2005-12-10 00:00:00
NYC
Saturday was an organized trip for Mount Aloysius alumni to New York City. It started with an early wake at, yes that's right, 2AM Saturday morning. We were on the road by 3AM to pick up my Aunt and drive to the Mount. Once there we boarded the bus, waited for the slackers to board, then were off. I tried to sleep on the way, but someone decided to bring their pre-school age kid on the trip. Now don't get me wrong, I love kids, but this kid was amazingly awake for that early in the morning. Needless to say, I didn't get much sleep on the way to New York. But oh well, no big deal. I was looking forward to some rityz shopping and nothing was gonna screw that up.We were dropped off at the corner of 47th and Broadway. It was so cold that morning I felt like Dr. Evil in his cryogenic chamber. But we braved the cold (not like there was another choice) and started walking. We walked to Toys 'R' Us and toured there for a little bit. Then Aunt Vickey called the car service so that we wouldn't have to walk half way across the island to China Town. Wow... You would not believe how people drive in New York. And I'm not kidding. You think you know from watching specials on TV or from movies or from people telling you how it is... you don't! You have to be in a car in New York to understand it. They're crazy! Passing, cutting people off, swerving, and all of this is done within three inches of the other cars... no kidding. There were many times I was wondering how the car didn't get scratched or beat up. It was ridiculous.
We made it to China Town in one piece and with more money in our pockets than if we had taken a cab. I thought it was going to be different. I pictured signs in Chinese on all of the buildings, Chinese banners across the streets, and those huge dragons walking through the streets. Buy was I wrong. All China Town was... cheapo "shops" lining the street and people shoulder to shoulder. I absolutely hated it. That was not the kind of shopping I was expecting to do. But my sister was having fun so I didn't say anything. After China Town we went to Little Italy to eat. We ended up at Pomodoro's after every other restaurant was packed. Once we walked in, we realized why they all were packed. Each place had a max of 10 tables. Pomodoro's sat, at the most, 34 people. But we were lucky and there were four open seats at the same table as these three girls. For those of you wondering, one good looking, one semi-good looking, and one not. But anyway, that's where we ate. Sounds pretty uninteresting, but if you would have been there you would have seen what I saw. At the table right across from us there was this girl... this... wow... girl. I happened to come across this picture in someone's webshots gallery. Imagine Jennifer Love Hewitt crossed with the girl in that picture. That's what this girl looked like. Dark brown hair, no bangs, shorter in the front than the back, and wavy/curly. But, as always, I said nothing. So I did all that typing for nothing cause I'll never see her again. Anyway...
My Aunt called the car service and we were dropped off at Bloomingdale's. Now this is my kind of place. But I wasn't interested in shopping for myself, even after walkin in the front door to be greeted by the men's department. This shopping was for my mom. I was looking for her Christmas present. So we went to floors two, three, and four. After a lot of looking she found a brown cashmere sweater to match some of her work clothes. A little over $100, but worth it. I really didn't care how much it cost. As we were looking we went through the designer collections (the placed where you sit down and the people bring clothes to you) and I saw this awesome white dress. It wasn't a formal dress, more like something a 20-something would wear to the club. Then I looked at the price tag... $1600. That made me happy. All I wanted to see in that store was something over $1000. No one else wanted to shop in Bloomingdale's, so before we left we stopped in the men's department. I looked at the shirts and found this awesome super-light lilac shirt that was made from this reflective type material. It was $275. I wanted it really bad, but I had already spent four times more money on presents for my family this year than last year, and besides, it's not like I need any more shirts. But I did find one nice shirt and my Aunt found another one. So I bought them and my sister got me a tie.
After that it was time for church. We walked to St. Patrick's Cathedral for 5:30PM mass. The line to get in was like the line for a Beatles concert. By the amount of people trying to get in you'd have thought God made another human appearance inside of the church. Turns out it was just half of New York coming for mass. We got a seat about half way up the aisle. Before mass started there was this sound... woooosh woooosh... wooooooooooosh. I turned around and noticed some smoke, actually, a lot of smoke. I'm not sure exactly what happened, but it appeared that either someone was lighting a candle and lit something else instead, or someone's clothing or bags got too close to the candles. The wooooshing was the fire extinguisher. All was cool and no one had to leave... mass went on. Most people in the church didn't even know there was a fire. We left mass right after communion. We never do that, but we had an hour before the bus departed for home and we didn't know how long it was going to take us to walk where we needed to be. We made a bathroom stop at Banana Republic, and then walked back to 47th and Broadway to wait for the bus. Our walk got us there with 45 minutes to go. So I got some Starbucks and we waited... and waited... and waited... til we finally boarded and went home.
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