I'm back from NYC and boy am I tired. Well as you know, I napped in the afternoon on Fri and stayed away through the wee hours of Sat to catch the 4am bus to NYC. It was -5 degrees celsius when we were waiting at the bus stop and that's really really damn freaking cold. It's gonna get worse, but I'll talk about that later. So the bus picked us up from our campus to fetch us to the bus station so that we could purchase our tickets. Then we hopped back onto the bus, where I promptly colonised (like bacteria do haha) the last 3 seats at the rear end of the bus. I think I mangaged about 2 plus hours of uninterrupted sleep before the bus got too crowded to allow me to take up so many seats. Btw, it's a 5.5 hour bus ride to NYC. No kidding. USA is large. Ithaca is in New York State, but it's very far north. NYC, however, is down south.
We reached Port Authority Bus Terminal and my first impression of the bus berth is that it resembles an airport. There are boarding gates for the buses and they are sort of dark and underground. Yup NYC is not a very clean-looking place. Our first stop upon arrival was the visitor's centre to pick up maps. We didn't get too lost haha.

Just a brief about NYC: The city is divided into 5 "neighbourhoods". Manhattan is the one where everything is (Times Square, Chinatown, Ground Zero, Wall Street etc...). The streets run east to west and run in numerical order from south to north, so 52nd St is 10 streets north from 42nd etc. The avenues run north to south and 1st Avenue starts on the east. 6th Av is somewhere in the middle. Yup so it's actually quite like grid lines and once you get the hang of it, it ain't too hard to navigate.

So after the visitor centre, we headed to our hostel at 106th St, which is way up north at the edge of Central Park, to check-in and dump our bags. We bought the one day subway pass which allows us unlimited rides for the day. We made good use of the pass of course, zipping in and out of subways. The subway lines aren't as straightforward as Singapore's. There are so many lines (1, 2, 3 etc... A, B, C etc...) and some miss certain stops at night, some replace another one on weekends etc. Yeah I'm using "etc" alot cos I haven't figured out the subway line. And I don't think I will so...

Our first stop was to Ground Zero. The rubble is gone. It's now replaced with the construction site of the building that's gonna replace the World Trade Centre Towers. So it looks like, well, a typical construction site I guess. Next, we went to take the free Staten Island Ferry to look at the Statue of Liberty. This ferry is actually a shuttle service to Staten Island (another of the 5 "neighbourhoods") which goes past the Statue at a distance. We still got a decent view of it so that's fine by my standards. We headed to Chinatown next. Nothing much there, unless you're interested in fake LV or Prada, Gucci and that sort. Picked up souveniers there. We proceeded to the Rockefeller Centre next to see the gigantic Xmas tree there. It's not lighted up yet, it will be on Thanksgiving. We headed for Hard Rock Cafe next, only to reach the address and find out that they've actually relocated. Argh. That was pretty frustrating. We met a really kind lady at a shop that we popped in to ask for directions. She was indeed very helpful, calling up the Yellow Pages to find out the location of Hard Rock Cafe for us. It turns out that they've moved to Times Square. *slaps forehead* Right, where else could it have been? So we happily trudged down to Times Square. It was really crowded. Think Chinatown on Chinese New Year's Eve. Yep. That crowded. Took pictures of Times Square, bought some Hard Rock merchandise, then we grabbed a hotdog from a nearby stand and proceeded to the theatre for broadway. "Rent" is really quite nice, nice catchy music, lyrics were hilarious at times. One of the male leads is so so cute. Oh my. My favourite character wasn't him though. And that was the end of one very hectic, tiring but fulfilling day.

The next day, we took a short stroll at Central Park in the morning. Unfortunately, that area was devoid of anything interesting. Just trees and leaves and people walking their dogs. So we headed back to the hostel to grab our bags, eat breakfast and check-out. We made our way down to Port Authority to catch the bus to Woodbury Premium Outlets. Then we spent the rest of the day there, but not really shopping actually. Guess we were just too tired from the previous day, what with all the walking and lack of sleep. Denise had it really bad, she hardly slept that night. Cherlyn and I just had really sore feet. Well Denise too I guess. We all had really sore feet. The bus Ithaca brought us back to Cornell at 11.25pm.

I'm off to Philadelphia, Washington DC and New Jersey tomorrow. Will be back on Sunday. Gosh, I can already feel how tiring it's gonna be if NYC was already so draining. Guess that's the difference when travelling by car (provided that you're not the driver) and taking public transport. I miss road trips.