♫ "New York, New York!" ♫ Part 3 - The Adventure - Friday

For part 3, this is where the real fun and adventure starts!

Once we met @zeewriter at Penn Station (the NY side) we check in with the lady that @BeCullen and I are renting the apt. we are staying at so that we can shedule a time to get the keys - anytime was fine so Zee gave us a choice of either going to the apt. to drop our bags off and come back into the city or just stay in the city, go eat, meet with some other twitter friends and then drop our luggage.
People, when you are given this option in NYC and you have a 50lb. bag of luggage - take option A! LOL Never in my life have I ever walked so much or went up and down so many stairs in the span of roughly 3 hours. LOL It got to the point where Zee was yelling out to us "Stairs" anytime a set of them came up, so we would be fairly warned. LOL
Obviously, we chose option B to make it "easier" on everyone and as not to go back and forth in and out of town. So, after walking a bit, getting on the subway a few times, and climbing about 10 sets of stairs we get to a place to eat lunch called The Republic. While there we got a chance to meet @Greenabsinthia, @scribeninja and also @Vio_laine. Vio was a little later getting there, so Green ordered for her. The minute Vio walked in and we got to talking, I immediately fell in love with her. She is a very powerful, full of life woman and commands her presence. In a word, she is awesome.
The place had a really nice atmosphere and the food was delicious!
I had some sort of chicken soup with a side salad thing and beef kabobs. Yum! And I also ordered a Stella Artois.

Like I said - delicious! :)
Unfortunately, after lunch was over Scribeninja had to head to the airport so Zee, Be and I told them all goodbye and made plans with Vio and Green to meet at Highline Park later that night.
In the meantime it's going on 2:30pm, and we are headed to the apt. to get the keys and take a little nap since at this point I have been awake for roughly 33 hours or more.
Once we get settled, get our nap taken, which was approximately 2 hours, Zee was back to take us back out to meet with the girls.
Before meeting with Green and Vio, we met @tydestra who was very interesting and was on top of the world because she was getting married in about 2 weeks from then.
We walked around Highline Park for a little while just to enjoy the evening. It was a beautiful night, but after about an hour or so we were getting pretty hungry, so the 4 of us decided to go to The NY Burger Co.
Best burgers ever! They were so good. I had the Brooklyn Burger with bacon and cheese, and a Brooklyn Lager. With so little sleep in the last 40+ hours I was feeling a little punch drunk and was having the time of my life.
I think the other girls were too! No matter what the subject was at this point we were all a feeling like a bunch of giggly teenage girls. :) Fun stuff...

I love how as we were waiting for our food, we all get on our phones to tweet and text (and take this picture!) :)

After getting our food and talking some more Vio and Green came and ate with us. After we were done, the 6 of us went back to Highline to walk around some more. The view was amazing and I got a great shot of the Empire State Building.

As we are walking we come up to some bleacher type benches to sit and relax and decide we want our picture taken as a group, so the trick is going to be trying to find someone willing to take pictures with 6 cameras/phones. Well, as luck would have it we chance upon a gaggle of teen girls. I told Zee, ask them, teen girls LOVE taking pictures. Sure enough, we ask if one of them would want to take our picture. All of them pipe up at the same time - ME ME ME I'll do it! Zee was like, yep, you called it. LOL

So we got a pretty nice picture of the 6 of us.

After a little more walking Be and I decide we are exhausted. 44 hours awake with a 2 hour nap in between will do that to a person.

We get to the apt. and get some sleep for the adventures to come the next day.

Next up - Part 4 - The Adventure - Saturday



♫ "New York, New York!" ♫ Part 2 - Getting off the plane - Or - The misadventures of finding Penn Station

Hello again! :) I hope to not put you to sleep as easily as that first post most asuredly did.
I last left off when I was in the air to NYC. Once landing in Newark Liberty International Airport (yeah, say that 5 times fast! LOL) debarking from the plane and finding my luggage was a breeze. Walked right to it like my husband had shown me how back at DIA. So to make things easier in my opinion, I decided to look up @BeCullen's flight as well, so I could just get my luggage, go wait the 4 hours there at the airport at her baggage claim and when she got off the plane it would be easy breezy and we would be on our way. What you really need to understand at this point is it is 5:30am NYC time. I am from CO, so to me it really feels like 3:30am and at this point I have been awake for 23.5 hours with no sleep and a hella lot of stress. I actually thought I was doing pretty good. I was able to find a coffee place, freshen up in the restroom and sit on my luggage at baggage claim 4 - where the Charolette baggage was coming at 9:30am.
As I was sitting there daydreaming on and off and reading while also having my headphones in listening to the iPod, this damn pigeon - which, yes! is inside the airport - keeps dive bombing me.

JFC the first time it happened it scared the bejesus out of me and I literally screamed - out loud! I'm thinking this must be a common occurance because the 4 or so people that I did see around me, who had uniforms on so I assumed worked there, just kind of looked at me and went about their business. After a while the bird just sort of wandered around on the ground.
Well, 9:30 comes around and I get a text from @BeCullen
"Plane just landed"
Cool, I told her I was waiting at baggage claim 4 and would keep an eye out for her. When I got off my plane it took me roughly 5 minutes to get to baggage claim. So at 9:40, I texted :
Me - "where are you?"
Be - "right around the corner"
Me - "Okay, see you in a few"
Be - "where are you"
Me - "at baggage claim 4"
Be - "it says my luggage is at carousel 10"
Me - "really?"
Be - "yes"
Me - "okay, I'll come down to 10"
So I bebop my way down the luggage carousels and come to 9 and it stops. What? Where's 10? So I ask an attendant, where is Baggage Claim 10? He proceeds to ask me if it was an international flight. I know Charolette may seem like another country, but no, it is in fact part of the US. He told me there was no "10" that they stop at 9 for Continental.
So I look at the little arrival/departure board and clear as day says baggage claim 4. I call Be this time and tell her it can't be 10 there is no 10 and there is a piece of luggage just waiting for her at carousel 4.
She was like, "Well, I don't know where you are, but I'm at baggage claim 10 and have my luggage with me"
LOL - Turns out she did not fly in on Continental - which if I would have READ and REMEMBERED her email she sent me with her flight information, it clearly stated that she flew in on United Airways. In terminal A. I was sitting for 4 HOURS in terminal C waiting for her. SMFH
I had to find and take the train to terminal A which once I figured all of that out it took me about 25 minutes to get to her. I was never so happy to see anyone in a very long time!
Once we get out hugs, kisses, hellos, nice to meet you's, and the how was your flight's out of the way we try to get our bearings to see where we need to go and call @zeewriter to tell her that we have landed and are on our way to Penn Station.
So, after some bumbling around and talking with a really sweet foriegn family, we found our way to the New Jersey Transit train that would take us to Penn Station and get boarded. We couldn't find a seat anywhere so are kind of standing in the middle where people come aboard and get off. Standing there it was really hard to hear which stops are which, but we heard what we thought they said was Penn Station and asked a guy standing next to us and he said "Yes, this is the Penn Station stop" so we book it off the train. Umm, we look around and see nothing but platform. It looks nothing like a "station" at all, just a platform with some doors, so I decide we should go into one of the doors and ask someone. We lug our huge luggage bags down a flight of stairs and ask a lady behind a pizza counter if this is the NY Penn Station. No, this is the New Jersey Penn Station (who knew there was 2 stations named Penn Station? LOL), so we have to lug our luggage back up the stairs and get back on the train to get to the NY side.
We see a train coming and are about to get on when we hear that it is for Washington D.C. Nope, not our train. Thank God @BeCullen was paying attention! LOL I would have us going clear across the country! :)
Finally we get back on the correct train, and make our way to getting to Penn Station - the NY Penn Station that is.
Once we are off we call @zeewriter and let her know we are there. A few minutes later - there she is! Our best tour guide ever and I was sooo happy to finally see/meet her in person!
She is just as cute and petite as she seems in her twitter pictures.

As we walked out of Penn Station it dumped us out right at Times Square/Madison Square Garden! 

 
And that's when the real adventure began!

Part 3 - NEW YORK, NEW YORK - THE ADVENTURE!

♫ "New York, New York!" ♫ Part 1 - getting on the plane!

As a lot of you know, this past weekend - 6/9 thru 6/13 - @BeCullen and I took a trip to New York.
This plan was hatched out of a chat we were having after just having made plans to go to Chicago at the end of September (9/30 thru 10/3). I don't remember the exact conversation or what brought it up, but either way, we were headed to NYC in the very near future.
We knew that one of our twitter friends @zeewriter is a local and we were talking to her about going, and what she thought were some of the "must see" attractions. She was gracious enough to offer to be our "host" as it were. As it turned out we couldn't have asked for a better guide! :)
We were also planning on meeting @Kennedy_Carter while we were there, but as circumstances have it, that's the weekend that his boyfriend decided to take him to Puerto Rico. Lucky man. So meeting him was not in the cards for us that weekend. *shrugs*, oh well. Some other time...
So I get up on Thursday 6/9 - do my normal routine of going to work and when I got home I did last minute packing and freaking out. I had a midnight flight - flying out of DIA at 11:59pm. Anybody who knows me knows that I am deathly afraid of flying. Afterall, planes DO crash, ya know! So, I made my husband take me through the airport to get my luggage checked and had him stay with me for as long as he possibly could through the security line until he finally pried himself away from me, leaving me alone in the big scary airport. Before this flight I hadn't been on a plane since 1999, before 9/11 and the restrictions put on security, and with the recent additional restrictions of the TSA I wasn't sure what I was afraid of more, the actual flight or getting past TSA and not going to TSA jail. So, like a good little flyer, I took the guidelines to heart and got to the airport at 10pm so as to have my 2 hour window that, in reality I didn't need, which my husband tried to tell me, but I would not listen. (Next time I will listen! LOL)
Once he left me to my own devices in the security line, I went to the part of the line where they look at the boarding pass to make sure you are who you say you are and then to the part where you have to take off your shoes, jewelry and belts. Once I walked through the little scanner thing, lifted my arms, turned and twisted like they askes, yes, low and behold, I get pulled aside for a "general pat down" as they called it. As luck would have it, I had to wait for a female to come over to do the pat down because in my line all they had there at that time was a male. At this point I'm kind of freaking out a little bit because I know I have nothing on me that should have triggered the pat down, and I'm already nervous as it is. Well, the female TSA agent comes over and asks one question - Do I have a belt on? Nope, didn't even wear a belt. The "general pat down" was just that - they barely touched me as the skimmed past my breast area, waist and thighs. Trust me, I can't tell you how I know this, but cops do a more thorough job. ;)
So I'm off to find my terminal. Remember this is DIA, the most ridiulously large airport on the planet I think. I'm at one end and the terminal is on the other. I had to take 2 shutttle trains and ride 4 of the little walking escalators to get to my terminal.
I finally get there and look at my watch. 10:30pm. I still have over an hour and 15 minutes before we board, but am too nervous to wander anywhere further than the restroom which is right around the corner from where I was sitting. As I'm sitting there, I am looking around and wondering what is going on. Not even kidding, I was the youngest person in this waiting area by at least 20 years, and in some cases by 40. I was always under the assumption that the elderly should be in bed at midnight, not taking a red-eye flight to NYC. LOL
To pass my time and try not to freak out too much about the empending flight, I decided to tweet some. Nobody believed me that I was on the geriatric flight, so I had to take a pic of one of the passengers as he was checking in. Not even kidding this was about the average age, with the exception of me on this flight. Which from the looks of it I'm about 40, maybe 50 years younger than this gentleman. :) 

After getting a lot of advice about calming my nerves and having a lot of fun by tweeting to pass the time to calm my nerves before boarding the time passed rather quickly and before I knew it, it was time to board.

I found my seat relatively easy since it was the very last aisle seat at the back of the plane, but that actually bode well for me. Closer to the booze so I was the first to get my inflight drink almost as soon as we took off. Before the plane took off though I was looking at the flight attendant and she must have seen the terror in my eyes. She came and asked me if everything was okay and if she could get me anything. I told her some tequila would be awesome but unfortunately, they didn't have that, so she said she would bring me something as soon as we were in the air and at cruising level. About 15 minutes later she brought me out 2 little shooter bottles of rum and a coke. Once I drank them, I got my kindle out, and read the entire flight. Not a bad way to get to NYC despite being so terrified. The rum calmed my nerves enough that I was able to relax and enjoy the flight even though I couldn't sleep. 3 and a half hours later I was in The Big Apple!

Part 2 - Getting off the plane and meeting @zeewriter!