NEW YORK!!
you wanted the story? happy reading! ;D
time square: where we spent a lot of time.
and on one side of the building, there was a HUGE poster of JOSH GROBAN!! haha so took a picture (pix of trip will be up after i: finish the roll, develop and scan them). and liane took pix of LOTR of which there were two :D


Liane, Mike and I (plus a lot of other ppl i knew of but didnt KNOW), plus 2 greyhound bus-full left at 11pm thurs night and arrived in NYC at 7am. the bus ride was BRUTAL..man, sitting upright for 8 hrs suck. since i dont sleep in moving vehicles that means i got to NY pretty tired but well, since we only had two full days...we all had to get moving and sight-see and whatnot. twas fun...lotta walking - like, non stop until midnight every day.


we stayed at the international hostel at 103rd street. the hostel was really nice actually. sort of like an upscaled motel i suppose. clean sheets, security, the only complaint i have was that the bathroom was a lil yucky. after realizing that i didt bring flip flops, we spent the entire trip finding some cheap ones until we finaly went into Old Navy on Sat and bought a pair. hee, bright pink. the hostel it was DAMN far, good thing subway is so convenient :D

OH YEAH and this ANNOYING guy completely stuck to mike when they were assigning the rooms. stupid Lionel. bah, that guy creeps me out, and its not even about the lazy eye. he has no social skills what.so.ever. anyways, so there were 3 of us and rooms come in 7 - 10 ppl in each. so we coulda paired up with joels group (one of my housemates bf) and that woulda made 8. but NO, he had to stick to mike and actually announced to the organizer "oh no, we're a group of 4". not only inviting himself, but driving away joels group as well...more like another group of 5 heard them and they all took a room for 10. so we got stuck with another group of 4. seriously, what the HELL is that?? we shouldve moved away when the room assignments started. ick. least he didnt come along with us during the day...we only saw him in the morning (he wakes up EARLY, like at 7) and at night (him in bed by 11). so creepy, how can you wander around NY alone? so weird that no one can stand him...what an odd little fellow. i feel bad for him sometimes, and then he does things that make me take that last statement back: moving our bags up to our rooms, the elevator was jam packed (obviously) so a lot of people were like "oh where are the stairs?". he asked me this and of course i say "i duno", and then HE goes "well why dont you look for them then?" in this annoyingly condescending tone. EXCUSE ME but youre the one who foisted yourself onto US, a little appreciation goes a long way buddy-boy. ingrate.

ok whatever, he didnt spoil our fun so im not too bitter. moving on...


first day (lessee how much i can remember), we went to the museum of natural history. holy cow that place is big. HUGE. im not sure how many times bigger than the ROM but it's big. we picked and chose which exhibits to see and still we didnt have enough time to see everything inside those rooms. haha throughout the entire walk-around, i said to mike "no reading! let move, move, MOVE" :D we were a rambunctious trio..well, me and liane mostly.

went to eat somewhere for lunch...went to ground zero and saw all the charred buildings. walked to the statue of liberty from there...it was a long, cold, windy walk..brrr! didnt take the ferry cuz they wont let you up anyways so whats the point. and plus its freezing. so we just walked around the park and looked around. went into a couple of stores along the way back uptown since it was on..Broadway? 5th Ave? i dun remember, somewhere with stores- to warm up at the very least.

we walked around Times Square during the day and again at night cuz we figured it would be the safest place on earth with the bright lights and (we found out when we got there) the ten thousand or so cops posted everywhere - with an NYPD station right smack dab middle of the square. we saw a lot of stores that we wanted to go into but either said "oh we'll come back later" and then didnt, or just forgot which street they were on: sanrio store, ben and jerry's, etc

it's so bright there. once inside Virgin Records store, i looked outside and thought it was daytime. haha it was so bad, walking along certain streets and then reaching the end of it..i'd be like "no!! we cant go down THAT one. it doesnt have bright lights to lure us!" so all the streets we chose to walk down was always brightly lit. hee :D

ate dinner at TGI Fridays. ooo spensive. pretty regular food..i have no idea why they charge so much, mebbe cuz it was in the middle of times square, hmm prolly. and of course there were the obscene american portions.

went into this little convenience store/grocery store to buy chips and since the majority of shoppers there were hispanic, black, we were getting a lot of stares. haha now that i think about it..two chinese girls and a white guy...it's kinda funny. well, anyways, left after i found my pringles and lays.

oh yea, speaking of food, went to the Hershey store and bought a box of S'mores :D mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm chocolate. was looking around and came upon this happy box, i realized that they didnt sell it in canada so bought it...yummmmmm box of 36. haha the night after, convinced both liane and mike to get a box. didnt take much. muwhahahahahaha!! ahem. (dammit, they dont have a product pic of it..anyways, think of Mars bar, only with graham cracker crunchiness :)


2nd day we slept in till 10. went to SOHO. so yea, saw a lot of the stores on that site. see, when i went in the summer a couple of years ago, there were ppl at street corners selling knock off...everything! blah, new yorkers cant take the cold..sissys. so didnt end up buying a watch. and stores were spensive. i kept saying we needed to find the "shady" part of town to get the good deals but we never ended up finding those streets :) haha. it was cool tho, there were a lot of little stores with pretty interesting stuff. OH! and i kept seeing these tshirts (sesame street, pippi longstocking, etc) and SO wanted to buy them but they costed a lot..so didnt. actually didnt end up shopping that much cuz poor mike was a lil bored trailing after us. we were good...we let him wander around on his own sometimes. haha im j/k.

went to litty italy, china town. ate at litty italy for lunch and dinner. chef boyardee is gonna suck now after eating there. oh sooo good! and it was so funny the way the owners pulled in customers. well, there are restaurants one right after the other so their advertising methods were a lil more involved on their part. they had menus outside so we stopped to look and check out the prices. we had barely stood there for 2 seconds when this guy comes out of the door and starts telling us about the menu, how we should eat there cuz its family owned, has good food and service...so we went in. it realy wasnt bad. and throughout our entire meal, he kept bringing more people in..some left after seeing the menu but most stayed. at first i thought it was kind of rude for these people to just walk out. one group was like "do you have pizza? no? oh ok" and left shortly after that. well, i guess theyre used to it and the customers figure they arent being rude walking out, just researching where they want to spend their money..?? it was an interesting experience.
of course, it was so good we went back at dinner time to another restaurant. the one we eneded up choosing offered a glass of wine on the house, so that was the deciding factor haha. i cant remember what i drank, cant read it, cant pronounce it, frankly pointed at the menu and said "that one". it said it had "a faint taste of blueberries" so that won me over. was good, fruity. wish i could remember it..meh.

course, went back to times square afterwards..looked at more stores, mike ate at famiglia and there were all these pictures of celebrities on the walls. pretty good pizza i guess..mike thought so, we didnt have any cuz well, stuffed from dinner.


Sunday we had set our alarm for 8AM cuz we wanted to get up and go to rockefeller before we left and possibly squeeze in tour of NBC studios if we could..but well, we slept in till 10. so basically, packed, ate and boarded. oh well...next time, hopefully summer sometime :D mmmmmmm street vendors haha

we reached the border at...5pm-ish i think. we stopped at the duty free store and well, liane and i didnt want to go outside (cuz it was snowing) and we were comfortable so we stayed in the bus while others loaded up on booze. mike came back first and said that vodka was cheap (cheaper than LCBO) so i was like..oh cool. still didnt get me moving tho, then i asked about Bailys and how much they were. almost half off! and i was so tempted to get off the bus to get it..but then, laziness took over and i was like..ah well, not like i drink that much anyways so who cares. then Joel comes back on the bus and he was holding a Bailys bottle.."its 21 bux US, you should get it, its cheap"(or soemthing to that effect), well, we didnt need to be told so many times that it was CHEAP, so we got up and went inside. i was like..hmm mebbe i should get another bottle either for the house, or to bring back home. and then at the cashier counter, there were those mini bottles of..liquor so we each got one of those too (impulse buy), haha. Kaluha for liane and Absolut Citron (vodka) for me. getting back on the bus, joel was frankly smiggling at us. yummmmmmmm bailys :D


yea so realized, after this trip, that new yorkers are rude. most people are so surly. 'hurry hurry, get outta my way' type of people. but the trick is to SMILE. i found out that if i smiled and was in a generally happy/chipper mood, others were too. well, i guess thats true everywhere..but it was displayed so dramatically while i was there. there were security guards at EVERY store door and most were so happy (seemed so anyways) when i said "bye! have a nice day!" or just a big "thanks!" for opening the door for us. most sales reps gave us (slightly) surprised looks when we entered the store..well, i dont blame them, everyone else in there were pretty well dressed and...definately past 25. heh, funny....course i had to pick stores like DKNY (under Advertising, model looks like Cate Blanchett) to go into. very pretty, very expensive, not to mention in USD funds.
Funny line from liane while crossing the street to get to DKNY, "how do you SEE these stores?!" - cuz it was windy, snowy and we had our hats on so couldnt see that well. haha i duno, like a moth to bright lights, shiny things attract me ;)


OH YEAH! haha and throughout the entire trip our phrases were:
Me (while holding out candy/chocolate/sugar of sorts to mike): "wanna lil sugar from daddy?"
Liane: "hullo gov'na, wassup your bum?"
hehehehahahahaha hilarious. i hope passerbys didnt think us too weird. oh who am i kidding, of course they did.

*longest post yet. finish time: 1AM. stop distracting me ppl!! :D *