New York City-second chances

New York in 2005 was going to be the greatest. I had my dad and two best friends, Suzanne and Amanda. Unfortunately, the airlines did not feel so strongly as we did. We were delayed out of Anchorage and missed our connection in Seattle. That meant an extra 10 hours in Seattle, which meant us girls took off for downtown and dad guarded the airport. Having never been to Seattle I was alright with a bit of a side trip. We went to the Space Needle, the mall and to Pike's Place Market. The weather was hot but dry and we found the best little deli downtown to have lunch. After a long day we finally got back to the airport and left for Newark, tired and smelly. We arrived in Newark around 6am but unfortunately, our luggage did not. SO, we took a crazy cab into the city and got to our hotel about 3 hours after they gave away our room. They told us we could have a room in 2 hours, so we went and hung out in Central Park. I decided to walk and found that there was an AIDS fundraiser going on, so I followed the line. By the time I realized I was tired and wouldn't find any celebrities I had walked nearly 20 blocks through the park. So I headed to the subway station and took the train the 15 blocks to the hotel. We were all pretty wiped from the trip so we just slept and lounged near the hotel most of the day. Though for dinner we decided to go to Chinatown and wandered around looking at the street shops and tables of trinkets. Later that night I took Amanda and Suzanne to Grand Central station and then we walked a few blocks down Park Avenue to the beautiful Waldorf-Astoria hotel. The lobby was gorgeous and featured a gigantic chandelier and a green Oscar de la Renta dress.

Monday began on a better note; we had luggage! So after finally being able to really clean ourselves and put on fresh clothes, we made our way downtown. We stopped in Times Square, midtown and ventured all the way to Battery Park and decided to head for Liberty Island and Ellis Island. On my previous trip I had declined to go to Liberty Island but I was talked into it this time. After our trip across the water, which was great, we went to Ground Zero and walked around in the new buildings. It was very different than what I had seen just two years ago. That day for dinner I had the best pizza of my life and we did more walking and shopping until we couldn't walk anymore.

Tuesday Suzanne and dad and I went to 34th street between 7th and 8th, where the largest store in the world, Macy's, is located. We shopped there and all around Herald Square, looking at fancy shops, little holes in the wall and places we've never heard of. Then we ate lunch in the square, hot dogs of course. We shopped all afternoon and decided to drop our stuff back off at the hotel before we went to dinner at a Mexican place near the hotel. After that we went out to the comedy show we had gotten tickets for when we were in Times Square. It was called Improv and was hilarious. One lady called dad a stud because to her it seemed he had 3 very young dates.