New York Trip Recap (Day 2)

This is a recap of Day 2 of my NYC trip, so if you haven’t read the Day 1 post, head over there to get the full gist of the trip.

On Day 2 of the New York trip, I had a meeting with a faculty member at New York University’s Summer Publishing Institute, so the first part of the morning really revolved around that. Her office was only a block away from the hotel my sister and I were staying at, so it was a short walk. We grabbed some muffins from our deli and set off.

Because the office was so close by, we ended up stopping by the New York Public Library to look around. We didn’t stay long, though, because there was nowhere to sit and eat besides outside. My sister wanted a place where she could use Wi-Fi, eat, and look up our plans for the rest of the day while I met with the NYU rep. She ended up going across the street to a less touristy branch of the NYU library system.

New York Public Library

After my meeting with the representative (which went pretty well, I think), my sis and I did something pretty stupid. We decided to walk from our location to the Staten Island Ferry using Google Maps as our guide. My sister’s reasoning was that she hated the subway, mine was that I had no idea four miles would take so long to walk.

So we trekked out. We weren’t wearing the best clothes for a hike either. I was wearing my boots and semi-fancy clothes (skinny jeans and a nice sweater) with my backpack on in case we bought any souvenirs; my sister was wearing tennis shoes, but she didn’t have a real coat on, just a short denim jacket. While I was comfortable with the walk up until the last 45 minutes when my feet began to tire, she was very vocal about being cold. I had a big, puffy coat on. Heehee…

Anywho, on the walk there, we went through a couple of parks. For the life of me, I can’t remember their names, but in one of them, the squirrels would eat right out of people’s hands. It was bizarre.

This was the squirrel that ate out of the sitting woman's hand.

We also saw the Flatiron Building on the walk to the ferry.

The Flatiron Building. Stupid trees got in the way.

The most important thing for book lovers though is my visit to the Strand. Our stop here was about a third of the way through the four-mile walk. We didn’t stop here long though. It was very crowded and miserable in there. It was a cool experience, but we were tired and didn’t have a lot of time to browse if we wanted to make it to the Ferry before nightfall. (We didn’t end up making it before nightfall anyway.) My sister did buy a hoodie to wear over her clothes on rest of the walk though, and I bought a T-shirt for later wearage.

My bag from the Strand. I also got a free bookmark.

After a Starbucks snack trip and a short stop at a geek store (I write that with the utmost respect. There were Harry Potter figurines in that store.), we finally made it to the Staten Island Ferry. I’m not sure exactly how long the trek was, but it was loooooong. It was something like 30ish blocks. It was a fun experience, though.

What we felt like when we got to the ferry. I was so happy to finally be there.

The ferry was relaxing compared to our trip getting there. The wind outside on the viewing decks was very cold and a random guy kept getting my sister to take pictures of him, but it was a lot less stressful than the walking had been.

I finally got a chance to sit down.

I couldn’t get a decent picture of the Statute of Liberty because my phone’s night mode is awful, but you can kind of see it in one of the pics.

You can kind of see the Statue of Liberty. It's in the middle of the picture. It's a small, shiny, green speck.

All in all, it was an adventure that I don’t want to repeat. I’ll take a bus or ride the subway for any trip longer than seven blocks. Needless to say, we got a cab on the ride back to our hotel. We also were too tired to do anything but order a pizza delivery and rest our aching bodies once we got back.

That’s it for Day 2. Day 3’s recap should be up sometime next week. Stay tuned!