New York - Manhattan Day 2 Part 2
Well, so the idiot me forgot to get an adapter so I'm living off my laptop battery which I would have to charge at Andrew's place if I run out. I go there everyday though but the thought of a perishable battery life makes me not want to turn on my laptop.
Continuing from the previous post, the little curious squirrel got scammed by Mike into thinking he had food when in fact he doesn't have any. We managed to get him real up close.
He eventually gave up on us and scurried off on his own way. We continued walking down the park, enjoying the sun and scenery around us.
There were these hugeass hibuscus (in comparison to my hand). It is probably bigger than my entire face.
I also spotted this in the sky which reads: GEICO GREAT RATES. I'm guessing that's a company, but it's just so cool to see this randomly when you look up at the sky (and I tend to do that quite a lot if you have not guessed).
Lavenders, one of my favorite type of flowers even though they attract a lot of insects.
Another breed of Hibiscus that my mum likes.
We see many of this scene where people are just relaxing on the grass and sun tanning. Somehow, we never see this in Singapore. Not because of the crazy rushed lives we live, but because we'll probably get stomped and go on the news or something. Maybe a police man would even come along and chase us away. It's just how the way things work with us.
Pier A is the one behind the cat whiskers plant a few pictures up. Unfortunately, that still isn't the pier we were looking for. We ended up walking quite a fair bit and diverting our destination towards the Bull.
The Bull was way crowded. It was quite impossible to get a good shot especially when I am not queuing to take a picture with the Bull, but more like of the Bull by itself. People come in one after another and I just can't get one without anyone blocking its face. Quite honestly, I don't even know the significance of this Bull.
Rather than the Bull, I was more fascinated by this fountain just right behind the bull. The flowers were really vibrantly red and it looked like it came right out of a postcard or something.
We ended up purchasing softies and ice cream floats from a street van next to this museum. It was here that we found out that Starbucks is so much more worth it than these street stalls. Where in Singapore, Starbucks is treated like somewhat of a luxury and considered expensive with the smallest size for more than $5, Starbucks here can be around USD$3+ for the smallest and less than USD$5 for the largest. On the other hand, the ice-cream soda that we bought cost us USD$8 and a softie itself costs USD$4. Rather than these street stalls, Starbucks suddenly became something we considered comparatively cheap.
While we ate, I started taking selfies but the sun was really scorching hot; so I pulled out my funky glasses to add to the effects!
I like my hair in this above one for some reason. Probably because it has some shape to it. My hair tends to be so straight that it just flops down and I'm too damn lazy to curl it up or do anything about it.
I like this one for the blue in my hair. I'm so sad that the blue is almost all gone by now. The color has been fading much faster since I came to New York. Probably because I take more care of it when I am at home, but now I'm just using whatever shampoo my parents brought and it does not protect colored hair.
Sighs... I really want to dye it blue again. Right now, my hair is this color:
:(
Anyways, moving on, we finally joined the right queue to purchase our tickets towards the Liberty Island but the process was way longer than I had expected.
We got photobombed by Miss grumpy beside me. I was pretty much just showing off my Hanna buahahaha. This was during the queue to get our tickets while the picture above is of the queue to join the queue to purchase the tickets. I don't even know why, but yes there was a lot of waiting.
Because we spent so much time walking around, by the time we got our tickets, it was about 2+pm and they no longer sold tickets to enter the Liberty itself. We purchased the tickets to the Liberty Island anyways only to find that...
Tada, we have to join this queue for another half an hour+ to go through a sort of inspection like those in customs.
We finally got past the custom inspections only to find out there was YET another queue to get on the boat.
After a whole lot of queuing and waiting, we finally got on the boat and rushed up to the highest deck so that we can enjoy the wind and take pictures. Surprisingly, there was almost no wind at all :(
As the boat went pass the statute, we were all so excited in taking pictures that we completely forgot we could actually take better ones when we step onto the island. I was more thinking it might be too near to take pictures but I only ended up with a lot of repeated pictures of the liberty.
We went to collect our audio guides before we walked in. Somehow, we all lost interest in those guides and just took them off quite soon after.
These are only a portion of my collection of Lady Liberty.
Now, for some with actual people in it. Credits to Andrew and Mike.
We stayed there for a really long time just to get our money's worth of the trip. So I ended up with my phone out once more.
Before we left, we visited the souvenir shop.
We took the boat back at about 5.45pm
This time, we stood as forward as we could, and we had the wind against our faces. I really like that feeling.
We were quite fascinated by the 5th building from the left because it looked like it camouflaged with the sky to make it an invisible' building.
We had plans to head down to ChinaTown and Little Italy (which my dad constantly accidentally calls it little india) but we came across this street show (what do you call those?) and ended up sticking around to watch.
We waited quite a bit to watch this portion where he jumped over 9 kids.
I don't know how to make the quality better here, but you get the gist of it.
Instead, here are the slow-mo continuous shots from Mike's camera.
As planned, we took the Subway down to Chinatown.
They sold really cheap (slightly spoiled) fruits and there were wet markets with live crabs and lobsters around but that was pretty much it.
Little Italy was just one street across from Chinatown, but it is much more crowded and happening than the previous.
They had little stalls set up along the streets, and Mike bought me one of these to try because neither of us knew what it was.
It just tasted really sweet and creamy. All the deserts I have eaten here are really sweet to my taste buds. I find it is the same if I follow recipes from the US to the exact measurements. I prefer them a tad less sweet.
There were restaurants lining up the streets and everyone is trying to get customers in.
We ended up settling for this store, mainly because of the price and the menu.
Well, all I can say is that I would not recommend this restaurant to anyone. The service was really slow and the food was bad. Over the years, I have realized I have been getting more and more picky with my food and I don't know if that is a good thing or a bad thing but if I don't like my food, I tend to just stop eating. Not only was the service bad (waiters were rude), and the food bad, the gratuity fee (tips) was fixed at a 20% (the highest I have seen so far) without any other options. We left quite unhappy with our dinner.
We were quite tired after our long day of walking so we ended up taking 2 cabs back to our apartment to rest.
Hopefully I can get my travel adapter by tomorrow when I go to Best Buy while on a school organized trip down to Buffalo Wild Wings to try some buffalo wings so that I can start charging my laptop from my own room. Luckily, my apartment has usb ports, so I can charge my phones from there. I went to RadioShack yesterday but 1 single adapter costs USD$13.99, so I didn't get it. It was way too expensive and I'd rather wait for a few more days to get a cheaper option.
Labels: Manhattan, NY, Pictures, travel, USA
Obviously in construction at the moment... or maybe forever because I'm lazy like this ;)
Visit Montana, Yellowstone National Park