Note: this is about the remainder of my 8-day vacation out east. Seems weird it just got cut off after day 2, but when the plan to write about day 3 gets shot down due to a lack of wi-fi until getting to the Canadian border, subsequently getting sick, and swarmed with lots of things to complete doesn’t really help.

Before heading out to Manhattan on the last day in New York, we had some dim sum with my distant relative. The place was mediocre at best unfortunately, although it may have been because the place just opened for the day.

Once in South Manhattan, we got on the Staten Island Ferry to see the on-water sights like the Statue of Liberty. People would probably tell you to go to Ellis Island to see the statue up close, but due to a lack of time and a stupidly long lineup to get onto the ferry tour to go there, we decided to take the free way to see the Statue of Liberty, although a bit far away.

After the ferry ride, we wandered around 7th Avenue for a bit before ending up at Macy’s at Herald Square. It’s a huge store, with somewhere around eight floors of retail space. I don’t remember much except for the fact that I was starting to get tired, so I went to one of the four (?) Starbucks they have inside the store and had some coffee.

After that, we got some dinner, grabbed our things, and got onto a yellow cab taxi-van to the bus terminal. Holy crap was that a scary ride.

In any case, we got to the bus terminal, a three-story high complex similar to an airport, sans the security. The bus, from what I gathered from the staff guy, was MIA, so they eventually got a replacement bus for us. Not the Megabus we were on to get to NYC, but whatever. A bus is a bus, and that will get us back to Toronto.

We got back to Toronto with little incident. Amusingly enough, at the border, we had to wait on the bus for 30 minutes because we got in after a shopping tour bus, which had so many shopping bags it was ridiculous. When we all got out of customs and hopped onto the bus, that bus still didn’t leave yet because they were trying to reload the bus and failing.

Now that we were back in Toronto, there wasn’t really much. Saying hi to relatives, including my aunt from Virginia, who drove up to Toronto. Several noteworthy things:

• Did a phone interview for a potential co-op job for Winter (Spring semester) on Friday
• Did some sightseeing at Scarborough Bluffs/Bluffer’s Park. Absolutely remarkable view.
• Flight out of Toronto was delayed for around two hours due to back-to-back thunderstorms near the airport.

So that, in a nutshell, was the remainder of the trip.

Today’s trip started off on Wall Street. You know, where the stock exchange is. The security there is pretty crazy, I must say. Just right off the street from the New York Stock Exchange, there were at least 3 marked police cars, one of which was an emergency services team vehicle with assault gear on hand. Just a bit further down in front of a Starbucks was an interesting mechanical roadblock system, controlled by a security booth. When cars want to head out of the financial district, they would go up to the roadblock, which would be moved down by the security guard. It happens again after the car moves up to the other roadblock. I guess it’s all just in case terrorists decide to attack Wall Street.

My dad and his high school classmate’s husband were looking for the Charging Bull sculpture. Apparently there’s some superstition that goes around it where it provides stockbrokers good luck if they rub it in the right places (ie. the testicles). When we finally found it, a block or two off of Wall Street, some Chinese tourists were taking turns having their pictures taken while rubbing the bull. Quite a funny sight if you ask me.

After that, we started to look for Ground Zero, the site of the collapsed World Trade Center buildings due to terrorist activities on September 11, 2001. It is by far one of the most unique memorial sites I have ever seen, considering it’s located inside what is currently a construction site for a new World Trade Center building. It consists of a visitor center (which had a fairly long lineup) and a set of signs on the fence surrounding the construction site along the path to the World Financial Center.

We then went to the World Financial Center for lunch, which consisted of soup and sandwiches, the first instance of non-Chinese food during the entire New York trip.

The original plan was to find our way to Battery Park and catch a ferry to let us see the Statue of Liberty, but the intense heat and the discovery of a Century 21 department store, which my dad’s high school classmate was actually looking for. So some shopping was had.

We then went off to SoHo to check it out. We ended up doing some shopping, then walked over to Chinatown for dinner with my cousin who’s working in New York. It was pretty decent Chinese food, somewhat similar to Vancouver’s Chinese food in taste.

After that, it was time to head home and get ready for tomorrow.

Although I went in yesterday (June 8), I would not call that my first day, since it consisted of sitting/sleeping on a bus for around ten hours, catching a taxi to a distant relative’s place at Queens, eating dinner, and sleeping.

In case you were not aware, New York City is having a record-breaking heat wave right now. From what we (parents and two family friends, along with myself) saw at Times Square, it went over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (around 37-38 degrees Celsius)! The humidity didn’t help much either.

Anyway, the day started off with heading out to Central Park to meet the family friends. Walked around there a bit, then proceded to head along Fifth Avenue.

The first stop was the Apple Store sitting at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and East 59 Street. The store is actually underground and all what you see at street level is a glass cube with the Apple logo hovering above a glass elevator and a spiral staircase that goes around it to the sales floor. I poked around with a Macbook Air – it is quite light and thin, but my original opinion on it still stands. Too many sacrifices and too big for my tastes. I’ll stick with my Thinkpad, thanks. I also took the opportunity to look at some of the iPhones. Funny thing is people have apparently used those display iPhones to log onto porn sites. Oh crazy people.

We proceeded to head south along Fifth Avenue, going into various stores with stuff way too expensive for us to buy just to enjoy the free A/C and carry on.

We ended up having some lunch at a Chinese place serving Shanghai food. It wasn’t bad.

More going down Fifth Avenue afterwards. We saw an Anglican church, Saint Thomas, partway down and noticed there was a woman eating a pretzel on the steps, despite a sign up top saying “Please do not eat food on the steps. Thank you.”. Yay for people not paying attention.

We then quickly went through the Museum of Modern Art on the ground floor and the gift shop, since we wanted to see more. Of special note there is that there was a fan-based pendulum swinging around just over the second floor. As I watched it, it came close to hitting people walking through. So asking for a lawsuit with that..

We then came across Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. It’s a fairly beautiful building, being a cathedral and all. Going through it reminded me of some other cathedrals I came across when I went to Germany for World Youth Day in 2005.

Moving on, we reached Rockefeller Plaza. It looks pretty amazing with all those flags around and the NBC news studio nearby.

Our next stop was the New York Public Library. Holy crap this place looks amazing. I had to have my bag checked at least four times (once going in, once going into the research library, once going out of the research library, and once more while leaving). I guess they don’t want people smuggling away things that cannot be borrowed.

We then made our way across to Times Square. So many screens with so many advertisements and stuff. Quite a crazy place and cars moving in an interesting traffic pattern.

Afterwards, we headed over to Gyu-Kaku in East Village for dinner with our family friends and their daughter, who’s studying in New York for a short while for summer. Gyu-Kaku is kinda like Shabusen (for the Vancouver readers), except it only focuses on the BBQ bit and has a very large sake list (4 pages worth). I wanted to do the sampler, where they give you 3 types to try out, but since no one else was drinking, there wasn’t much of a point. Oh well.

Afterwards, we just headed home.

Some miscellaneous notes on the day:

• Pedestrians here don’t really care about the signals. If it looks open, they just go for it. At the end of the day, I’ve just followed their lead.
• I have never seen so many taxis going down a street in my life.
• Speaking of taxis, these taxi drivers are some of the most aggressive drivers I have ever seen.
• I would probably be scared shitless driving through Manhattan. I’ll stick to getting around by subway.
• I seem to really enjoy trains. The subway was fairly pleasant to ride. Makes me want to break out the SimCity 4 and play around with city building and traffic management again.

Tomorrow: South Manhattan.