New York Vacation Day 3 - Driving to New York City (Number 5)

Oh man was there a lot of driving today. When I originally planned this day I knew it would be more than a few hours. Especially since I wanted needed to stop in Scranton (for the "The Office" geek in me). The roads out East or more confusing than back home, but I'm definitely glad I brought my car charger so that we could use the GPS on our phones to help get us to where we needed.

For some reason NY had these
Road signs everywhere.
Seems like a waste.

I did get my wish that we got to stop in Scranton (it doesn't hurt that even though it was a bit longer, it helped us avoid as many toll roads as we could). It was very pretty. Larry didn't like all the one way roads, but I picked it up quickly. Unfortunately they are all names, and not numbers, so it was a bit more difficult. But I knew if it said to go to Washington which direction that was in. They had this huge outdoor mall there, reminded me of The Gateway a lot, that I so wanted to go explore, but knew we didn't have the time. We finally found a parking garage to put our car in (I didn't realize it would be like downtown and we couldn't just park on the street) and at this point I had to go to the bathroom so bad I just ran to the closest place I thought would have one (a CVS), but for some reason couldn't find it anywhere. Luckily next door was a Subway, and we were both pretty hungry at this point, so I stopped in there.



I did walk away with a few stickers
On my pants from this.
It was worth it.

The guy at Subway was really nice. He was saying how crazy busy it was and we told him at least it was Friday, but he kept saying "Yeah, but the first Friday isn't a good one." We just kind of laughed and ignored it and that's when he realized we weren't from around there because they have some fun festival at the mall we saw on the first Friday so then everyone comes into the food places around it. He asked where we were from and when we said Utah he said he could hear our accent when we said Utah (I'm still confused on this one as I don't think there are multiple ways to say that state name...how do we have an accent? Haha). He asked where we were going and when we told him we just finished Niagara Falls and were heading down to the City he was telling us all the cool things to see and explaining how updated the 9/11 memorial stuff was. He was a really friendly guy and I was glad someone was giving us little tips (not that anyone was ignoring us, but usually I'm antisocial on trips to others).

After our quick stop there (with a picture of me with the sign, of course), we finally made our way to NYC via the George Washington Bridge. Now let me tell you how awful that bridge is!! It takes 4 lanes of traffic to open into 20 toll booths, to merge into 4 lanes again. You'd think the 4 into 20 wouldn't be so bad, but it was! You have no idea where you're going, GPS is all sorts of confused, everyone has to be first and will create their own lane if need be, and there is non-stop honking! Like that is going to help anything. Oh boy if I never see that bridge again I'll be a happy camper. It was so crazy cramped. There was a sign on the bridge saying you shouldn't park or be stopped on the bridge at all and that it should only take half an hour to get through it (or something to that effect) we just laughed at that (internally of course, we had a bad case of road rage from this today).

Washington Bridge craziness

Once we were off the bridge we thought getting to our hotel shouldn't be too bad...wrong again. I guess the bridge just gave us a taste of what driving in the actual city would be like. Once again, everyone honks, makes their own lane, and MUST.BE.FIRST. I didn't realize the city was a bunch of one way roads as well so if you missed your turn you had to wait a couple lights before you could try again. I also thought our hotel had valet parking so I was pretty bummed when I saw they didn't and we had to park at a garage across the street for $10 (for a whole 20 minutes!). Luckily the people at the hotel have been very nice and helpful. They even took our bags for us up to the room and walked us to the elevator we'd use and showed us where the breakfast would be each morning. They claim they upgraded our room, but the one we have is really tiny so I'd hate to see what room we were going to get. Also, I booked asking for a city view but we got stuck seeing the other side of the hotel and into those rooms so it was kind of awkward. Needless to say the shades were drawn all the time.



Tiny room
Comfy bed

Our pretty light



I think the  most shocking part of coming into the city is I wasn't aware how extremely dirty it is! One of my co-workers made a joke for us to try not to fall into the piles of garbage around and I laughed not realizing how extremely true it is! It reminded me a lot of Vegas at night (only this was the day time).

Tonight we decided to try Hard Rock for dinner because it was close and open late (apparently being two hours ahead doesn't mean you are hungry earlier). Both the hotel and restaurant were right off of Times Square, but I almost didn't catch that. Times Square isn't as obvious in real life to me, it was almost disappointing. Guess we'll see how I feel about it as we go though. I will tell you I'm glad we won't be using a car (we turned it in earlier) because it's obviously much faster to just walk places.

Me trying to get a pic of Times Square at night
My phone obviously hates the lights.

Although it was a bit more rough towards the end of today, I'm so glad we're finally here. I can't wait to go exploring. We've only got 9 days in the city, so hopefully that's enough.