day one of the NYC experience

So the time has finally come to break down the big trip. Much apologies, it has been quite some time since it happened.
DAY 1-
we left P-town bright and early- around 7:00 for a 10 o'clock flight-i have my father's disease of goin to the airport way too early. It was a direct flight with some sweet little tv's which made the time go by much faster. We arrived in New York at JFK in the early evening and met up with Ryan and Joselyn at the bag claim. After a while of trying to figure out where to go for the Airtrain and what stop to get off, we finally found our bus that took us to our hotel. Me and Erika had no idea where the hotel was located because Ryan had planned out our stay, all we knew was that Ryan had picked it out and it was "super convenient." To our surprise, this "convenience" as it were, was in the middle of the ghetto of beautiful Queens, right across form the airport.

We decided to go into the city, because the night was young. we didn't know where the subway was, so we had to hop on the local bus. Thats when things got a little interesting. Allow me to paint you a picture: We get on the bus and go through ghetto Queens, travelling around Rockaway Blvd- the neighborhood that 50 cent comes from on a friday night. We were the only white one's on the bus, and when i say white, we are talking WHITE. Me and Ryan passed for locals- Ryan looked like Joey from Friends, and I can pull of the mexican, latin american pretty well. However, the women were a different story. Here are Erika and Joselyn, both white, blonde and stickin out like sore thumbs. Both wearing white designer jackets with fur, designer jeans, designer purses...plus both them with eyes the size of saucers as the neighborhood locals hopped on the bus.

We finally got to the subway station, and bought what we thought at the time were useful subway/bus cards. It took us nearly 2 hours to get from our Holiday Inn in Queens to Manhattan. We headed into the city and cruised around SOHO a little. Surprisingly Erika handled her fear of homeless people remarkably and we cruised the busy streets. After wandering for a whilewWe ended up in Little Italy starving. Meandering down Mulberry St. we settled at Caffe Palermo aka the "Cannoli King of New York. It was pretty amazing, good paninis and even better desserts.




After eating tiramisu, bread pudding and some sort of mocha concauction that blew my mind we decided to venture around some more up in SOHO and then decided to head back to our "convenient" hotel. The funny thing though, was that we were realtively new to the whole subyway thang. All we thought was the different color lines took you to the places we needed. However we failed to understand that there are different trains within the different colored tracks to take you to the various parts of NYC. Unfortunately we learned that the hard way. and I do mean hard. We ended up taking the wrong, very wrong subway into the heart of Queens, just in time for the last train of the evening left. We were stranded, once again in the ghetto, with no more trains to catch. After watching the locals shoot up and deal different drugs in dark street corners, the girls kind of lost their cool. Upon being extremely terrified of the hood, Joselyn had to pee and was becoming more and more uncomfortable by the second.

After one attempt of catching a cab gone awry, I rolled up to a pizza joint to ask for directions about getting a cab. The pizza dude was real coi aobut showing us the way to "the best cab co." in New York,which ended up to be down a dark alley, with broken down cars on the sides of the streets, under the subway overpass. We ended up getting a cab, and luckily made it back to our hotel safely. Our cab driver lightened our mood a bit as he could tell that we were not from Queens or NY at all. For some reason he kept complimenting Ryan on his ability to score three beautiful women on vacation. The old italian who was obssessed with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and tv in general kept us entertained for sure during the trek around Queens to the sweet Holiday Inn. To this day, we don't know how the driver got so confused- for one, how he confused me for a hot lady- I guess his standards are real low, or he is into his women having some serious 5 o'clock shadow. And 2nd, how Ryan could possibly be percieved as that big of a pimp.