Inside the giant Pink Lady.

*warning*

The following may contain minor grammatical errors. it also may contain car wrecks of sentences. im not going to proof read so suck it up and figure out what I was trying to say. Love Cel.

So not long after I finished my last blog post a girl came and sat next to me. The whole trip the rather jovial train driver had been threatening that the train was going to be COMPLETELY full. Sure enough, we hit Rochester and there was an all out brawl in aisles between people trying to get a seat. Not really, but if just one person was having a crappy day then I reckon there might have been. A young woman saw the spare seat next to me and I think there was mutual relief in our eyes when she sat down. After a reasonable amount of silence we started chatting. She is one year older than me and she was on her way to Albany to visit her boyfriend. She had never been on a train before so she was unnecessarily tense. Every time the train rattled she thought we were derailing and she was standing up ready to leave about 5 minutes before we pulled into the station because she was scared that the train would leave before she had time to get off. I guess I was like that the first time I had to get off the bus in year seven.

So my new friend Danae departed the train, promising to add me on Facebook and her spot was replaced by an old man who reminded me peculiarly of a cross between oma and opa. He was a retired political science professor. We had a great conversation and talked a lot about politics. My goodness I love politics. Mr ompa, whose name I never found out, and I chatted all the way to Penn station. Did you know that Penn station is short for Pennsylvania station? I did not know that. There was a cute little girl behind us who was singing Christmas carols and star spangled banner.

When I got off the train a guy who had been sitting in front of us asked me if I was meeting someone or knew where I needed to go. It was fairly out of the blue but I assured him that I was sorted and then attempted to find my way out of the maze of Penn station. All I can say is I now understand the usefulness of exit signs being giant, red and lit up.
And now for the tricky bit. Catching a taxi in nyc with a hiking pack, a backpack and no previous taxi experience. I found a little white haired lady an asked her how to go about it. She also had no idea, so we stuck together and translated for each other until we found a queue for a taxi. It turns out that 5 pm is exactly when all the taxis knock off. I'm not kidding either.
While we were in line some people tried telling us that we only had to pay 25 dollars for a five minute taxi ride. This seemed wrong but I had no point of reference so I asked a confident looking woman in a ridiculous fur hat about it. Madam fur hat became the personal tour guide of me and all my fellow morons in the near vicinity. When she left with a better offer the woman who had been standing in front of her struck up a conversation with lol (little old lady) and I. Oh, by this time lol and I had figured out that we weren't too far from each other so we were going to share a taxi. The woman in front of us, I'm going to call Mel Scott, was really cool. She was Scottish but had lived in Melbourne for eight years. They asked what brought me to nyc and I told them my plan, Mel thought it sounded great and lol exclaimed that I was the most grown up nineteen year old she had ever met. She said it almost disapprovingly. We waited in that line for an hour. Mel and I hit it off and it was great talking to an (almost) Aussie who had travelled a lot. Lol was a tad annoying.

After I made it to my hotel I walked down the street to a pizzeria joint for some dinner. I thought it would be fun taking myself out to dinner. It was just awkward silence because talking to myself just makes it awkward for everyone around me. I was sitting uncomfortably close to a father daughter dinner, so I eaves dropped on them. They were discussing a trip that the daughter wanted to take for spring break. she was trying to convince her dad that it was a good idea. The daughter mentioned surviving the school year, I could relate to that, then they started talking about her tumour and her health. Eek! I felt bad for eavesdroping then cos it got pretty serious. I think she literally meant survive the school year.
There are some perks to eating alone. I got to eat all the bread. I could eat as slowly or quickly as I wanted. ..and not much else. Still I was proud of myself for going out for a decent meal instead of sitting in my hotel room with my jar of nutella.
It is at this point that I will say that if someone wants to join me for the rest of my trip then I will shout you every single meal.

After my meal I hailed a cab. I. hailed. a. cab. All by myself! Cool cel slides into the back seat and says casually "times square please" then with a head toss of indifference she begins to look out the window vacantly. My cool movie mimicking cab antics finished when I realised just how carsick I felt. I have a taxi mantra, here's how it goes- "don't throw up cel. Don't throw up cel. Don't throw.." the smooth cel got even bumpier with the taxi driver and I's awkward conversation discussing where exactly in times square I wanted to be dropped off. (sentence carwreck? I think yes.)

When I got out of the cab I realised just how happy I was. Through completely my own doing I was standing in times square by myself soaking in the atmosphere and completely free to do whatever I wanted. I went into the mnm super store which was fun until I got stuck in there. That is one terrifying building. In all the corners and hidden behind giant mnms I found Prams and families trying to regroup and develop a game plan. I swear the only people who make it our of that store alive are those who have had some experience with urban warfare gaming. Luckily for me, the few LAN parties I have attended set me up for success when I planned my escape from the mnm palace of hell, as it will forever be remembered as.

After that ordeal I decided to get a coffee from Starbucks and walk around confidently with it in my Takeaway cup like a yuppie. That, too, was lots of fun until it started going cold and I had to scull it. Then I hailed another cab worked really really hard on not reaquianting myself with the coffee in my way back to the hotel.

That brings us to now, where there is an italian woman cussing to her computer like a madwoman, thinking that no-one can understand her.

No photos, because technology still sucks. You have no idea what I did just to get this to upload.