Day 14: New York City

When I went on my mission to Rochester, NY, I never anticipated how many people would ask me how I liked New York City.

The truth was, I had never been to New York City. It was outside my mission boundaries (by several hours). It wasn't until this trip that I actually had the opportunity to see it.

The ridiculous thing about it was that we only spent a day there, part of which was taken up by a Broadway play.

For this reason, most of what we saw was from the inside of the bus.

Like Ground Zero:

Trump Tower:

And Radio City Music Hall:

We did take the Staten Island Ferry

to see the Statue of Liberty.

We stopped in Chinatown to do some shopping. We also stopped at a street vendor to get authentic New York City hot dogs:

And we got off the bus briefly, just to walk through a small corner of Central Park with a tribute to John Lennon:

When we stepped off the bus, I snapped a picture of this man:

Who I am pretty sure is this man:

Who is this man? His name is Noah Emmerich. I know him from Frequency, The Truman Show, and Miracle. He played the second banana in all of them.

I was so distracted by this celebrity sighting that I stepped in dog poop. I got it pretty well cleaned off my shoe before heading back on the bus.

Eventually, we headed to Times Square, where we killed some time before the Broadway show we were going to see.

We saw this:

Found ourselves on the Times Square camera (we're by the top of the 2):

Had a cupcake (even though, according to Jack Donaghy, people in New York are off cupcakes and back on doughnuts):

And had dinner and fabulous cheesecake at Junior's before heading here:

The sign is a little hard to see in this picture, so here's a better one:

Seeing a musical on Broadway is pretty high on my bucket list. I am a huge fan of musicals, whether they be new shows or old classics like The Sound of Music or Oklahoma. Add to that getting the opportunity to see Kristin Chenoweth (the original Glinda in Wicked) perform, and have the opportunity to see a cast originate a production, and you can imagine how excited I was.

Immediately after I snapped this picture of the theater, I was chastised by an usher. Note that the show has not started yet, and that the seats aren't even close to being filled yet. A look at reviews from regular Broadway-goers leads me to believe that this is how the ushers there are.

The musical was fabulous. This production was a revival, and it had the look of the 60's era for which it was originally written. It looked like Mad Men. The songs were written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, the book was written by Neil Simon, and this production included popular songs like "I Say a Little Prayer" and "I'll Never Fall in Love Again." I couldn't get over the fact that I was actually watching Kristin Chenoweth. And while I wouldn't say that Sean Hayes (of Will and Grace) was much of an initial draw, he did a pretty good job with his part.

The only bad part of the whole day was that our show got out late, and we had to leave before the curtain call was over in order to make it back to our bus on time.

Day 13: Baltimore and Philadelphia

I love that, on the east coast, everything is pretty close to everything else. We were headed to New York City from Washington, D.C., but, on the way, we were able to see some pretty amazing sites:

Baltimore, home of the Ravens and the Orioles, and the setting for one of my favorite movie/musical/movie musicals, Hairspray.

Fort McHenry, where Francis Scott Key wrote "The Star-Spangled Banner":

Independence Hall, the site of the signing of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution:

The Liberty Bell:

And the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which has the steps Rocky Balboa famously ran up in the first Rocky movie.

It's hard to say what I was most excited about.

We got a cheesesteak, too, which could have easily been the highlight of the trip.

We got to our hotel in New Jersey that night, had a late supper, and were joined by my dad, who flew in from Las Vegas for the last few days of our tour.

Day 12: The Smithsonians

Our day picked up where we left off the day before: back at the monuments.

We made a stop by Iwo Jima, which I had never seen before. To give you an idea of how giant the monument is, I have included this picture of it next to some average-sized people:

As you can see, it is massive. Also, there is a hand on the flag pole that does not belong to any of the other soldiers, which, they say, represents the hand of God.

We made a stop at the World War II monument, which I already went into a lengthy diatribe about when I was in D.C. about a year ago, so I'll spare you.

We were given the rest of the day to explore the Smithsonian Museums. Our first stop was the Holocaust Museum, which I had never been to before, but which my friend Kim recommended highly. One of the reasons that I had never been there before was that one of the times when I was in D.C., a security guard at the museum had just been shot, and they had closed it down.

It was the only museum we went to all day where we had to have tickets to enter. They give you different entrance times to keep people from all showing up at the same time, which is very important because you take an elevator to the top floor and wind your way down. The floors go in chronological order, as you learn how Hitler's political rise affected Jews, how they were exiled, imprisoned, and eventually exterminated. The final floor deals with their release, and the people who hid people during the war.

To say the least, it is intense. We were not allowed to take pictures in the main exhibit, which was probably for the best, as the images of cells, the dioramas of the gas chambers, and hundreds of shoes left behind by people who were killed were haunting. But I am glad we went, and I would encourage anyone else who has some time to visit the Smithsonians to make it a priority.

We had spent over 2 hours in the museum, and, by the time we left, we were hungry. We stopped by a pretzel vendor whose prices were suspiciously absent from her cart. For two bottles of soda and a pretzel, she charged us $10. We didn't care. It was enough to keep us going through two more museums.

Our next stop was the American History Museum. Below is a picture of Archie Bunker's chair from the TV show All in the Family. I have never been a fan of the show. It was off the air before I was born. However, there is a reference to the chair itself in an episode of Gilmore Girls, making it picture-worthy.

One stop we had to make in this museum was here:

Those of you who have seen the movie Julie and Julia will remember that Julia Child's kitchen was donated to the Smithsonian when she left her home in Cambridge, Mass, a few years before she died. It's quite a sight. It is covered in glass, which made it hard to get a good picture. There are displays along one wall of the exhibit of the kitchen gadgets she used. They are pretty incredible.

The most popular exhibit that we saw was the one that housed all the First Ladies' inaugural ball gowns. For some reason, I don't have any pictures of those.

This particular museum also housed the flag which inspired "The Star-Spangled Banner." While we were there, they were unfurling it on the floor below:

Pretty cool, huh?

We also made a brief stop at the Museum of Natural History.

This made me think of Ross Gellar. It is clear that I probably spend too much time watching TV.

We had dinner that night at IHOP, having learned our lesson the day before about getting too adventurous trying local places.

Three new posts!

Sorry it has taken me until after my trip ended to post about the second half. More will follow as I pack up my stuff and wrap up my life here in Lubbock.

Day 11: Washington D.C.

I love Washington D.C.

The day started out at Arlington Cemetery. Did you know Arlington Cemetery was once the property of Robert E. Lee's family? The Lee mansion is still on the property. It was conceived as a punishment for Robert E. Lee for not commanding the Union Army, and, instead, commanding the Confederate Army during the Civil War.

We got on a tram at the visitors' center, and it stopped at the first site, which was the graves of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Ted Kennedy. It was stopping at the last grave that prevented us from catching our tram to the next location, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. I convinced my mom that it would be quicker for us to walk to it than to wait for the tram (which it was).

We got there just in time to watch the changing of the guard, which happens every half hour in the summertime. Here is a picture of the monument. Apparently, I did not get any pictures of the changing of the guard. I did get video, at the insistence of my mom. I'm pretty sure no one is going to want to watch it.

We narrowly missed another tram, which, as it turns out, was headed to Robert E. Lee's house. We did not make it there on foot. Instead, we saw these:

After that, we drove around and saw the White House:

The Capitol Building:

And Ford's Theater.

Then we got back on the bus and went back to our hotel room in Alexandria. We decided to venture into Old Town for lunch, after hopping a shuttle and the Metro. We were pretty proud of ourselves when we stepped off the Metro at King Street.

After lunch, we took a cab back to our hotel, where I narrowly avoided what is hopefully the last crisis of my academic career. However, once it was resolved, I didn't think too much about it, since we still had a lot of our day left.

We had a large break during the day, so we also had dinner at the worst Chinese buffet on the planet.

There were several handwritten signs posted behind the counter in both English and Spanish which conveyed the following guidelines:

• No checks or American Express cards.


• Do not even THINK about wasting food because you will be charged for it.


• Do NOT sit in the dining room if you are not eating dinner.

I took small portions of everything, which was smart because everything was bad. Even the desserts were bad. Maybe they wouldn't have these problems with people wasting food or not eating dinner if the food were better.

In the evening, we went back to look at the various monuments around the Mall.

Here are some of the ones we saw that I had never seen before:

Jefferson

The Korean War

This picture doesn't show it, but it's pretty eerie at night.

Franklin Roosevelt

Does anyone know the name of FDR's beloved pet dog? It was a question we were given before we got off the bus.

It was night, and it began to get dark, so we didn't notice the ominous clouds gathering overhead until we were headed back to the bus to make our way over to the World War II monument.

When we got to the place where we were supposed to meet the bus, it began dumping rain on us. We stood under the overhang of one of those information booths for about ten minutes before the bus showed up. They had just gotten a ticket somewhere along the way.

All in all, it was quite a day. I saw more of Washington D.C. in one day than I have in all my other trips combined.

Day 10: Gettysburg

We got up early this morning to head to Gettysburg. I had never been to Gettysburg before, so it was kind of exciting to get to see it.

Our little tour group descended on Gettysburg at the exact same time as a large group of bikers. What I did not take a picture of was the booth selling Gettysburg-themed motorcycle clothing.

The town of Gettysburg is small, and quite a tourist town. Pictured below is a motel around the border of which is the Gettysburg Address, which I tried to memorize during the trip. I'm pretty close.

I took lots of pictures at Gettysburg, mostly for my dad, who is a big Civil War buff. However, I can't remember much about any of the

This is the Eternal Light Peace Memorial on Oak Hill.

Here is a shot of me in front of one of the cannons at Big Round Top.

Here are some of the graves at Gettysburg.

After Gettysburg, we headed to the Washington D.C. Temple. It was built in 1974. As you can see, it has an awesome reflecting pool near the visitors' center.

Of the 133 temples that are in operation, Washington D.C. is number 16, chronologically. For many years, it was the only temple east of the Mississippi.

The day finished in our hotel room in Alexandria, which, I have to say, is easily the worst place I have stayed in all my trips to D.C. I finally got out my pants with the orange juice on them from Tuesday. They smelled like yeast and feet. They are now soaking in the bathtub, and I am less than optimistic about whether or not I will be able to get the stains out. My mom has graciously offered to help.