Well, it wasn't exactly a whirlwind weekend but a lot was accomplished in the way of seeing the sights!
After work on Thursday, I drove to Pearl River, NY to pick Josh up from a work thingie. The Garden State Parkway was jam packed full of very slow cars. I'm pretty sure that everyone's IQs drop half when getting onto the Parkway, which therefore makes them forget how to drive their car. Awesome. It took me FOREVER to get off of it.
I finally picked Josh up and got lost trying to get back to the Parkway. Oops. Luckily, his Blackberry has GPS capacity and we eventually made it to Flemington for dinner. I wanted to take him to a NJ diner because that's a big deal around here (diners), but the diner was closed (at 9:15 pm) so we went to Stewart's instead. Fine by me. I'm always up for a coney dog, even if I shouldn't eat one!
Friday morning we got up at 7:30 am and finally made it to the Hamilton train station, getting into the city around 11 am. We took the PATH from Newark Penn Station so we arrived at the heart of the WTC area in NYC. Amazing. You literally come into the station under ground in the middle of construction. Crazy. It's just a huge pit of construction.
We spent a bit of time in downtown Manhattan walking around. It was a perfect day to be outside: not too hot, not too cool. We walked around Battery Park, watched the New York Acrobats perform, walked by the Staten Island Ferry and up the piers. We ended up walking down Wall Street, passing by the stock exchange to catch a subway to Times Square. We stopped by Grand Central and walked around for a short bit catching a glance at the Chrysler Building. It started raining right when we got to Times Square so we just hurried and got lunch at Bubba Gump's to get out of the rain. It was good...
After lunch, we tooled around Times Square going into the ToysRUs & M&M store. Yum. Then we walked up to Rockefeller Center, then to Central Park (seeing the Apple Store and going in on the way). We sat down in Central Park and it started to rain (the rain from earlier was short and sweet and the sun had come out in less than a half an hour). We had ran to the subway in the rain and catch a train to Penn Station.
I had bought us tickets to the Empire State Building on Wednesday so we had to go up (even though it was raining). In line, they told us that visibility was only 2 miles and dropping because of the rain. When we got up there (stopping at the 80th floor to take a different elevator to the 86th - the 80th floor was a construction mess) visibility was just fine. It was beautiful. It had stopped raining and even though the wind was cool, it wasn't very uncomfortable.
After the Empire State, we stopped to get souvenirs on our way back to Penn Station and took the train home. Whew. We were exhausted! We opted to get samiches and pizza at a little place in Lambertville and just took them back to the apartment and watched the Olympics Opening Ceremonies.
Saturday we slept in until 8:30 am. We drove the Philly and parked the car (they take your keys and your car...weird. We decided that the Cruiser was on its way to NYC to a chop shop, but in the end it was just fine). We got our tickets to see Independence Hall at 3:45. Since it was 11 am, we had a little time to kill. After walking around a short bit, we opted to Ride The Ducks. It was really fun! It was a little over an hour long but it went all over Historic Philly, down South Street and into the water.
After the Ducks, we walked to South Street and got cheesesteaks at Jim's Steaks. Totally worth the 30 minute wait! Yum! On our way back to Independence Hall, we just had to stop in at one of the local stores: Condom Kingdom. It was exactly what you would expect of a condom store: lots of games and condoms.
We ended up going through security to get into Independence Hall, got a history lesson from a guy who couldn't remember his history and sat around on a bench. It was another beautiful day. We finally went on the tour and then Josh stopped by to see the Liberty Bell before we went to get the car. On our way home, I had some sheets to return to IKEA, so we stopped by there and got their awesome ice cream and walked around for a little while.
We ate in New Hope that night at Triumph Brewery (yum) and had a couple beers. Then we walked back to Lambertville and hit up the Lambertville Station pub and closed it down at the early hour of 11 pm. We then went to the Inn of the Hawke and really did close it down around 1:30. We watched a bunch of YouTube videos when we got back to the house and didn't get to bed until after 2:30 am! So wild!
It was raining on Sunday when we finally got out of bed. Josh looked his flight up online and it was canceled. Awesome. After 45 minutes on the phone and two different agents, he finally got rescheduled for 9 pm that evening out of Newark (he tried to get them to change him to Philly and the lady wanted to charge him a penalty BECAUSE THEY CANCELED HIS FLIGHT). At about 4:30 or so (after I took a nice nap during rainy weather and a bit of hangoverishness) he looked again...and again his flight was canceled. After over an hour on the phone, Continental switched him to a Northwest flight out of Newark at 11:30 am the next morning.
Monday, I drove him to Princeton Station and dropped him off to take the train to Newark. He called me later and his flight was canceled. Again. Bad weather. Again. (It was sunny here abvout 90% of the day). This time, his new flight was out of Philly at 6:15 am the next morning. I urged him to get a hotel because 3:15 am is a really early hour to have to leave my house to get him to the airport. He did and his office paid for it.
I met up with him in Philly last night for dinner one last time (the company he was visiting for work on Thursday sent him a car and driver to drive him from Newark to Philly...nice!) I went home and he said he was going to bed early.
His flight made it. Finally. To KC at 11 am this morning. One hour after he was supposed to get there.
In Philly, his flight was delayed 1.25 hours after already getting on the plane because of some indicator light. He tried to recline his seat during the flight and the guy behind him said "I don't think so" and shoved his seat forward. No reclining for him (jerk behind him). He arrived 15 minutes before his departure out of Detroit. He got on his plane just in time (First Class this time) and was delayed again. This time because there was a crack in the plane and they had to get a special machine out to determine if it was going to cause an accident.
I'm so glad he made it home safely!!
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