The City That Never Sleeps

We made it to New York this afternoon and had a very eventful day.  Since we are in the city that never sleeps, we are following the trend.  It is almost 2 AM local time and we got up at 3:45 AM Sask time!

We could really see as we flew out of Regina how wet the fields are and how spradically they're seeded.  It's really something to see from the air.

When we got onto the plane, alarms kept going off and a voice kept saying, "Jet tube overheat."  We wondered why they would let passengers hear that.  Otherwise, our flights went well, with one minor exception at customs in Minneapolis.  We got a friendly customs agent who we could see had been joking around a fair bit with the people in front of us.  Katie really got into the joking mood.  He was really friendly, and asked us what we did for a living.  Katie said she was a nurse and he asked, "A good one?"  Katie responded by saying, "I hope so.  I haven't killed anyone yet!"  At this he turned very serious and was like, "Don't even joke like that, m'am."  Way to go, Katie. :). (Honestly, I might have said the exact same thing!)

On the way to Newark the pilot of the plane sounded just like Toby from The Office, which gave us great entertainment.

When we got to Newark, we checked into our hotel, which is right at the airport.  We headed into Manhattan soon after, which incorporated the most expensive train ride per distance travelled in history.  It cost us $20 for a 3-minute train ride to Newark Penn Station (one way). Fortunately, the rest of the 30 minute trip only costs $1.75.  That first part is still demoralizing!  We then found our way to the World Trade Centre (which will be enormous when fully constructed), Wall St. and the Staten Island Ferry.  We took the free round trip on the ferry, which gave great views of the Statue of Liberty and Lower Manhattan.  It was a good first thing to do in NY.  We chose to sit as high up on the ferry as possible, on the "hurricane deck".  We discovered quite quickly on the return trip why it was called the hurricane deck, as we had to hold tightly on to our shirts to keep them from blowing up to our necks.  That is not an exaggeration.  Katie almost had an incident while she was trying to take a picture of me.

From there, our plan had been to go to the observation deck at Rockefeller Center, but we were short on time.  We took the subway to Times Square, and walked through it on our way to the Ambassador Theater for "Chicago".  We stopped off for a quick supper at Sbarro's, which is basically an Italian cafeteria.  We both had a slice of artery-clogging (but very good) pizza, which we gulped down in about 5 minutes, because we were in a hurry to get to the theatre, which happened to be across the street.

Chicago was amazing.  I realized that you don't fully appreciate the quality of a Broadway show until you've been to one.  It also didn't hurt that we were in the front row, dead center!  (We even counted the seats to make sure we were in the center.)  Granted, the best seats in the house are probably a little further back, but I don't think we would have traded the front row experience.  The music was phenominal.  In a lot of musicals, I find myself during the songs looking forward to the next drama part.  This was easily the opposite.  At the end of the show, the two leading ladies receive roses as part of the show, and they tossed them to people in the front row.  One of them got given to me, which was cool.  Katie was gracious enough to let the girl beside her have the rose that came her way. We're going to try the Wicked lottery tomorrow night to see if we can score cheap front row tickets to Wicked.  If we don't win, we're tempted to see what cheap seats are available for tomorrow night's shows, since Chicago was so amazing.

We then took the train back to the hotel, which took us about an hour and 45 minutes, because we stayed in Manhattan too late, just walking around, and the trains are very infrequent and take really roundabout routes after 11:00.  We're very happy to be back, and we're not sure why we're still sitting here instead of just going to bed.  So... goodnight!