The next morning, Pauline actually woke up earlier than me! She and Kitty had planned to wake up at like 7AM and head over to Century 21 for more shopping. I “slept in” until 9:45 before I headed out for my own adventures. I had wanted to visit Liberty State Park to take some pictures of the Statue of Liberty, and decided to walk there. I left at 10 and was making decent progress until I got to a point where the road stopped and undeveloped areas started. By then, it was 10:45 and I had to be back at the hotel by noon to check out, so I back tracked to the closest light rail station to get through the remaining distance. I reached the Liberty State Park Park & Ride and had to take yet another shuttle to the visitor’s center. On the sign, it said that the shuttle came every 20-40 minutes which was trouble because then I wouldn’t make it back on time. Fortunately for me, it arrived within 5 minutes.

The driver seemed to have a chip on her shoulder about white people. I bet she was tired of rich, white folks demanding to know how much the shuttle cost so she clearly, but very s-l-o-w-l-y said a d-o-l-l-a-r t-w-e-n-t-y f-i-v-e. I also realized why we had to wait 20-40 minutes for the bus, because she drove even slower than she talked along the cobblestone road to the visitor’s center. On the way back, she wasn’t as bitter; maybe because her only passengers were a Hispanic and me; both visible minorities.

The visitor’s center itself was kind of dumb, it was an old railway station and a place to buy ferry tickets to Ellis Island and the Statue. I was far enough away from both of these places that I couldn’t really take a good picture of either of them. The closer of the two, Ellis Island, was facing New York so all I could see was its profile. It was good in a way, because I was able to see everything and make it back to the bus stop within 20 minutes and catch the next loop. I also made it back to the hotel by 12 even though the light rail was horrendously slow.

We then went over to Newport Center to get some breakfast/lunch, meet the girls, and do some last minute shopping. Then it was on our way back home. We started driving at 3 which was bad because it was almost rush hour; and it was going pretty slow for awhile, but once we got out of the city we were able to make some ground. That is, until we came to some state park. There was an accident where a tractor trailer crumpled the crumple zone of a sedan in front of it and blocked both lanes of the two-lane highway. It backed up traffic for a good 5 kilometers, but fortunately not on our side. We only had stop-and-go due to rubber neckers.

We continued on and met up at the same McDonalds as last time for some dinner. It was a less boring trip this time because both Victor and Richard bought CDs at the Virgin Megastore, and we had some BBQ and X-13D chips. We hit the road again at about 9, made it across the border without problems, but then ran into traffic again after Kingston. This provided the perfect opportunity for some more NDS action!, although after awhile the two cars were no longer following each other and we had to quit this hilarious activity. The rest of the drive was pretty smooth (and fast) and we made it back to STC by 1AM. We re-organized the drop off and I was home by 1:30AM, which was great because I had to work the next day. Overall, a fun trip.

Ben kept bothering me about what the most fun thing about the trip was, I thought about it for quite a while, and there was a lot of fun stuff (Rent, Japanese place, clubbing), nothing one thing was significantly better. But, I figured it out now, and the most fun/best thing about the trip was being able to go with a bunch of friends. That may some lame but it’s true; I could have done and visited all the same things on the trip by myself, but it wouldn’t have been the same would it?

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: diary, nyc07, travelling