Winter 2009 - NYC, Part 3: Statues and Bones

Alright so I've been a bit behind on updating. I will DEFINITELY update more often; one more coming up tomorrow! Here's the last part of the NYC section of our trip.

25th
We went to see the Statue of Liberty today, along with a half-dozen other Singaporeans who hadn't left for home yet. Had lunch with them at some Chinese place first.
Took a subway to the port. Ferry goes from Manhattan to Staten Island, passing by Liberty Island on the way.
In the ferry. Really quite big.
My first glimpse of the statue of liberty.
A shot when the ferry was a bit closer. Statue's pretty cool!
.. and more SoL, since it's so freaking famous. That tiny island's Liberty Island, obviously >_>
See that snowy thing? Donald Trump's golf resort. Costs 60,000USD for a membership, yay (overheard from a random tour guide).
Staten Island.
Staten Island port. We only stopped for 3 mins or so, so we wouldn't miss the next ferry back. I don't think there's much to see there; trip was just for the statue of liberty and..
..the Manhattan skyline, obscured by mist, darkness, and a crappy photographer >_>

Was a 20min trip each way. When we got back, we realized that we were near one of the things Jian really wanted to see.
Bull testicles!
... No, seriously, it's a famous, huge bull on...
Wall Street.
Supposedly brings good (finance) luck if you touch it.
It'sa me! Jian REALLY wanted to climb it (as in, onto its back), but there were too many people there. Paiseh lah, and probably illegal. Winston said he'd done it with some friends at 2am, when it's pretty deserted. We actually did sorta plan to go there again past midnight to climb it, but eventually decided it was too far and way too f*cking cold.
They like putting up big christmas trees all over the place.

We had "Christmas Dinner" at Nyonya, the Malaysian place. Ordered a buncha tasty stuff, half of which Jian wouldn't touch cause he's so fkg picky. Also, we noticed an interesting logo on the wall painting...
Hello. That's very familiar. Hmmmmmm >____>

26th
We were to leave on the morning of the 27th, so today was effectively our last day in NYC. McD's for lunch again (GRRR!!!) then went to the Museum of Natural History. MASSIVE place. Somehow the ticket price was "pay what you wish", so I offered the guy the 12 bucks it costs for a student ticket. He goes "No man, you're a student, you should save money!" and takes just one dollar :D
Dinosaurs just past the main entrance!
Hard to imagine those huge things were once alive and tearing stuff up.
Really big, ancient slabs of rock from undergroouuund.
Astronomy section! Big big biiiiig round thing that's actually a CINEMA! After the video you leave and walk down a long path that spirals down the outside of the sphere (portion of the path is visible here).
See the poles on the ground? Jupiter, Vega, etc. That's Winston looking at the camera btw.
The poles are connected to models their corresponding planets/stars/wtv. Quite cool.
A large Origami tree wtf.
Close up of the base. Polar bear taking a leak hehheh.
Another pic of the tree, but with flash. Looks smaller in this one though.
Big wall o' animals and stuff.
Damn alot lor =="
MASSIVE life-sized blue whale model.
Like.. MASSIVE. I mean everyone's heard that blue whales are big and all but whoaaaa, really gives you some perspective when you see how big that is in real life.
Big.... jellyfish.
"Treat the Earth well. It was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children."
-Kenyan Proverb
Cross-section of a huge tree. Giant redwood I think? Fkg big lor =="
Diorama of a snowy farm.
Wooooow. Fake punya, ceh. Just a diorama of sorts. The tree and bushes in front are on a different plane from the background.
Some African exhibit. Didn't look through.
Something they were selling at the shop. It's self-sustaining I think. Pretty cool, but not worth 85USD (~RM300 wtf).
View from outside the museum. It stretches pretty far to the left and right of this pic, so you can't really tell how big it is. Shit pic lol -_-

The museum was GIGANTIC, but we didn't get much time here; just an hour, cause our show at the comedy club was starting soon. We would've definitely been late had we not caught a cab and cut right through Central Park to get to the show place. Lucky!

They Call Me Mister Fry, an autobiographical play by a guy they call... Mister Fry >_> Kinda obvious right. Wasn't so much a comedy as a play; It's about a teacher and some problem students. There were some really sad parts, mainly cause it's a true story. Not too bad overall, but I wouldn't really recommend it ): Sridhar, on holiday in New Jersey, came down to join us for the show. Bad timing lah, if he had come earlier we coulda done more stuff with him, but we were leaving the next morning so.. abit hard. Sorrylah bro.
Last meal in NYC, at Udon West again. Delicious stuff. Gyudon and Curry Udon set.

After that we went back and packed our stuff for the next day. A HUGE HUGE thanks to Winston for letting us stay at his place for so many nights. Thanks to his roommates too!

Temperature: 4 to -3 or so. Not too cold, but really windy!

Expenditure:
Chinese lunch, 13
Nyonya dinner, 16.5
McD's, 7.5
Museum, 1
Taxi, 3.25
Comedy club, 29
Mandatory drinks at comedy club, 20 wtf
Udon West, 14.4
Total: 104.65USD=RM358

Winter 2009 - NYC, Part 3: Christmas Eve

23rd - 24th

So everyone totally messed up Liying's arrival time, resulting in a wasted day of waiting and wandering. Long story.
Times Square/Broadway.
Billboards for broadway shows! We all really wanted to watch Wicked, but the affordable tickets(i.e. less than 130USD =_=) were sold out ): ended up buying tickets for some.. play in a comedy club.
Random Billboards
Lots of chocolate shops wtf. Probably the biggest (and only?) shop that sells nothing but M&Ms.
M&M dispensers sorted by colour wtf. Three rows of plain M&Ms..
and a buncha tubes with themed mixes of M&Ms! There are mixes by country too, like green white and red for Italy.
The dispensers and "drain" where all the fallen M&Ms go. Needless to say Huan, Jian and I helped ourselves to a few handfuls of M&Ms. Btw they're 12.99USD a pound =_= What fug.
The Hershey's store! We got free Reese's mini-cups when we went in. That weird machine thingy? You can buy a bucket of chocolate; place an empty bucket under the funnel thing, tell the attendant and chocolate comes spiraling down the tubes!
Hooooly... wait no, coin box. Ceh.

Outside the shop, an alternative solution to the healthcare reform problem.
Less kids = Less liability :D
Bought a pretzel from a street vendor. Salty and pretty firm, not like the usual dessert pretzels/pretzel crackers we have. Quite nice.

So we walk around broadway for ages, walk 15 blocks to the Nike Store where bitchface shoeless Jian takes one look and goes NAH NO THX LET'S GO, try to look for a cinema (Avatar?), fail to find a cinema, sit around in McD's (Winston joined us there), go to Penn Station and wait another hour for Liying, meet Liying, and go for dinner. 6 hours summarized into one paragraph yay.

Japanese BBQ for dinner! Half-price on all beef after 9.30pm! OM NOM NOM NOM.
Waiting..
FRESH MEAT.
Taaaaasty. Seriously, not many things top meat and good rice. We ordered tons but not much pics cause.... all kinda busy eating. TAAASTY.

The next day.. Dim Sum for breakfast!!
Om Nom Nom. Good stuff.

Liying and Jian wanted to the Metropolitan Museum, while Huan and I wanted to toss (frisbees) on the Great Lawn, Central Park. Sorry lah, weather forecast said it would be warm! Easiest solution was to split up and meet again in the evening.
Central Park's famous reservoir.
and its ducks (don't click).

Winter really shows over there.
Hmm.. could it be that..
FFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU >____> (that's the Great Lawn btw, covered by 8 inches of snow).

So we tossed abit on the less-snowy areas and went over to the museum. It's IN Central Park, right by one of the edges. Convenient!
The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Summary by a non-artsy guy.
Museum has 234235098 rooms that look like this:
and they've got a main staircase inside, like so:
End of summary. Not a huge connoisseur of paintings and stuff ehehe. They were nice and it's pretty amazing that people can paint nice things on gigantic canvases but.. I can't spend more than 20 seconds on each painting lols.

After that we took a subway down to Rockefeller to see how the Christmas celebrations were going. Saw a group of bboys busking on the street:

Pretty awesome stuff huh!

NYC is has lotsa limos.
Must be really inconvenient to drive that thing around town lol.
Massive Xmas tree by Rockefeller Centre! Apparently like 200,000 (or 2 million?) people crowd around Rockefeller/Times Square on Xmas Eve.
The skating rink. Closed I think? Massive amounts of people.

We got there at 6-something.
Tree again.

There were SO MANY PEOPLE and we didn't really have concrete plans for the night. No reservation at any restaurants either!
Big snowflake Christmas lights that flash on and off with the background music (Xmas songs, of course).

So we decided to eat at the first decent-looking restaurant we saw. As luck would have it, TGIF for Christmas again!

I had Jack Daniel's-flavoured pork ribs and shrimp.
HUGE! TGIF in Msia serves large portions. Restaurants in USA serve large portions. So servings at TGIF in USA are.. ENORMOUS.
MASSIVE.
Burp :D

We reaaally didn't want to stick around for another 3 hours just for a countdown to midnight (well they didn't; I kinda did lols ==") so we went back and missed it on TV.
.. Same spot as the white one from earlier. Wtf.
A giant string of Xmas lights! Someone made a very obscene comment about these >_>
Busker at one of the subway stations, playing a hang drum. Really cool!

Yeah so we went back, failed to buy alcohol (<21 T_T) and played soccer on GH's roommate's PS3 for a few hours. My Xmas wasn't anything special. New Year's is gonna be awesome though; fireworks at the White House!

Done for the night, so Merry Christmas everyone!

Temperature: Fluctuating! From negative seven up to two or three degrees Celsius!

Expenditure:
Pretzel, 3
Japanese BBQ, 23.5
Dimsum, 13.5
TGIF, 36.5
Buskers, 2
Total: 78.5USD = RM270 x.x .. Christmas ma? X.x
@JwC: didn't have my list with me when I first posted this! I note down my spending on my iPod :D