New York City, "I ♥ NY"
The plan for this trip started some time during a weekend in the mid of October. R, H and myself were just asking each other if we had any plans for the Thanksgiving weekend. Since none of us had any plans we thought of making a plan soon to get good deals. The final outcome of the discussion we decided to book a rental car at Enterprise. Two weeks past by and none of us booked a car, H thinking R will book, R thinking I will book and I was thinking H will book. Finally I decided to take the extra step to book the car online. Yo! we got a car ready for Thanksgiving holidays.
Days just past away thinking where we can go worth for 5 days and which is drivable. At the crisis time, when we had just 2 weeks for the thanksgiving weekend. After a lot of brain-stroming we decided upon going to Newyork city. When we had just about 3 days for the holidays we sat all night to find a good deal for the hotel and finally booked the hotel at about 4:30 AM and then went to sleep.
On 22rd November evening R, H and myself conferenced to decide if we really wanted to go with our plan of driving to Newyork because R felt that it was not a good idea as the weather forecast was not good for our route to NYC and NYC.After a lotof discusion we decided to go. The nest day in the afternoon at about 1 PM H came to my office and we both went to Enterprise and we rented the car. We got a Buick Le Sabre. Once we got the car I went back to office and H went to his house. At 5:30 PM I left from office and went home and packed my stuff for the trip and by then H came to my house. Then we went to Walmart and got some stuff to munch on the way. Later we went to O'hare airport to pick G, who was coming from Oklahoma. His flight was bit delayed due to the bad weather. Later we picked up G and drove to Chicago downtown to pick R and M. By the time we started from R's house it became 11:45 PM.
We started to head toward NYC exactly at about 12 midnight and we started our journey to NYC on I-90 E and later on I-80 E. In between we lost our track and went on the wrong route later we joined the correct route and continued our journey.
When we were near Toledo it was snowing really heavy. It was told that it snowed about 7 inches that day in Toledo. It was real adventure to drive in that. All you can see is white track, I had absolutely no idea which lane I was driving as the whole road was covered a thick layer of snow. At one point I could hardly see anything in front of me so I put on the hazzard lights and started to go at a speed of 30Mph. Every car in front of me also did the same. That day I envied all the trucks that went past us. The trucks had no problem driving through the snow. H and I drove the whole distance until 24th afternoon 3:30 PM and finally reached our hotel that we booked in Jersey city.
It was surprising to see that the hotel that we booked was own by desi's. We checked in and all of us freshened up. R and H called their friends in NYC to find the places to see and also to find the best way to reach those places. After all the phone calls we decided that we will go to the Madame Tussaud's museum that evening and we decided to take the bus as it would be safe us a lot of time on parking and finding the route etc.
At about 5:30 PM we took a bus to NYC downtown and we went straight to the Madame Tussaud's museum. Once we entered the museum we were really to see the wax models of all the stars. We spent about 3 hrs posing with each star wax model. It was a nice experience to take pictures with Robie Williams, Julia Robert, J Lo, Donald Trump, John Travolta, Brad Pitt, Woody Allen, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Beatles, Michael Jordon, Pele, Charlie Chaplin, our very own Mahatma Gandhi, Princess Diana to name a few(the list goes very long). Even though we spent more than 3 hrs we never felt like stopping from taking any pictures, the museum staffs were waiting patiently with a smile on their face as it was nearing their closing time...But nothing stopped us, we kept running all over the place to take a picture with whom ever we wanted to.
Once out of the museum we walked in the cold streets of NYC to the Time square. It was a great feeling to stand in front of NASDAQ . They say if we stand at the time square long enough we can meet every kind of people in this world. But I found so many indians that I felt like being in India as the place was crowded and dirty just like how it is in India. Then we went in search of Joe's Pizza as we heard its a famous in NYC like how Giordano's is for Chicago. We asked quite a few people on the road but none of them answered us properly, most of them did'nt even bother to answer to us. After a long search we never found the pizza so we gave up and went which ever pizza place we saw opposite to the Toys r us store at time square. By the time we finished our dinner it was 11:15 PM we went rushing to the bus station to catch the bus back to our hotel. To our bad luck the last bus for the day had left just 5 mins before we went there. We thought we will take a cab and go back to our hotel but to my surprise the cab in NYC was very similar to that of the Autorickshaw's in Chennai. The most scary part was when we were talking to one of the cab driver 5 other cab driver round us up and argue why we can pay so much. After a long wait of 1 hour in the siverely cold NY winds we decided to take 2 cabs and go to hotel as it was 1 AM by then. Finall we reached the hotel and immediately fell on the bed with absolutely no more energy.
Next day we planned to leave for Statue of liberty by 7.00AM because we heard only a limited number of people are allowed to go on to the platform where the statue is placed, but by the time we got ready it was 8.00AM. We then took a subway to the WTC station and took some quick pictures at Ground Zero. We then went fast in search of the place where we can board the ferry to the Statue of Liberty. There was a long queue for the ferry. We waited in the queue for about 45 mins and by then we got our turn to board the ferry to the Statue of Liberty. We sat on the top of the ferry though it was bitter cold. We thought that the ferry will go just near the island and turn back, so H, G and I took some quick pictures of the statue and We with the statue as the back ground but later we found that ferry dropped us there. We were so happy to find that we will be going right under the statue, which never expected to happen. I went around the statue biting my Hotdog that I got from the Mc Donalds that was present in the Statue of Liberty island. We took pictures from different angles of the statue. The statue is awesome from which ever angle you see it. Later we took the ferry to go back to NYC but the ferry dropped us at the Ellis Island. So we went around the Ellis Island and to our surprise we found photograph of some immigrant in early 19's who look very similar to that of M. We made fun of M saying one of her ancester has come to US in the early 19 century. We made M stand next to the picture and took a photograph of both of them together. Later we took the ferry to NYC.
It was 4:00PM by the time we reached NYC, so we quickly took a look at the Battery Park, Art Museum building and Wall Street. On Wall street we bumped into one of our college batch mate, it was nice to see her there. Later we went to Ground Zero and read all the board which described the timeline of happenings of the 9/11 tragedy of WTC.
Later we took the subway to reach the 42nd street from where we were going to the Central Park. We went around the Central Park for some distance but we were too tired to take walk for long so we turned back and headed towards the Empire state building.
There was a lot of crowd at the Empire state building also, When we were in the queue we were told that we can go to the observatory soon if we got a combo ticket of Observatory and 4-D show. So we bought the combo ticket and headed towards the 4-D show. it was a nice show we enjoyed thoroughly. The show was a simulation of how it would be to be on a helicopter in NYC. After show we took the elevator to the 86th floor which has the observatory and gift store. We went around in the observatory trying to identify each building NYC which we knew. Later came down and has our dinner at sbarro and went back to our hotel without any problem this time.The nest day we started relaxed after vacating the hotel. We put all our stuff in the car and left the car in a subway station and went to the Grand Central train station. The station was a great treat for the eyes. We later headed towards the UN buiding. We took the tour of the UN building. It was a nice tour, the tour was very informative, we felt very happy to see all the halls which we have seen on TV and learnt in our Civic subject.
We were happy to see the hall where our former Prime Minister Mr.Atal B Vajpayee had give a speech in the recent past. Treat to the eyes were the gifts that different countries had given to UN. Each gift spoke so much about the culture of the country and it was so unique.Later we took a CTA bus to the Rockfeller center. There Macy's had a light show which was really good. Later we went around the Rockfellar center and went back to the subway station where we left our car.
We took our car and went to the Brooklyn bridge. On the way to the Broklyn bridge we took the wrong route and so we got the chance to see the China town and the Italian place. Later we saw the Broklyn bridge and bid adieu to NYC and started our journey towards Pittsburg Balaji temple.
At about 8:00 AM on the 27th of November we had reached the Pittsburgh temple after a long search. Pittsburg temple is special, because this was the first temple to be built in US. The temple was very much like the ones in India. We had our Darshan and later had some food at the temple and started towards Chicago. We reached Chicago by 10:30 PM and so we took G around the downtown showing him the important places of Chicago. Later we returned back home and brought a curtain down on our most successful Thanksgiving trip to NYC.
