Part 2: Girl's Trip and The City

The whole trip, I would end the day, laying in bed, with my book, thinking I needed to calm down from the day. I ended up reading the same page for 3 nights. Me being a night owl, it was amazing how exhausted I ended up being. Not that walking 5 kajillion blocks had anything to do with it or anything.
So we woke up Friday knowing we wanted to do some touring and some shopping in SoHo. Before we left we got tips from everyone with how to barter and haggle on Canal Street but no advice seemed more bizarre than from our friend Stacey who was telling us we had to try to get taken to these "secret rooms" with really cool purses. Odd, but I filed it away.
We caught the double decker bus tour which was really fun. Our tour guide didn't speak English all that great, mumbled into the microphone and all in all was as useless as a tour guide could be-but it's easy to take really cool pictures in NY, and we figured most stuff out on our own.

We asked the couple in back of us to take our picture, and found out that they were from Utah. Leave it to us to track down other random LDS tourists.

Bless her heart, I'm sure she's a sweet spirit, qualified to do many things, with talents and life ambitions. Double decker bus tour guide?...not so much.

We had joked that if we spotted celebrities or a film crew making a reality show, that we were not above doing whatever it took to get on TV. Not sure what was going on here, but it was probably lucky for them that we were trapped on top of a moving bus.

(above) one of my favorite shots of NY. Don't really know why, it just is.
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Okay so Chinatown...Canal Street, SoHo, whatever. Any of those terms is correct. I had way too much fun with this. We got ready for it by eating Italian food at this really quaint, cool looking place. We tried to eat at places we could only get there. Then we took to the streets and the craziness began. There are people everywhere and these booths are not built for leisure strolling. As I'm walking, I hear people saying words really fast like, "Chanel, Tiffany's, Louie." What we found out was, if you respond to the person saying that word, they whisk you away into a hidden compartment within their booth. The back wall is literally a hidden door, where you go back and there are all these designer handbags. It was a complete trip and I mainly wanted to do it just for the thrill of it (and to make Stacey proud.)

How cool is that, a fan of the blog! Whoever it was didn't have to go to that extreme to show their support, but totally cool, don't you think??

Kay, so story time. We hurry back to Times Square because we want to buy tickets for Spamalot and Wicked. There's a discounted tickets office right in the middle of T.S., but Wicked tickets were only being sold at their theater. So Beth and Andrea stay in the discount tickets line to secure Spamalot tickets for that night, and Jill and I run up to buy for Wicked. It seemed easy enough, and after securing them, we hurry back to meet up with Andrea and Beth. Now, you remember me telling you the height of Beth's adoration for Lin-Manuel (the star of In the Heights)? Upon meeting back up, Beth relays that after buying tickets, she turned around, and who is walking down the street right toward her, but Lin-Manuel. 2 million people in NY, and she runs into the person she essentially came to here to see. She keeps her cool, stops him and says again how much she enjoyed the show last night. Randomly throughout the rest of the night Beth would say, "Hey, did I happen to mention that I ran into Lin-Manuel on the street today?"

Us: "Only once every 10 minutes."

Before Spamalot that night, we hurried back to the hotel where we dumped and sorted through all of our finds on the beds like an adult version of Halloween. We ate at a cool looking place called "Duke's." The food was good, but it was added to our growing statistic that people in the service industry there, were not helpful, and at times totally rude. New Yorkers we met on the street were super helpful and nice. But the ones who were being paid to be super helpful and nice could have cared less. It was just an observation.

Spamalot was in a word: hysterical. Clay Aiken stars in it, but on that night, his role was being played by his understudy. But any disappointment that was felt, was instantly washed away with the absolute great time we had at this play. With brothers, I was subjected to more than one Monty Python movie so I had a limited idea of what it was about. Not that it mattered. You wouldn't have had to see any of the movies to thoroughly enjoy yourself. I mean seriously people, tears rolling down the my face. Funny stuff and great music.

We decided not to tempt fate that night with dessert or any other late night death buggy rides. The taxi drivers were only a slight step up in the fear factor in being that they had doors. Beyond that, they drove super fast and barely avoided plowing people over. On the way in from the airport Victor had said, "Now, you should know that pedestrians do not have the right of way here. The cars will run you over. Well, except in Times Square. There are too many people there, and you can't run everyone down." I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say that he said that with a note of disappointment in his voice.

Tomorrow: Statue of Liberty, WTC, Wall Street, Battery Park (just to name a few) and a night that was seriously, ridiculous fun which included Freak #8 on our list.