Best trip ever, part five: Back to New York

The last day of the trip required getting up in Massachusetts and then driving off to New York. I seem to remember us taking a slightly different route than we'd taken before, where we stopped off at a very green rest area or two. We ended up back in New York a few hours before our flight, so we looked up things we could do and ended up in the Bronx. We went found a place in a much-less touristy area than Times Square for pizza (it's still fine) and then drove up to a place that I came to love. It's called Wave Hill, and it's a public garden in the middle of the city, but not like Central Park is. Central Park is very much a part of the city. You can see taxis in there, and it's surrounded by streets. At certain parts of it you can hear sirens and traffic. With Wave Hill, it's very quiet. At the top of its hills you can see over the water and spot the Brooklyn Bridge, and that's all you see of New York. I'm also a huge fan of flowers and love photographing them, but I am also an enemy of bees. I'm not allergic, I'm just petrified of them. And this was the site of the biggest damn bees I have ever seen in my life. There are trails you can walk and see more of the place, but after one too many bees I stopped just short of running screaming and we ended up sitting out on the lawn for a while instead.

When we left, we still had time, and still had gas in the tank, and Nick was determined to return it to the rental place with all the gas used up. We killed some time by going to Liberty Park in New Jersey. Now, Jersey had done us absolutely zero favors so far. We had not one good experience there. We thought that maybe this might be it. Maybe after all of this, the state would come through.

Nope!

We got super lost getting there because the GPS seemed to say "lol nope," and we ended up cruising around not-great streets and I think a couple of alleys before we found the place more or less by accident. Admittedly, the park itself is kind of neat. There wasn't a ton to it, but there's a 9/11 memorial with what I think is a girder from the Towers, and yes, Nick and I do tend to find a lot of depressing stuff on our trips. There's also an amazing view of the New York skyline, and another part of the park has a ferry over to the Statue of Liberty.

As we were leaving, I checked in on what was Foursquare at the time and noticed that the app listed the park as being in New York.

"After all this," I said, "did our one good experience in New Jersey actually happen in New York?"

That was the last thing we really got to do. We had to get to the Newark airport for our flights back, and we were using up so much of the gas, and then we got stuck in traffic. It was very hot, and we were suddenly worried that we would run out of gas on the highway before we even got to the airport, so we kept turning everything off. Air conditioning, radio, everything must go. We pulled up to the rental place at the airport with three miles to empty. Nick is still very proud, even if he's said we could have cut it even closer.

I could end it there, but then I don't get to tell you how the Newark airport was even against us. I don't think it had air conditioning. At one point I stopped in the bathroom and noticed that my eyebrow makeup had melted off above one eye, so I got my makeup bag out of my carryon and started to fix it... and the lights went out, followed by alarms. I couldn't do anything and wasn't sure what was happening, so I got out of there, only to find that it wasn't happening much further outside. Nick had no idea that had even happened. We stood at the charging table between our gates and talked for a while, and then our separate flights were called, and we got on separate planes home.

I got on a plane with one eyebrow. Suck it, New Jersey.

Flasback post: Best trip ever, part two: NJ to MA

On day three of the best trip ever, it meant that we had to leave New York. It also meant that we got to check out of the worst hotel ever, so, plus. This was also the day we did five states in one day, driving out of New Jersey and up through New York, which is really pretty when you get further upstate. About an hour north we started passing signs for Westchester and joking that we should find the Xavier School from X-Men because we are huge nerds. The city was gone, leaving us driving through wooded areas and occasionally taking little backroads into areas with roller coaster hills. We'd pass little lakes and farm houses, and then stopped when we got into Connecticut.

After getting breakfast at a little roadside diner, we stopped in Stanford because we'd been attempting to use Nick's iPad to listen to music and podcasts, but there was some issue with the cord/port, so we found a Target where we could get a new cord and stock up on stuff while we were there. The new cord didn't really work. I know we got to listen to some podcasts on the way, but I want to say it was actually on my phone, because we had to keep flipping to the radio when we could get a clear station. And somehow, we only heard about four songs for the entire road trip, because that's all that was playing in every single state in New England. If it wasn't "Clarity," "Blurred Lines," "Mirrors" or that duet with Pink and the lead singer of Fun, we didn't hear it. But I have a special love for all those songs now, because it's impossible for me to hear them and not think of this trip. There are worse things.

We were supposed to visit our cousin and her family while we were in the state, but that fell through not long before the trip and so Nick managed to find a backup plan, which was Essex Steam Train and Riverboat. For $30 it's exactly what it sounds like, and I found it pretty cool. We got there a little before our 2:00 departure time, and that meant we could go around and check out the old train cars they had there. I think the gift shop was in a caboose. When they announced boarding, we got on the train, which seemed to be filled with families, which makes sense since this would be great for kids. The train ride itself wasn't really anything special, though we got to see a lot of greenery, and some of the houses on the way. It stopped at a dock, where we got out and then loaded ourselves onto a steamboat that went around the Connecticut River. It takes you past Gillette Castle and a gorgeous old opera house, towards a bridge, and then brings you back. By now the sunny day we'd left in New York was over, and it was starting to get cold and gray. The waters were a little choppy, so when we went out onto the top deck to take pictures, I couldn't leave my hair down without it constantly ending up in my face, and people were a little surprised when another boat would come by and we'd get the wake on top of already rougher waves. You could stand at the top and watch people hiking or walking their dogs at Gilette Castle State Park, or you could watch speedboats race past you, and there were all these little islands that got me all excited because I read the Babysitters Club books, dammit, and all of a sudden it made sense that there could be an island where Dawn and Claudia would get shipwrecked, and if it happened to us I knew what to do because I had read that super special.

If you were unaware that I'm a giant dork, hi, I'm Natalie. Nice to meet you.

After the boat ride, the train took us back the same way and dropped us off at the station, where we got Diego and started back up to our next state, Rhode Island. It's somewhere I wish I had more time to spend, because from what I understand it's great, but we wanted a full day in Boston and had already decided on the boat that we would end up stopping for the night in Cape Cod, so we didn't have a lot of time and not a lot of ideas on what to do. We stopped for dinner at a pizza place at a mall, which had outdoor seating so you could look up at the capitol building. And that same mall houses a PF Chang's that Nick actually worked on, so we got to go there and take pictures.

State capitol, yo.

Aaaaand that was it for Rhode Island. It was cloudy and going to be rainy, so there were some great clouds but no sunset on the drive to Massachusetts, and by the time we got to Cape Cod it was dark. But five states in one day is an Accomplishment, and part three means getting to one of the many highlights.

Flashback post: Best trip ever, part 1: NYC

In May of 2013, I met the love of my life. New York City, you're mine forever.

So, it was part of a bigger trip that I'll get to telling you over the next few days, and it's the trip that all other trips have to live up to. A year before, Nick and I had met up in DC, only to add other cities onto it, and then the next year we decided to do New York and the rest of the upper east coast. I took a redeye into Newark, and Nick took an early flight out of O'Hare to meet me there, and after dropping our stuff at the worst hotel in the world, we tried to get back to the city. Now, this meant taking the horrible shuttle back to the airport, because that was the closest subway and that was not stated in the hotel's info but whatever, and then it finally get us out at Penn Station.

I stepped outside there, and I was so happy to be there that I actually got really emotional and maybe cried some. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's because I almost moved there instead of LA and it's a Road Not Taken sort of thing? Or maybe it's just that the city just speaks to me, but I love it so, so much. We walked along the streets and saw everything. We saw street performers doing pogo tricks. We went through Times Square which is super tacky but I love it regardless. We saw Parson's School for Design and stopped in at Midtown Comics and went into 30 Rock and saw something filming outside Radio City Music Hall. We saw St. Patrick's Cathedral while it was under construction. We walked through a good portion of Central Park. We took the subway a few blocks when our feet were threatening to fall off and went to meet my friend Eva, who I met online when I was 16 and was never able to meet in person before. We had New York pizza (it's fine) and she walked us over to the Empire State Building, where Nick and I went up to the observation deck. For the record, it's got gorgeous views, but at least at that time of night it's severely crowded. You had to fight to get close enough to take pictures of the view, and people were taking selfies and there was a proposal and it's just a lot. Worth it, but a lot. And then the elevator broke so we had to take the stairs down en masse to a lower floor to catch another one, which was an interesting experience.

New York at night was very different from the day. It didn't seem as busy, which might've had to do with the fact that it was Thursday, but we were tired and had to get back to New Jersey, so we found a little spot to sit. A large section of the street outside a row of stores had been blocked off with a low fence in order to extend the sidewalk into said street. So we basically sat in the street in NYC at a little white iron table as taxis whizzed past us as fast as traffic would allow. Something about that might've been my favorite part of the trip. Even though I look exhausted in every single picture.

We got back to the worst hotel in the world, though we left early the next morning to come back to the city. We got pretty good at the subway, which is reassuringly easy to navigate, and tried to start out at the World Trade Center memorial. The problem was that at least at that time they had a strict bag policy, and I had a giant purse and Nick had a messenger bag, and since it seemed that we had to leave our stuff behind rather than just get them checked, we got pictures of Freedom Tower and started walking instead. We found a little dog park that was a fenced off area of concrete and watched the puppies. We went to Battery Park, where we got to hang out for a while and see the Statue of Liberty from a distance. And then we went back to the hotel to pick up our rental car (which was orange and we named Diego), we for some reason drove back in order to get to Brooklyn. We had other friends in New York, and wanted to meet Angela at the bakery where she worked, but we hit massive traffic trying to get through the Holland Tunnel and ran out of time. But we did have some time to sightsee there, including driving on the Brooklyn Bridge, and then checking out Brooklyn Bridge Park, which I loved and am kind of surprised I don't see more about when people talk about New York. We also walked a few blocks from there to find a little pub that I wish I got the name of, because it was just a great little place tucked away in an area I don't think I ever would have found without wandering. Update: Nick found it! It's Henry Street Ale House. I highly recommend.

Our big thing for that night was finding the Waystation, where we met our friend Karyn. It gets a lot of noteriety for being a Doctor Who bar, but it's really more just a geek bar that has a TARDIS for a bathroom. Seriously. A TARDIS for a bathroom. And I swear to god, it's bigger on the inside. There are characters from the show painted all over the walls, the trash can is made to look like a Dalek, and there's a framed autograph from Matt Smith hanging up that reads "Pee happily!" But besides this and some themed drinks, I find it hard to call it a Doctor Who bar when there are replica weapons from Firefly and I seem to recall swords on the wall, you know?

The only problem with this place was that it's small, so when they brought in the admittedly great live jug band (I mean, Brooklyn), I couldn't hear anything anyone said anymore. We listened to the music for a while, and then walked out into the neighborhood to find the car, walking past people sitting out on the stoops, with rap playing as a backdrop. It was kind of great.

And then we got lost in the dark for at least half an hour in Jersey trying to find our hotel because it was located in hell. I have nothing good to say about New Jersey.

New York, though.