I want to wake up in a city that never sleeps.....

We begin another adventure!  Art, Sara, Brittney and I left home at 7am, after getting up at 5:45am and downing several cups of coffee.  We made great time--got to Linden, NJ by 1pm, and checked into the Hampton Inn.  The hotel is pretty nice but Linden itself leaves something to be desired. Let's just say it's not the swankiest part of New Jersey by far. After getting a bite to eat in the hotel and getting settled, we headed out in search of Art's boyhood home in Scotchplains, NJ.  Of course, he didn't know how to get there and didn't want to ask directions, so it was a bit of......."yea, now I know where I am.....wait, no, I'm going in the wrong direction....I don't recognize any of this.....oh yes, I've got it now....well, maybe if I go this way.....Anyway, he eventually got directions from his brother by phone and we found the old homestead and it was a big blue farmhouse in a really beautiful neighborhood that had the most wonderful old trees. He got a bunch of pictures and reminisced, although it wasn't everything he had expected.  And I have to give him a break for not asking directions, because when I took him to Woodstock, Va. a while back to find my old home, he was very patient while I drove around for an hour in a couple block radius obsessively searching for the house I had lived in--and I eventually found it.  So what goes around comes around.  And I enjoyed seeing his place.

We made it back to the hotel ok, and from there took the hotel shuttle to the train station so we could make our way to New York City.  After a confusing attempt at purchasing train tickets out of a machine, looking like total tourists who had never travelled on public transportation before, we bought the wrong tickets and proceeded to board the train.  Once on the train, the conductor (they actually had conductors taking tickets on the train, a new experience for me) straightened us out and collected a few extra dollars from us and explained how we should have purchased the tickets.  So we made it safely to Penn Station, but then we were a little perplexed as to how to find the Hard Rock Cafe, where we had decided to go for dinner.  No one we asked knew where it was (I couldn't believe that).  Several tourist books for sale didn't have Hard Rock Cafe listed under their restaurants.  Come on, isn't this restaurant a major tourist attraction? We finally found one guy who gave us an approximate location--something like 42nd street (who knows where on 42nd st, but it was a start.) So we hit the street and started walking and of course, we were instantly mesmerized.  There we were, in New York, in the Times Square area, with all the neon lights and hustle bustle and excitement. We were definitely a bunch of amazed, picture taking tourists. I am not a city girl, and I have been to NYC a couple years ago, but it still amazes and energizes and excites me.  Wouldn't want to live here, but what a fabulous city to visit.  So we found Hard Rock Cafe without any problem, right there smack in the center of Times Square---with a location like that, how could these New Yorkers working in Penn Station NOT have known where it was?  We had a fun dinner though, and heard lots of ROCKING music and saw some really cool videos.  $15.00 for a burger for dinner. What a rip off.  But it was a fun rip off.  Afterwards it was dark outside, so Times Square was all lit up and we had fun just walking around and checking everything out.

Don't mess with a tired, cheap Southerner!

By this time we were pretty tired, as it had been a long, full day. So we headed back to Penn Station and caught the train back to Linden. We called the shuttle to pick us up, and they informed us it would be 20-25 minutes because the shuttle was at the airport.  With the homeless folks and the brothers roaming around in the dark, and us tourists hanging out at a dark train station that wasn't very populated, I was a little nervous. When the shuttle didn't come 35 minutes later, I was ready to throw in the towel and pay the $5.00 for a cab to drive us less than two miles to our hotel.  Actually, I was ready for that from the beginning, but the rest of the crew had wanted to hold out.  So when we finally decided to go for the cab, I verified the fare was $5.00 and then we hopped in.  I was tired. Then he radios the dispatcher to tell him where he was going, and the dispatcher tries to say the fare is $7.00.  Now, the hotel people had told me it was 5 bucks, the first cabbie I asked had told me it was 5 bucks, and the second cabbie (the one we had ended up travelling with) had told me it was 5 bucks, so I didn't appreciate it when this guy tried to then tell me it was more because there were four of us in the cab.  Now, I may be a woman, and I may be a southerner, but don't mess with me when I am tired and DONT make the mistake of thinking you can rip me off, even for two dollars.  Before I knew it, I let this New Jersey Cab driver have it, and for a moment I thought he was going to drop us off right there on the dark street. But he didn't, he drove us safely to our hotel, and he only charged us $5.00, and he wouldn't even let Art tip him, he was so mad at me.

So ends our first day in the big city.  We survived.  I have always been intimidated of big cities, but tonight I feel like in spite of not knowing a whole lot, we did ok.  In fact, we did pretty good.  And it was fun.  And tomorrow is another day!

Until then,

Beth