not the long ones) to F.O.A. Schwartz. It is the largest toy store in the world (I think). 3 floors of nothing but toys....and these floors were really, REALLY big. I can't even estimate at the square footage of this place, it was nuts!! They sold everything that you could imagine....Barbies, toy cars, Legos, stuffed animals, Harry Potter merchandise (hats, collectible wands, replicas of the Death Eater masks, little figurines, candy, dolls...you name it, they had it), Lord of the Rings merchandise, incredibly ornate dolls, magic tricks, train sets, Rubik's cubes....everything under the sun!! Honestly, you name any toy and they had it. They even had the really ancient barbie dolls that they stopped making 20 years ago!! It was so cool, but so incredibly expensive it was ridiculous!! But the whole thing was so cool!!

After that, I think we were all pretty tired. We walked a little ways through Central Park, and caught the Subway back to our hotel.

I went to dinner with my friends, and came back in time to get ready for the Mets game.

You know, I guess for some people who were really big baseball fans, it must have been really cool. I sat by a couple of my friends....Becca, Stephen, Austin, and AJ. We had pretty good seats....but I chatted most of the time to Becca. :) We chatted with Stephen a little bit, all three of us teased each other. Boy, I was so tired!!! I went to offer Stephen part of my cotton candy piece because I didn't want that much. So he went to take some, and I wanted him to take more because I didn't want such a big piece, he said "Which piece do you want me to take??" and I said "That piece....no...the MORE BIGGER piece." he said "The MORE BIGGER piece?" with a big grin on his face. Then I realized what I had said......for those of you who know me, you know that all my speech revolves around grammar (I apologize to those of you whose grammar I have corrected in the past :)). When I realized what I had said, we all broke out into laughter. It was just too funny because none of us had had very much sleep. :)

The game seemed to go on forever, and it started to get cold. So at the end of the 9th inning, Becca, Kenzie and I went back to the buses. Luckily the one we got on was running, and the heat was on. We warmed up pretty quick. The game wound up going on to 12 innings because nobody could get a run. They were tied....but I think the Mets wound up winning. So that was good, but everyone left before the game was over. Talk about the ultimate overtime.

On the bus ride back to the hotel, Becca and I fell asleep on each other for about a half a hour. Then I went up to my hotel room, got ready for bed, and I was just about to go to sleep when my room mates got back from Mary Poppins. I think everyone fell asleep at that play because they were all so tired. Anyway, so I got into bed, threw in my earplugs, and put on my eye cover (I've never done either of those things before, but my roommates were going to be up for another who knows how long, and I think the earplugs really saved my sleep), and went to bed at about 11:45 p.m.

End of Day 2