#13 - take Ricky to NYC (day 2)

DAY 2 - TUESDAY, MAY 15TH

After a surprisingly restful night of sleep (despite being woken up at 7:00 by boys yelling in German in the hallway and the bathroom door that sounded like a trumpeting elephant when opened--I didn't even know that was possible), Ricky and I left the hostel at 9:00 or so to try and get standby tickets for "Death of a Salesman."  The box office doesn't open until 10:00, so if we're in line by 9:30, we'll be good, right?  Wrong.  All the info I found online about standby tickets said the non-musical shows were pretty easy to get tickets for, and you didn't have to show up super early, etc.  Well, apparently Phillip Seymour Hoffman is more popular than I anticipated, because all the standby tickets were sold out by the time we showed up.  In fact, the ticket attendant told Ricky they had been sold out since 7:00.  IN THE MORNING.  He said the line started at 5:00.  I laughed in Ricky's face when he passed the information along, because that is dang ridiculous.  I love Arthur Miller as much as the next person--and, let's be honest, probably more than the next person--but I surely don't love him enough to drag myself out of bed at 4:00 a.m.  I'm sure it was worth it for the people who did get the $30 standby tickets, though, because the next cheapest seats were around $200.  (We checked.)  YIKES.

With that plan foiled, we decided to grab breakfast croissants from a corner stand in Times Square (so delicious) and warm up a bit.  (It basically rained all of Monday and Tuesday.)  Then we figured we may as well walk up 5th Avenue, since our next scheduled event was in that direction, so we meandered until we hit FAO Schwartz/the Apple store.  FAO Schwartz is one of my favorite NYC places, and it was fun showing Ricky the giant floor piano, and the entire hallway of board games, and the room of Lego sets, and the science kits with real fossils.

McGonagall hat!

As soon as Ricky put this on, I knew he was a Keeper.  (Hehehehe!)

 I love that the employees are out on the floor playing with the toys!  We ran across a guy demonstrating a paper airplane that's constructed in a special way to make it fly in a big loop back to your hand, and I asked if I could try it out.  I was fine when I started, because it was just this retail guy and Ricky watching, but I got a little camera-shy when a crowd started to gather.  The paper airplane guy was eating it up, but I was so embarrassed!  You have to throw the plane in a certain way, and I wasn't good at it, so it would end up hitting people in the crowd, or the ceiling, or basically anything that probably shouldn't have been hit with a paper airplane.  Oops.

BRAIN CANDLE!  Or, as Dr. Jones would say, "brain in a vat." This was in the awesome science section.

While we were picking out a stuffed animal (to go with Gershwin, my stuffed dog from my visit in 2008), we struck up a conversation with one of the employees; she asked where we were from ("South Florida!") and she started telling us about how her fiance lives in Miami, and she's planning on moving there soon, and how she hates her Bronx apartment, and how she doesn't have a garbage disposal (!!), etc.  She was super nice, and we had fun telling her all about the glories of year-round summer while we were buying our polar bear.  (Who, we discovered, has a weird tiny sack of beanbag pellets on one side of his stomach.  Beanbag tumor?)  Then we were off to American Girl Place for lunch.

I should probably give some backstory here before I tell you about our lunch trip.  When I was 7 or 8, my parents gave me an American Girl doll for Christmas, and I loved the heck out of that doll.  I took Samantha everywhere!  One of my friends accidentally popped her head off in the middle of a good hair brushing, and I went into hysterics until my dad put her back together--that's how serious I was about my doll.  Anyway, my mom decided to surprise me when we went to visit her parents outside of Chicago with a trip to the American Girl store in the city.  It was my first "big city" trip--skyscrapers, a taxi ride, etc., and it was magical.  The American Girl store was big and wonderful and (they don't do these anymore) there was even a musical revue they put on about the time periods each of the historical dolls "lived" in.  (It was a lot less cheesy than it sounds, I promise!)  Attached to the store was a little restaurant where you could eat with your doll, and they would give you a little doll-sized high chair and plastic tea set for her--I wanted to go so badly, but it was super expensive and I didn't even have Samantha with me.  (First world problems, right?)  I was determined that one day I would bring my doll there for lunch.

Now you probably won't judge me as harshly when I admit to bringing Samantha with me to NYC.  I tucked her into my messenger bag so that I didn't get weird stares all down 5th Avenue, and was so excited to bring her to the American Girl store--she's a retired doll, and one of the ladies on the store floor even "Oooh"ed when she saw her.  The restaurant was decorated in bright pink/zebra print, and there were tons of little girls everywhere, and I loved it.  Ricky was such a sport, and I don't mean that as in "He sat there and didn't complain or grimace too much."  I mean that as in "He took pictures of a doll holding a plastic teacup and commented to his wife on how cute the dessert presentation was."  (He's a good man, that one.)

Best thing.

It's chocolate pudding in a little flower pot!

The main course wasn't anything to write home about, but the fruit and cheese plate and the dessert were pretty awesome.  My favorite part was a little bowl in the center of the table filled with questions like "How would you spend a million dollars?" and "What's your biggest pet peeve?" that you're supposed to ask the other people at the table.  Ricky and I had a good time going back and forth with those.

I thought my insides were going to rupture once we were done (so much food!), but somehow we made it back out onto 5th Avenue and trekked through the downpour to the Stephen Schwarzman building of the NY Public Library.

Heat and wifi made it the perfect place to wait out the storm, so we hunkered down in the children's section (less tourists) to dry off a bit.  I had put the library on the to-do list for the artwork and architecture alone, so I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the Schwarzman building houses the stuffed animals owned by the real-life Christopher Robin that inspired the Winnie-the-Pooh stories.  I used to look at the picture of them together in the back of my Winnie-the-Pooh collection and wish that I could see them in real life--you're welcome, childhood me.

This made me laugh.

Compared to the nonstop traveling we had been doing, the hours we spent in the library felt like days.  It was lovely. We walked through the Percy and Mary Shelley exhibit--I never knew how much I didn't know about those two--and used the free, more-than-one-stall bathrooms, and took lots of pictures of ceilings, and generally enjoyed being not-wet.

I have a huge, creepy alien eye.

Entryway.

 Around this time, I was texting Huey, one of my South Carolina friends, who just happened to be in NYC the exact week we were in NYC.  So we planned dinner.  We decided to meet up in Chinatown, but I was still lugging around my American Girl doll, so Ricky and I decided to subway back up (I used "subway" as a verb, yes) to the hostel to drop off our toys.

Don't my curls look awesome in this picture?  Good job, hair.  (I can never take credit for anything my hair does.)

Our favorite station sign, for obvious reasons.

 I, the genius, then figured that we had enough time to walk across Central Park to grab the subway straight down to Chinatown (hehe)...and we would've, if I had factored in that paths don't go straight across Central Park. They're all wind-y and criss-cross-y.  Like, I don't know, A PARK.  Duh, Katie.  Therefore, we were already running late when we got to the subway station, and then when we FINALLY get to Chinatown...we go the wrong direction.  Long story short, we didn't find Huey and awesome friend Gabriel until like, 40 minutes after we said we'd be there.  I felt awful.  I can't even blame it on confusing city layouts, because NYC is really one of the easiest places to navigate (thanks, grid system!).

Huey saved the day by picking a severely authentic Chinese restaurant.  So authentic, in fact, that I had never heard of 90% of the menu, leaving me paralyzed with fear of ordering blowfish or something by accident.  I went with fish (flounder or trout maybe?) in black bean sauce, thinking that would be relatively mild.  Well, when everyone else's food was brought out, the second server dropped a plate of what looked like a mound of beef on the floor; we didn't think anything of it, because I ordered fish, right?  Nope.  Totally my food.  Once they had re-made my fish, they brought it out to me (still looking like a stack of steak--that's how dark this fish was cooked), and the first thing I noticed was that the fish was looking at me.

Not only did it still have its creepy, lifeless eyes, but it also had gross little fins and a gross little tail.  Now, a person less experienced in reality television may have run screaming from the room, but I've seen enough episodes of Fear Factor to know that only wimps can't eat fish eyeballs.

(Ok, I didn't actually eat the eyeballs.  In fact, when Huey suggested it, I died a little inside.  But don't tell anyone.)

(...I also didn't eat the fins because they were crunchy and that really grossed me out.)

I must've had about eight entire fish on my plate, and I had to de-bone every one before I could eat it.  When I was done, it looked like I had massacred Nemo's entire village.

I got pretty good at sliding the fish flesh (you just made a face, don't lie) off of the skeleton by the end, which garnered a lot of praise from Huey.  I was pretty proud of myself.

Afterwards, we discovered that Gabriel hadn't been to Times Square yet, so we decided to go with them to check out Toys 'R Us before it closed (all of 15 minutes).  I lamented again over the Powerpuff Girls "I heart NY" shirts that were only in kid sizes (I think I forgot to mention that I found those on our first visit) and also tried in vain to get Ricky to remember his Cartoon Network classics:

Me: *holding a giant jawbreaker* Hey, what show does this remind you of?
Ricky: Uh...
Me: I'm holding a giant jawbreaker.
Ricky: ...And this is supposed to remind me of a show?
Me:  A cartoon.
Ricky: ...
Me: It had three main characters with extremely similar names.
Ricky: ...
Me: Extremely similar.
Ricky: ...
Random passerby: It's Ed, Edd, and Eddy, dude.

Yes, a complete stranger did answer my cartoon trivia.  It was glorious.  I think I may have high-fived the guy; I don't remember.  If I didn't, I should have.

Once they kicked us out of the store, we walked to the Times Square/42nd St. subway station and said goodbye to Huey and Gabe before heading west (?) in search of some ice cream.  Here's a question for you, NYC fast food establishments: What kind of crazy person turns off the ice cream machines at 10:00? Obviously you don't know how much money you're missing from late-night, irrational desires for unhealthy food.  Ricky and I went in and out of three different McDonald's/Burger Kings with no success, finally stumbling across a corner store that had ice cream bars in the freezer.  I may or may not have squealed like a small child when I saw that they also had my favorite English candy: Flake bars.  Oh, the heaven that is Flake bars.  They were ridiculously expensive, being imported and all that, but I insisted we buy two so that Ricky could understand my obsession with them, and now he does.  Because they're the best candy in the world.  (If anyone out there is planning a British Isles trip anytime soon, I will pay you good money to bring me back an entire bag.  If you manage to snag a dark chocolate one from Ireland, I'll let you name my first child.)

 Since the Empire State Building is open past midnight, we decided to trek there with our ice cream in hand and take advantage of the fact that there wouldn't be so many people, and it wound up being completely empty.

 The tickets for the ESB are crazy expensive, but it's just one of those things you have to do--I'm glad the lack of a line at least helped make up for the chunk of cash we had to hand over.  Also, side note: The Empire State Building had the nicest bathroom I saw that entire week.  (No, I will not stop talking about bathrooms. It's amazing how much more aware you are of them when you have very limited access.)

After winding hallways and multiple elevators, we reached the viewing (86th) floor!  We had to hand our tickets over for stamping before we walked outside, at which point the ticket-taker informed us that there was 0% visibility of the city.  Way to go, Empire State Building.  (Before they're stamped, the tickets are good for any day.  Once they're stamped, that's it.  So they make sure to tell you "Oh, by the way, you can't see anything today" AFTER THEY STAMP IT.  Be warned, NYC travelers.)

I was annoyed, but the visibility actually wasn't as bad as I was expecting.  You could see NJ and everything over to the Chrysler Building just fine, but the entire west side (don't quote me on that--I'm really bad at directions) of the city was completely covered in fog so thick it looked like you could walk out onto it. It was eerie, but in a cool way.  Despite the perpetual rain and trying to take pictures past other people's umbrellas, it wasn't bad at all.  Now that Ricky's done it, we don't ever have to go back!

Creepy, right?

 Up until leaving the ESB, we had never had any issues with the subway system--it's not difficult to navigate at all.  All bets are off, though, once nighttime rolls around and the trains switch over to the mysterious and terrifying "late-night hours."  It made me incredibly cranky to discover that all of the stations nearest to us weren't open past a certain time, so we had to walk--all the way back to Times Square, I think--to find a station that was running the trains we needed.  When we made it back to the hostel, we packed up most of our things in preparation for check-out the next morning.  I assume we went straight to bed afterwards, because I don't remember doing anything else, but you really should never take my memory as evidence of what I have/haven't done.  Really.

Stay tuned for Day 3: Wednesday (or, Boston Departure Day).