Last morning here in in New York City. And the shortest narrative too. Today, we finished a little souvenier shopping, checked out of our hotel, took a cab to the airport, and then…I wrote. Allllll of this journaling for the past 9 days.

The entire trip was phenomenal. So many amazing memories and fantastic experiences. I’m so blessed to have had the chance to do this with Audrey.

Our last full day here in the city. So sad. We’ve had such a phenomenal time, done so many things and enjoyed so much of this trip. After getting tickets for tonight’s performance, we headed all the way south one last time for our Dialog in the Dark experience.  Dialog in the Dark is basically about getting people to experience parts of New York as if they were blind. It’s all about touch, hearing, spell, and texture of the world around you. We “visited” Central Park, took a ride on a “subway,” “shopped” at a supermarket, and crossed a “busy street.” Along the way, we learned to use our canes and to be more aware of all the cues that we miss all the time in our normal experience of the world around us. All of the guides at the exhibit are blind or severely visually impaired so they can take you through “their” New York. It’s a really interesting concept and was a unique “tour” of New York City that was different from anything else that we’d experienced this week.

Columbia University was next on our agenda. Audrey’s dad went to school there so we thought it’d be cool to take a look around and check out the area. Lots of old, beautiful buildings, giant libraries, stuff like that. For lunch, we went to a local Ethiopian restaurant where you eat with your hands and, apparently, the food is pretty legit, partially judging by the number of people there speaking unrecognizable African languages. I wasn’t a fan of the food, but the experience as a whole was very interesting- I’m glad we did it.

Around Columbia

Taking pictures around Columbia

How I spent a lot of the trip

Ethiopian food

The Cathedral of St. John the Divine is located just a couple of blocks from Columbia. It’s the largest cathedral in the world, and could easily fit the entire Statue of Liberty under it’s main dome. I’ve visited a lot of Cathedrals while traveling but none quite like this. The size alone was overwhelming (it’s as long as two football fields). While we were wandering through, there was a choir concert going on. The way the voices just floated up in that space gave it such an ethereal quality, echoing off the hundreds of panels of intricate stained glass. Around the outside wall of the cathedral are tens of smaller chapels, each with their own style and feel. Audrey especially loved wandering through all of the art and things that were hung on the walls. The whole church was really quite something.

St. John's

Glass in St. John's

More food: the Momofuku Milk Bar. So much sweet, so much delicious. It took us a while to find, but it was so worth it. We got Candy Bar pie (carmel, chocolate, peanut butter, and pretzel), Crack pie (buttery custard on an oat crust), and a pile of cookies for later including the Compost cookie (chocolate chips, butter scotch, potato chips, oat, pretzels, coffee grounds). Yummmmmm.

We took the long way back to our next show, stopping by the Lincoln Center, the New York Apple Store, FAO Schwartz (the coolest toy store ever), and walking down Fifth Avenue, not understanding how anyone could ever spend that much money on anything ever.

Other things Audrey loves? The Muppets

Lego Captain Jack Sparrow

The Big Piano at FAO Schwarz

Tonight’s show, and our last show for the week was How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying. Again, we had amazing seats (7^th row, orchestra) to watch the show. It’s a “jazz hands show,” full of big flashy dance numbers, “ba-dum-chh” jokes, and everything else that makes a classic cheesy stereotypical musical. Nick Jonas was playing the lead- not particularly impressive, but fun overall. I loved the set, the “big” songs, and the atmosphere of the show. It’s all about this kid climbing the ladder in the business world, but through a series of strategies and good fortune rather than relevant skills. Cheesy and a lot of fun.

We decided that our last night in the city would be our fancy dinner night. We went to Sardi’s, a famous restaurant in the theater world. Its walls are covered with caracatures of years of famous Broadway stars, about 1400 in total. “You know you’ve made it when they put your picture up at Sardi’s.” Besides the food being amazing, it was a lot of fun to look around and see who we could pick out.

Delicious dessert at Sardi's

Audrey snuck pictures of the Sardi's walls

We were sitting next to a table with a husband and wife and we had caught bits of their conversation that clued us in that at least one of them was a pretty big deal in the theater world. In their conversation with their friend, we’d been able to catch their first names, but couldn’t figure out who they were. While we were ordering dessert, Paige, the woman at the table, turned around and commented on something I’d said and we chatted for a just a moment before going back to our own conversations. I said bye to them when we left, wished them a good night, and left still wondering who we’d just been talking to. When we got back to the room, Audrey googled the bits of information we’d been able to collect. The wife was Paige Davis, former host of TLC’s Trading Spaces (a show I used to watch a lot). She’s also made a couple of Broadway appearances. Her husband was Patrick Page, one of the top American classically trained actors and a big deal on Broadway- the Grinch in How the Grinch Stole Christmas, the original Scar in The Lion King, and currently the Green Goblin in Spiderman.

Our time at Sardi’s was mostly spent doing our own version of the Tony awards, thinking through the shows that we saw this week and coming up with our favorites and least favorites in lots of made up categories. We saw 7 Broadway shows: Porgy & Bess, Godspell, Anything Goes, Once, Seminar, Other Desert Cities, and How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying. Here the notes that we made on our own awards. Where there were ties, we didn’t try too hard to resolve them so there are plenty of categories with 2 or 3 winners. Oh well.

Too bad nobody actually cares about our opinion. Hahaha.

Today was another day where Audrey and I each went our own way for a while. Audrey went to take a tour of Lincoln Center and to see the Musuem of Modern Art (MoMA).

Audrey's view in the lobby of the Lincoln Center

I headed to a new part of Manhattan called Washington Heights. Ever since Audrey took me to see my first real musical, In the Heights, last December, I’ve been really excited about visiting the part of New York where it’s set. There’s a part in the opening song where the narrator gives directions of how to get there:

“You must take the “A” train/ Even farther than Harlem and maintain/ Get off at 181^st and take the escalator”

(I promise it sounds cooler when Lin Manuel Miranda is rapping it.) Anyway, Washington Heights is a largely immigrant community, predominantly Spanish-speaking. I wanted to go, soak in the culture, enjoy the food, speak a little Spanish, and get to see where the musical that I’ve enjoyed so much is set. Even following the directions from the song, it took me a little longer than I anticipated to find the area that I was looking for, but when I did, I plopped myself down inn a little diner and ordered myself a plate of maduro(fried ripe plantains). As they cooked, I listened to the old men chattering in Spanish at the counter, the waitresses fending off their playful flirtations, the old guy crooning along to the Spanish song playing on the jukebox, and just enjoyed so many of the memories and good times that I’ve experienced in the time that I’ve been fortunate enough to be abroad. Such great memories.

A different view from Washington Heights

For lunch, I’d arranged to meet up with another friend, Luis, who was involved in Agape and graduated in May, like Jon. We went to eat at an Ecuadorian restaurant, pretty close to his office. It was so nice to catch up, just enjoying sharing what’s been happening in our lives, future plans, what we like about where we each are right now and doing a little reminiscing about things that have happened in the past couple of years as well.

After leaving Luis back in his office with the mountains of maduro that I had left over from Washington Heights, I made my way to the Empire State Building, hoping to catch a good view of the city during the day. Unfortunately, the drizzly cold from a couple days ago still hasn’t cleared up and I didn’t get to see anything because of the lack of visibility. I did, however, get to check out the New York Skyride, a hyper cheesy movie-crossed-with-motion experience flying around the city narrated by the one and only Kevin Bacon. Don’t ask.

One of many colorful walls of M&Ms in M&M World which we also visited

The lobby of the Empire State Building

I met Audrey at MoMA and we found our way down to the South Seaport area again, this time to get tickets for Dialog in the Dark to see tomorrow. We tried to lotto to see Wicked, but again the odds weren’t in our favor. We ended up getting tickets to see Other Desert Cities for tonight just a couple of minutes before it started. If Seminar last night didn’t convince me that theater could be amazing, ODCdefinitely got the job done. This one was about the conflict emerging in a family when the daughter announces that she’s planning on publishing a book about the things they’ve been through. I wish I could put into words the excellence of this experience. The writing was terrific. The set was great. The actors were incredible. A really really realllllly exceptional show.

Not sure what face to make for ODC

Since it was one of our last nights in NYC and our last night with our New York Passes, we decided to use our free game of bowling at a fancy bowling alley on Times Square. When we got there though, they told us that they can’t use our NY Passes on Thursday because of another special deal they have going on. Since we didn’t want to pay an arm and a leg to bowl, we thanked them and turned to go. But the people behind the desk started asking us where we were from and how long we were here, etc. When they found out that we were from out of town and that this was the last night we would come, they felt sooo bad (a lot worse than we did, for sure). They found us a free lane, gave us shoes, and invited us to stay. So instead of the one free game we were hoping for, we ended up getting to play six!! We had a great time (I might have enjoyed myself more than Audrey) hangin gout, refining our “technique” and laughing at each other and ourselves when we did just as poorly as usual. A fun “bonus” on our adventure. (Just for the fun of it, we totaled up our costs and expenditures on the NY Pass- we paid $130 for $258 worth of activities. Go us.) We got back to our hotel tonight a little after one and crashed.

Bowling night!

Our first (and probably only) double show day today. Which worked well because it was rainy and cold and we’re tired. Audrey has been loving the cold and, apparently, for this region and this time of year, it’s actually quite nice…but I’m cold. So it was nice to have lots of indoor stuff to do today and not so much walking around the city or fighting our way through the crowds on the streets.

We started at Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum. What a trip. We spent the whole time in there being confused, waiting for people to get out of our way who would never move or trying not to bump into people who weren’t actually people. Some of those sculptures are frighteningly lifelike, especially if you stare into their eyes for any length of time. There were so many famous figures, from Obama to Johnny Cash to Ben Franklin to Michael Jordan and Miley Cyrus. We had fun wandering around and checking out the figures we recognized, taking pictures with our favorites and laughing at everybody doing the same. I wonder what it would be like to dress up, pose, and start standing still and see what people do. Just for fun.

Audrey chilling with Steven Spielberg

I had way to much trying to stare down the wax figures

Next stop on the list was another lottery, this time for Once. This one just started previews yesterday (It opens on Broadway, officially, on March 18^th) Again, my name was called and we locked in tickets for more obscenely low prices.

Before the show, we had time to go see the Dead Sea Scrolls, an exhibit that’s currently in NYC, pretty close to the theater where we were seeing Once. It was pretty incredible to see these shreads of parchment of such extremem importance that were so old and, to me, entirely indecipherable. The exhibit also included a piece of the Western Wall, a sight in itself. I really enjoyed the whole exhibit. While I’m not a huge history person in most cases, occasionally I’ll find something that connects me, in some way, to people of certuries ago and have those goosebump moments where I realize that we’re sharing a common experience even though we’re separated by time. This exhibit was one of those moments for me..

After a quick pizza lunch, we went to go see Once. I’m pretty sure that Audrey and I actually attended different performances, even though we were sitting next to each other the entire time. She saw a musical masterpiece, was stirred to tears by the emotion communicated by the actors and their passion for music. The musical was about two people connecting over music and she explained to me about how they weren’t together to be together, but rather because they both needed something from each other for a time and then they could move on with their lives. Me? I was so painfully bored that I couldn’t help but dozing off during the second act. Oops. The music was beautiful, but I didn’t really understand what was going on, didn’t really connect with the characters, and didn’t see how the music moved the plot along at all…what there was of a plot anyway. I wish I’d seen Audrey’s version of the performance. I’m looking forward to listening to the music again when it’s released and hopefully I’ll understand more of what she saw and heard in the performance.

Audrey loooooved Once

We’re very different, Audrey and me. I’m much more of a concrete thinker, I see what’s on the surface, and usually not a whole lot more. I need things very clearly laid out form me if I’m really going to understand them. Audrey delves into the abstract. She loves art, music, performance, and sees lots of stuff below the surface. It makes for an interesting relationship between the two of us because it affects everything about how we think, communicate, and relate to each other.

Our first time emerging from a theater into the light instead of the dark was a little jolting at first, especially since I was groggy from trying to stay awake and Audrey was thrilled over the excellence of the performance she’d just witnessed. We managed to get amazing seats for Seminar for tonight and decided to try to solve a crime before dinner. We headed to “CSI: The Experience.” which is supposed to be an interactive crime-solving experience that uses lots of the strategies and techniques from the show CSI which is supposed to be based on the work of real crime scene investigators. Turns out that the exhibit was about 10 years too young for us. We were both looking for a bit of a challenge, hoping to learn something new, but instead we just joked our way through all of the labs and puzzles that we could solve just by looking at them, answered our multiple choice questions and went on our merry way. We had a good time, but more people we were laughing at ourselves than because the exhibit was exciting. I guess we’re pretty qualified to be investigators now. I really want to apply for a job and cite this exhibit as my work experience…just to see what would happen. I assume it wouldn’t be pretty, but I do think it’d be amusing.

Today’s second show was Seminarstarring Alan Rickman. It was a comedy, but not in the “constantly laughing” sense. The show itself was incredible though. I’m starting to understand why people love theater so much. The acting was so incredible and Audrey and I were both breathless through a couple of Alan Rickman’s monologues. So phenomenal. The play was about a writing teacher offering 4 students a writing seminar and the trials that they go through under his tutelage as he crushes their writing or, in one case, complements it so highly that the whole thing blows up. Basically, it was amazing. Afterwards, we went to the stage door and got to meet all five of the actors, including Rickman. Maybe it’s just because I know him as Snape first, but I couldn’t help being terrified of him even in person. But he was quite friendly, autographed our playbills, and let us take pictures. Quite friendly indeed. But I was still scared of him. Our last stop for the night was Junior’s, a restaurant famous for their cheesecake. Let’s just say that their fame is merited. Yummmmm.

Seeing Seminar

Alan Rickman signing our Playbills

Delicious after-show treat at Junior's

We’ve also decided that Worst Cooks in America on Food Network is our new favorite late night show. Every night when we get back, we’ve spent a little while updating our budget, journaling, making plans for tomorrow, etc. Our background TV program of choice has been this one. It’s a lot of fun without all those “Ohh…that looks soo good! I’m so hungry now!” comments.

Whew- getting tired. And sore. Sooooo much walking! Everywhere! Allllll the time! Or at least being on our feet. I’m feeling older and older- my hips, knees, and ankles are all starting to get fussy from being out 14 hours a day. I’m too young for this!

I’m not sure how may times I’ve talked about bagels in the past four days, but I’m sure that Audrey’s sick of it. Lucky for me, I finally got my bagel. And it was delicious.

This morning started in Central Park. We started our three-day “clock” on our New York Passes that basically let us into anything/anywhere for free. We tried to rent bikes but ended up with an old-school tandem bike. After a mildly terrifying start to the ride where I may or may not have thought we were going to crash and die, we went back to the bike store and, luckily, they had a couple extra single bikes that we were able to rent instead. We got to spend the next hour and a half making the 5+ mile loop on the outer bike path in Central Park. Even though it’s winter and there’s just a lot of brown, it’s still a surprisingly pretty area- especially compared to the rest of the concrete-jungle-type city. Another “NY food must,” we grabbed hot dogs on our ride through the park for lunch.

Bike riding in Central Park

Our bicycle built for two

Since Audrey and I are remarkably different people, we had quite different priorities on our trip. We decided to split up to check out museums for the afternoon. She headed to Guggenheim while I made a beeline for the Museum of Natural History. Since we only had a couple of hours, I sped through the African Mammals and Earth & Space exhibits, glancing through four floors in about 90 minutes- less than ideal but at least I got to see it.

Can't do a natural history museum without seeing the dinosaurs!

After a quick snack (a knish) and picking up a random bus that looked convenient, I headed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met). . With almost 2,000,000 pieces of art in about 1000 exhibit halls and galleries, the entire experience is overwhelming in scale alone. I expected to be be quickly bored by rooms and room sof painting and drawing, but was totally blown away at what I found. My favorite galleries were the arms and armor rooms, full of guns, knives, swords, and centuries worth of armor. The other highlight was the Egyptian temple…like…the WHOLE TEMPLE. It was huge and you couple walk in it and everything! The scale alone was impresive, but considering the location and age of the exhibit made it even more impressive that it would have been otherwise. I could have spent an entire day wandering through the Met, but only just scratched the surface. I checked out the Roman and Greek sculptures too and decided that humans have really like portraying the male figure for a verrrrry long time. There are figures and depictions from all over the world at all different periods in time that show the same thing. Just thought that was interesting.

Stained glass at the Met

Suits of armor at the Met

Egyptian temple at the Met

Audrey and I met back up for dinner tonight at the Time Warner Center. From there, we went to go see Anything Goes. It’s a fun, flashy, “fluffy” show full of catchy, showy numbers, tap dancing, and lots of jazz hands- right up my alley. It’s set on a cruise ship and is really a great time. Fun love stories, mistaken identities, lots of comedy, lots of closure at the end. Definitely a favorite.

Jazz hands for Anything Goes

We finished off the evening with a late night trip to Top of the Rock, a view of NYC from the Rockefeller Center. The whole city that we’ve started to learn and be familiar with was lit up with all those recognizable landmarks. From the 67^thfloor, Manhattan started to look like the map that I’ve been spending so much time studying- all the streets laid out in beautiful grids, a calm dark rectangle for Central Park, and climbing skyscrapers lit up with dots of lights on every floor. In the distance, we could see the darker outer boroughs and New Jersey across the river.  There isn’t darkness in any direction because of the east coast megalopolis (all those giant cities one after another). The expansiveness of that urban environment appears endless.

Looking out from Rockefeller. That's the Empire State Building in green

Looking out from the Rockefeller Center

This morning, we continued on our quest to try to work things out with our missing New York Pass. I wrote before that we forgot it in Houston on Friday. We thought we were oh so clever and got our roommate, Vinita, to overnight it to our hotel. But since my name was on the envelope and Audrey’s name was on the room, the hotel wouldn’t take it and were agonizingly close to recovering our investment before it slipped away again. So Monday, we started at the post office where they told us it had been mailed back to Houston as return-to-sender. Thanks to Audrey’s careful eye on reading the fine print on the website, we were able to head to the NYPass office for our next attempt at recovery. We thought we were lost at first because we ended up in the “Bar Office of New York” with lots of bustling lawyer-types passing us by but we eventually found the office and, between the account numbers that we had, were able to replace the card!! I couldn’t stop smiling for the next couple of hours- I was so upset that we’d invested so much money in something, only to completely lose it, but then everything fell into place!

We accidentally found Grand Central Terminal where we ate lunch and got snacks from Magnolia Bakery (yum!) for later. From there, we headed to the 9/11 Memorial which only opened about 6 months ago. It’s on the site of the original towers and is two giant waterfall-type pits where you can’t see the bottom where the water flows out. Around the perimeter of each square are the names of all of those killed in the 9/11 attacks. The water drowns out the sound of nearby traffic and construction and the surrounding trees make the entire site surprisingly peaceful and reflective. Across the street, you can watch the construction on the new World Trade Center and there’s an on-site museum and a visitor’s center around the corner. Even though there were plenty of people there, it was very quite, very solemn, and pretty sobering to see the sheer number of names lining the plaques of those pools.

Names on the 9/11 Memorial

Looking across the 9/11 Memorial

Our next stop was Trinity Church, on Wall Street. Both being big National Treasure fan, we couldn’t help but check out the church when we realized where we were, but no crypt hunting, no treasure, no secret passageways to be found…unfortunately.

Trinity Church and graveyard

Trinity Church entrance

Audrey loves National Treasure

We walked down Wall Street, saw the New York Stock Exchange (not so exciting from the outside), and headed for the South Pier to catch the Staten Island ferry. This free ferry shuttles people back and forth from Manhattan to…you guessed it!…Staten Island. But rather than going to Staten Island, we actually just wanted a good look at the Statue of Liberty. But after the first five minutes, when we were done taking pictures, we discovered that the ferry is a terrific place to catch a free 20 minute nap without going back to the hotel. Win!!

This really doesn't need a caption

After our much-needed nap, we started north again and went into Macy’s, the largest store in the world. Since neither of us have any affection for shopping, we dutifully rode the escalators up 9 floors, “oooh”ed and “ahhhed” at all the stuff, did a quick lap around the floor, and made our way back down- impressed but confused at who on earth buys all the stuff and what human would be brave enough to actually try to shop in this Goliath of a store.

We went and got more obscenely cheap/absurdly good tickets for our show for tonight, Freud’s Last Session, and then headed back to Chinatown for dumplings. (Chinatown three days in a row, I’m sensing a pattern.) After dumplings, we checked out some of the local stands and vendors, sampled things like dried squid, and Audrey bought strange foods to take home. After another quick stop through Rockefeller Center, we headed back to the theater. Our first off-Broadway production and our first play was Freud’s Last Session. It’s basically about a meeting of theologian/pastor C.S. Lewis and psychologist Sigmund Freud during WWII. Audrey and I were both quite disappointed with the outcome. The arguments were choppy and didn’t really leave you with anything to think about- which actually is hard to do using Lewis and Freud. The acting was “meh” and the writing was unimpressive. Hopefully that’s our only dud for the week and it’s all uphill from here. Still a great day though.

One of my good friends who graduated last year, Jon, now lives and works in NYC and I was looking forward to seeing him here. He invited Audrey and I to join him and Val (his girlfriend who also goes to Rice and is in town visiting) for church this morning. We went to Redeemer Presbyterian Church on the East side at Hunter College. Redeemer is the home church of Tim Keller, a famous pastor and author. Even though he wasn’t speaking this morning, the service was very good, although much more traditional than I’m used to.

Audrey, Val, and Jon

After church we met a couple of members of Jon’s small group and then the four of us (Jon, Val, Audrey, and I) headed down into Chinatown for dim sum. I’ve never had dim sum before today, but it’s basically like a bunch of little baskets of food- dumplings, steamed buns, chicken feet, tofu, and lots of things I had no idea what they were but they tasted good so I can’t complain. It was a fun experience and something that Audrey and I have been talking about doing for a while so it was fun to do it as a whole group. And also surprisingly a lot cheaper than it would have been in Chinatown in Houston- the four of us ate till we were full for only $28!

After dim sum, we walked through a bit of downtown headed for the east river. We walked across the Brooklyn Bridge (it’s only about a mile) and ended up at a riverside park in Brooklyn. There, we got ice cream from the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory (I’d never heard of it but it was delicious) and walked around taking pictures of the Manhattan skyline and enjoying Jon and Val’s company for another couple of hours. We took the subway back towards the NYU area and visited Jon’s apartment. It was fun to see where he’s been living for the past couple of months since I’ve only seen him a couple of times since graduation. And it was great to see how happy he is here and how he’s settled in to his new home in the big city.

Audrey and me on the Brooklyn Bridge

Part of the Manhattan skyline from the Brooklyn Bridge

After leaving Jon and Val, we headed back to Times Square to try for more lottery and rush tickets at other shows. We ended up in the wrong places at the wrong times and didn’t end up with any of the shows that we were hoping for. We did, however, happen to stumble upon a lotto for Godspell, a musical loosely (very loosely) based on the gospel of Matthew. My name was called for the tickets and I happily secured two front row tickets for less than $30 apiece. (At the time, we definitely didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into, but more on that later.)

Winning the lottery for tickets to Godspell

After a quick lunch at the strangest excuse for an “Amish Market” I’ve ever seen, we headed back for the show at the Circle in the Square Theater. Definitely the weirdest theater I’ve ever seen, the stage is actually round and has seating on all sides. The “seats” that we bought were actually “stageside” cushions on the ground so that, sitting, we were actually at about chest level with the stage. The whole show was really interactive and the actors kept coming over, whispering to us, and even occasionally pulling somebody up on stage. It was completely opposite of everything that Porgy & Bessoffered- it was fun, light hearted, interactive, flashy, and just a really good time all around. There were trampolines, confetti cannons, absurd costumes, and lots of hilarity. I could have reached out and touched each actor at some point during the show we were so close. We had a lot of fun watching and interacting with the show, they even had free “wine” (grape juice) on the stage for the audience during intermission. At one point they even quoted some of the same scripture we heard at church this morning during the performance- definitely not something I expected. The end of the show was pretty surprising though. They skipped the resurrection! They crucified Jesus and then took bows. What?!? Who does that?!? They left out the best part!! I can’t say I’ve ever heard anyone rap passages from the Sermon on the Mount though, so it had that going for it. I was really disappointed with the ending and realized, as I thought about it more, that they’d left out most of the actual “Who was Jesus” content, even though the entire musical was passages from Matthew. Strange. We went to the stage door again, but this cast seemed much less excited to see us than last night’s. But all told, we had a really fun night with the performance.

Jumping for joy for Godspell

I'm pretty sure the real Jesus looked absolutely nothing like this Broadway actor

A thought for today: public transportation here is a breeze. This morning was also our first time trying the bus system and we did just fine on that as well. Other cities should take a note from the NYC playbook. The whole city is incredibly simple to navigate, not only because of the numbers and grid of the city, but also because the public transportation is clear, extensive, and incredibly easy to use. We’ll both be pros at using the subway and buses by the end of the week. Or maybe by tomorrow.

Our first day in New York City!! We headed out this morning to explore, get our bearings a bit and start getting a better handle on the city. High on my priority list was finding a battery charger for my camera so I could take pictures like I was oh-so-excited to. We checked around a couple of places near our hotel (legit places like Radio Shack) but I ended up getting a “forty dollar” charger from a sketchy little electronics shop for “only” twenty-five dollars. Probably not worth that much, but I needed it, so it was. We made our way to the nearest subway station and bought Metrocards for the week ($29 for 7 days of unlimited subway and bus rides- a fantastic deal) and started trying to learn the subway system. We figured out enough to get us to the Times Square stop and came out of the subway in an entirely different world. Suddenly, we were in New York. Like, the stereotypical skyscrapers-and-a-million-people New York. The first building was The New York Times. Like…THE New York Times. We walked around half-stunned for a while, almost unable to believe that we were actually here. Actually in New York City. Everything was so loud, so busy, so crowded, so shiny, so…everything!

So. Many. People!!

We walked a couple blocks, trying to let everything start to sink in, the smells of all the food carts, the enormity of the buildings, how to dodge a hundred people walking at you, the sounds of cars, buses, subways, all of the sensory overload all at once. But then, we hit Times Square. Two observations about Times Square: 1) It’s not a square. 2) It’s really really reallllllly bright. But really, Times Square was mind blowing. A gajillion lights and signs and people and stores and things happening all at the same time. We stood and stared and tried not to get run over as we started trying to take it all in. So insane.

Billboards in Times Square

Our hope for tonight was to watch Book of Mormon and Audrey, champion of all things musical, knew the only way to get tickets was going to be through the lottery held before the show. We showed up…along with about 300 other people, all hoping to get the 22 tickets that were available. Unsurprisingly, we didn’t end up getting tickets, but we had a lot of fun starting to get a feel for the process and people who we’d be involved with for the rest of the week as we try to get affordable Broadway tickets.

After the lotto, we headed out for lunch. We were going to check out a place that Stephanie recommended, but ended up at The Counter, a custom burger place right across the street. It was there that I ate the best burger of my entire life. Everything about the burger is your choice, the meat, cheese, toppings, even the bun. I had a beef burger with brie cheese, dried cranberries, green chile, grilled pineapple, and apricot sauce all on a honey wheat bun. Absolutely amazing. My mouth was very very confused but also incredibly happy.

Very full and content, we hopped back on the subway and headed towards SoHo and Greenwich Village. We wandered through quite streets with lots of little shops and cafes. We saw NYU and an arch that I’m pretty sure belongs in France somewhere, not a little park by NYU. While we were in the park, it started snowing! Nothing tremendous, just enough to remind us that we were DEFINITELY not in Houston and further separating this “New York wonderland” from our regular life.

Apartments in SoHo

We found this in a park by NYU. Through the arch, you can see the Empire State Building.

Audrey has a friend from high school at NYU, Nick, who we met up with for the afternoon. He walked us around the area and down to Chinatown where we got Boba (my favorite). We had a nice time chatting and hanging out in his apartment, getting out of the cold, and he and Audrey got to catch up a bit too.

We left Nick’s headed back to Times Square, what I suspect will be our most frequented location this week since it’s central and right by all of the Broadway theaters that we’ll be running between. We waited in a relatively short line and got tickets to see Porgy & Bess, a Broadway musical that Audrey was soooo excited about. $37 dollars for fourth row orchestra seats. A good start to the week!! Apparently, being a student, willing to wait in lines, and okay with gambling whether you get a ticket or not is going to work in our advantage for getting cheap/awesome tickets. I’m excited.

On the way to our first show

With two hours left before the show, we decided to keep wandering the area. We made our way to Rockefeller Center: building, stores, lit trees, and a hundred national flags surrounding an ice rink, statue, and fountain. I’m sure it’s even more impressive with the famous Christmas tree up, but it was beautiful anyway.

In Rockefeller Center

From there, we decided to try out one of the Halal carts dotting the sidewalk. (Halal food is some sort of Mediterranean/Middle Eastern food that we saw a million times today and that came highly recommended). We headed towards the one that we’d heard the most about and were greeted with a long (but fast-moving) line and, eventually, a humongous/delicious pile of lamb, rice, salad, pita bread, and a mysterious “white sauce.” I approve.

Finally, it was time for my first Broadway show! We made our way back to the theater and found our seats, right in front of the stage. Porgy & Bessis the story of a woman from a questionable background and a cripple who she falls in love with, all the time wrestling with the horror of her ex-husband. It starred Audra McDonald and Norm Lewis, both amazing actors/vocalists. Audrey loved every minute of it, but it took me a little while longer to warm up to it. I was not super engaged for the first act, but the acting in the second completely blew me away. Leaving the theater, I was completely blown away by the quality and the power with which Audra McDonald, especially, played their part.

Such a sad/awesome performance

After the show, we stage doored- basically, you go and wait for the actors to come out after they get out of costume and then you get to meet them, take pictures, they sign your Playbill, all that jazz. The first time Audrey told me that was normal, back when I saw my first show in December, I thought she was insane. But turns out that, as normal, she was right and it’s a ton of fun.  It’s really cool to meet the people you just saw on stage, tell them what you loved, etc. Audra McDonald is actually pretty famous and she’s the person that Audrey was most looking forward to meeting probably out of the entire week. We even got to take pictures with her. Audrey just grinned ear-to-ear the entire way back. Definitely a great start to the week.

Audrey and Audra

Me with Norm Lewis from Porgy & Bess

After more than six months of planning and talking about our New York trip, we’re finally here!! Our trip got off to a pretty rough start- Audrey fell and screwed up her ankle and couldn’t walk, I lost my camera charger, Audrey’s iPod got lost (and found about an hour before we left), we forgot one of our New York Passes (our ticket to get into everything in NYC for “free”) and both of our flights got delayed because of massive snowstorms in the Northeast. We both came into this trip pretty tired from a long week before Spring Break. Audrey especially had a ton on her plate leading up to leaving. We packed at the last possible instant until her parents came to pick us up and take us to the airport. We grabbed a quick lunch on the way there and arrived at the airport in time to find out that our flight had been delayed by an hour- which wasn’t bad except that we had a 45 minute layover in Baltimore. Luckily, that flight got delayed too so we ended up with plenty of time to sit around and for me to get obnoxiously excited before we actually flew out. Poor Audrey put up with so much of my bouncing off the walls before we actually made it to the city.

I'm juuuuust a tad bit excited to be here

We flew in with an amazing view of Manhattan- all the lights of the city bright in the window, the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building standing out on the skyline. Once we landed and got our luggage we headed out into the cold to catch a taxi to Harlem where we had our hotel. I realized I’ve been in a hundred taxis in other countries but never in one in the US. Definitely a different experience. For starters, it cost a LOT more than $2, but it also had a built in touch screen with a TV, map, and info setup for us to read through as we rode. We were way more interested in looking around than reading though. We got our first views of some of the bridges and buildings of New York although we were still pretty far North relative to all the exciting stuff.

We made it to our hotel, Aloft Harlem, without incident and made our way to the front desk. As we tried to check-in, we were shouting over the club music playing the “lounge” where a million people were hanging out, drinking, playing pool, and generally being incredibly loud. Nevertheless, we got all of the details worked out and headed up to our room. Audrey told me to stop saying it, but I couldn’t help but use the word “trendy” over and over and over to describe our hotel. Everything was sleek, modern, hip and…trendy!! From squishy gel floors in the elevator to our cone shaped sink, to the enormous TV in the room, everything was so…trendy!! Such a nice treat for our week here!

By the time we dropped our stuff off, it was 11:00 and we still hadn’t eaten dinner so we set out for our first bit of exploration around the hotel. Since New York Pizza is supposed to be pretty famous, we found a local “Italian” pizzeria which turned out to be run by a bunch of people speaking Spanish with recent Latin pop hits playing in the background (which I didn’t mind in the least). Whatever works!

Enjoying my first bite of "New York style pizza"

We came back tonight very very tired but excited to finally be here. Looking around the hotel room and realizing how much we were going to want to rest, I kept repeating “We have to actually leave the room this week!” and I was only half-joking. After a bit of an interesting start to the day, I’m really looking forward to seeing what the next seven days of exploration will hold. But for now, sleep.

This is a post I’ve really been looking forward to writing and so I’ve saved it until the end. This will be my last blog post here. If you’re still reading this, thank you so much. I really appreciate all of the feedback and encouragement that I’ve gotten over the past couple months and I’ve had a ton of fun writing. The support from each of you has been a huge deal to me and I’m so grateful for it. Hope to see you all soon!

• Days spent abroad: 86
• Days since I last saw a hot water faucet in a shower: 86
• Pictures taken: 1973
• Countries visited: 3
• Minutes on television: 7
• Days in Barra Honda: Not nearly enough (18)
• Bad sunburns: 0 (Yay me!)
• Taxi rides where I was proposed to by the driver: All of them
• Longest bus trip: 24 hours (Panama City, Panama to Managua, Nicaragua)
• Machetes wielded: 2
• Americans I celebrated 4^th of July with: 4
• British people I celebrated 4^th of July with: 5
• Cumbia songs danced to: Too many
• Percentage of meals that included rice and beans: 90
• Ticos I met who have lived in my hometown: 1
• Birthdays celebrated: 1
• Words written on this blog: almost 30,000
• Ziplines…zipped(?): 12
• Volcanoes visited/photographed: 4/8
• Monkeys spotted: 63,935,529 (approximately)
• Times you’ll have to hear about Barra Honda when talking to me over the next several months: Now’s a good time to buy stock in Duct Tape