Spring Break Trip, Part I: New York (Manhattan)

Almost two months has passed since I last time posted anything to my blog. It's not that I forgot my loyal readers, but I actually devoted some time for studying this time :)  The Iowa winter was very gentle and we barely even had snow, so there's nothing much to tell about that either.

Anyway, the exchange blog continues again with another "travelogue". This time I will be writing about my spring break trip to New York with Antti and Abdul, two other international students here at ISU.

We left to New York on Friday the 9th of March, which was the first day of a week long spring break. After arriving to La Guardia airport, somewhere in Queens, at 7pm, we didn't have much time to do anything but checking into the hostel that night. The place definitely wasn't any "five-star hotel": Our rooms had no other furniture than beds. However, the location of the hostel was perfect since the distances from midtown Manhattan to any attraction were relatively short. 

Downtown Manhattan

Saturday noon we took a water taxi tour around the Manhattan "island". The tour was one of the five attractions we had admission to with our city passes. Starting off with the water taxi tour turned out to be a good idea, because this way we got a grasp of the geographical layout of the New York City area right from the beginning. At the end of our tour we arrived to East River Pier (or Ferry, check google maps), which was right next to the Brooklyn Bridge, and walked all the way to see the Ground Zero (or 9/11 memorial) on the west side of Manhattan. The memorial basically consists of two big pools with the names of the 9/11 victims. The two new skycrapers are currently being built right next to the pools.

Night time view of uptown Manhattan.

Because the weather for the first two days was quite cold, we decided to explore the midtown area (and some indoor attractions) the second day of our trip. First, we went to Rockefeller Plaza and took the NBC Studio Tour at Rockefeller Center. Some of the places we got to see during the tour included the studios of "The Dr. Oz Show" and "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon". After the studio tour we headed to Empire State Building. Surprisingly, there wasn't much of a line to the Observatory Deck, so we had some extra time to spend up there and ended up waiting a few hours for the sunset in order to capture all the three views (day, sunset and night). From the observatory deck we were able to see the whole Manhattan and nearby areas, such as New Jersey, Brooklyn, Queens, Central Park and a little bit of Harlem.

T-Rex, Abdul, me and Antti

On Monday morning we visited the American Museum of Natural History. For the first time in my life I had the chance to see the big dinosaur skeletons, and indeed they were pretty impressive. The museum also had a section for the history of space research, which we took a quick look at. After the museum visit, Monday afternoon, we had a chance to catch up with a former ISU exchange student from last fall. She had just come back from her own travels, so the hour-long reunion that we had was full of great stories. 

Bowling Green Bull and the "Trio"

Tuesday was reserved for visiting the Liberty Island and Ellis Island. We picked up the ferry tickets for the Statue of Liberty early in the morning and headed to downtown. Along our way to Battery Park, where the ferry would depart, we explored the downtown area more closely, particularly Wall Street. Approaching Wall street, one can really see the difference between downtown and the rest of Manhattan. Closer to Wall Street you can encounter more people wearing suits and carrying suitcases, but the infrastructure changes quite a bit too: Downtown has the most skyscrapers by far. However, the street itself wasn't as glamorous as I thought it would be and the surrounding area felt like quite a labyrinth. In contrast, midtown and uptown are fairly simple to navigate in. When you look at the map of Manhattan, the streets and avenues are numbered from right to left and from down to up in a "smallest to largest" order. Anyway, after Wall Street we quickly stopped at the famous Wall Street monument, the Bowling Green Bull, a 3200kg bronze sculpture. 

Statue of Liberty and me

Finally, finding our way out from Wall Street we headed to Battery Park. There we would have to line for some time for the ferry, but it was still less than an hour, which wasn't that bad since that was about the only time we had to line for anything in New York. The ferry took us to Liberty Island where the famous Statue of Liberty stands. The day couldn't have been better for visiting the Island. The chilly and slightly rainy weather of the previous days had turned into a warm and sunny spring weather. Admittedly, after arriving at the Island and standing there seeing the statue with my on eyes, made me realize how far I had actually come. So many times had I seen it on TV, but actually being there right next to the statue, made the experience "so unreal and amazing". 

MSG

 One of my favorite things we did in New York was when we went for an NHL game. Thanks to Abdul we got the tickets for Rangers-Hurricanes game with a reasonable price, $55 each for seats in the backrow. Rangers play their home games in the same arena as the Knicks, in the "world's most famous arena": Madison Square Garden (MSG). Compared to a basketball game, the backrow seats in an NHL game are not that bad at all. You can easily watch the game without using binoculars, but that's maybe because the hockey rink is almost twice as big as a basketball court. However, visiting MSG and going for an NHL game were, once again, things that I had long wanted to do, which made it even more memorable.

Rucker Park

The last day in New York we went to see a Broadway show, The Lion King. The price we paid for the tickets was close to $100 and we purchased them online a week  before the show. Later we found out that there's a ticket office on Time Square that sells Broadway tickets at half price or less for musicals that are not sold out and have shows on that day. Nevertheless, we wouldn't have had any other choice but to buy tickets in advance anyway since The Lion King is one of the musicals on Broadway that usually gets sold out days before the shows. However, our tickets were for a two o'clock show, so we still had some time to kill in the morning. On my request we agreed to use that time for visiting Rucker Park, "the mecca of streetball". The outdoor court with its stands had always looked a lot bigger on TV and on youtube clips, and it was in a somewhat hard-to-find location in Harlem, too. The time we were there (at noon), I didn't see anybody hooping, but that didn't bother me. After all, I was standing on a same court that reached its legendary status by hosting various exhibition games and tournaments that still to this day attract NBA players to come to NY and showcase their skills, while proving the basketball nation that they are the very best in what they do.

After spending six days in New York, it was time to head to Philadelphia and Washington DC. For the latter part of our trip I will post another "travelogue" to this blog. I will do my best to get it done as soon as possible, however, not before I have recovered from writing this terrible turmoil of Finglish. Hope you enjoyed reading it, though :D