Day 1 - NYC

This day happened ever so early. The night before, I drove back from Des Moines, got back around 10pm, and had to drop off my car to get my car worked on while I was gone. So I hadn't gone to bed until 11:30pm, and had to get up at 3:45am!!! Ugh. So I guzzled down some coffee and headed over to Karen's house. I sat around and waited for Karen to finish getting ready. We saddled up and Karen's dad took us to the airport.

Checking in took surprisingly long for a 6am flight, but I guess all the airlines have flights leaving then. We piled onto the flight with a hundred or so other people. Almost everyone zonked out for the one hour and five minute flight. 7:15am rolls around and we land in Chicago's O'Hare Airport. A forty minute wait greeted us for our connection to New York City. I managed to sleep on the night flight, especially because it was 2.5 hours after our delay. We arrived in sunny New York City around 11:30, but had to wait until Mireille's flight got in from Dallas at 4:30.

Karen diligently reading:


We ate lunch in the food court of our concourse, and sat in Borders for a LONG time. I'm surprised we didn't get yelled at by the people who worked there. We read magazines, looked up places to go in NYC in travel books, and bought postacards. I mailed mine out since there was a mini-post office around the corner. The wait was finally over, and we caught up with Mireille and headed down to the baggage claim. The taxi into the city must have made us look like ridiculous tourists. We were all slack-jawed at the city as it passed by us on our ride into Manhattan. Though to tell you the truth, we were all catching up with each other, since the three of us hadn't been together in almost a year.

The view of 95th street from the 4th floor of our hostel:


After two rounds around the block, the cabby finally got us to our hostel, The Continental. It was a nice location at 95th and Broadway, but a crappy room. That would change later, but we had what we had. A quick nap and re-dress after our collective plane flights, and we were off to take the subway to Greenwich Village. On the suggestion of my friend Todd, we ate dinner at Ditch Plains. Karen and Mireille had hotdogs covered in macaroni 'n cheese, and I had fish 'n chips. Both excellent. And we washed it down with a pint of the Northeastern's finest lager.

Karen looking sassy with an eye-patch Mireille brought:


Me at the restaurant trying to look not-exhausted:


Mireille and I in Greenwich:



The rest of the evening was spent wandering around the West Village and Greenwich, seeing shops and bars before finally taking the subway back up Broadway to our hotel. Day 1 in NYC: success.