Day 1: "Keep Your Eyes Open and Up"

New York really is amazing. I knew I would love it, it scares me, but I knew I always had to see it, but I had no idea how truly spectacular it is.

I feel like I'm already on East Coast time because I went to bed last night around 10:30 p.m. (7:30 Phoenix time...) and was awake at 6:55 a.m. (aka 3:55 a.m. Phoenix time...yuck) but it didn't feel early. But after losing Monica's keys in the smallest purse I own that has a handle, I had to walk to the subway alone because she has responsibilities and I can barely take care of myself and my tiny purse.

But I found them, walked past the Entenmann's and bought my 7-day unlimited metro card. When I got on the platform I had no idea what to do. The train in Phoenix is above ground and goes 19 blocks. There are a million trains here! Monica told me the R was tourist friendly and gave me the best book (nothing scary like the one I bought). So a train pulled up and I saw a few people not getting on it and I figured it was because it was so crowded, but when the next one showed up just as crowded I knew that wasn't right. But I got on the next one anyway and thank goodness it took me to Times Square. Who knows where I would be right now.

I was too freaked out to put in my earbuds so there was nothing to distract me from the fact that I'm in a tiny tin can shoved into a slightly larger tunnel traveling at a million miles an hour underground. Until the automated voice over the PA says, "A crowded train is no excuse for inappropriate sexual conduct." While I agree, it made me laugh.

I got off the train at Times Square and circled a building because I didn't know what to do. It was still overcast so I wasn't sure I wanted to take the bus tour but I was sure I wanted some coffee. And after walking for a few minutes in desperate search of a Starbucks, something I've never experienced before, found a cute place called Le Pain Quotidien where I got a cup of coffee and drank it in Bryant Park. Yes. That Bryant Park. The one where fashion week is held every year. I watched a man do exercises in a rocking chair and decided to take the bus tour (the two are unrelated).

After locating where I needed to walk to get to where I thought the ticket booth was for the tours I headed out on 6th Ave. also called the Avenue of the Americas and found myself right in the middle of Times Square as seen on t.v. The place where the ball drops at New Year's, TKTS where I fully plan to go and try to get cheap(er) Broadway tickets, an M&M World like the one in Vegas, and a giant Olive Garden which I still don't understand.

I had to sit down and consult my map again because I was overtaken by everything I was looking at, but after a few minutes of walking I stumbled across Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum where I could redeem my online voucher for a ticket and got on the bus. It had rained and my seat was wet so I started the day with a soaked bum, not my fault.

I was nicknamed Phoenix by the tour guide, who would eventually get me to sing New York, New York into a microphone (no joke--I am wild on vacay) and this bus took us Downtown where I saw Macy's, the original location and the permanent one we see during Thanksgiving, The Empire State Building from all kinds of angles, Chinatown, Little Italy, Site of the World Trade Center, Wall Street, Battery Park and the Staten Island Ferry, South Street Seaport where I'll be taking a cruise around the harbor (Friday maybe), The United Nations, Rockefeller Center, Greenwich Village, the Lower East Side, Times Square and the Theatre District, the Waldorf-Astoria, Ladies Miles aka Fashion Avenue, Carnegie Hall, the 3 bridges Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Williamsburg, the Sun where my favorite piece of writing was published in 1897, "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus", Rockefeller Center where they tape the Today show and Jimmy Fallon, and Dave Letterman, and probably more that I'm forgetting.

Amazing. Overwhelming.

And it was over, after I'd sung my song for the bus--I'm not even kidding he asked and the music was playing and we were in the Theatre District. It was my moment.

So I got off the bus where it had picked me up initially and decided to get on a different one and get off at some of the stops and unknowingly got on the Uptown Tour bus which showed me Museum Mile (The Met, The Guggenheim, The Museum of Natural History, The MOMA, The Jewish Museum, The Frick Collection, The Whitney Museum), The Dakota and Strawberry Fields were Lennon lived and was killed and is remembered, Lincoln Center where the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Ballet and New York Philharmonic Orchestra are, Columbus Circle and Time Warner Center, Central Park including the Zoo, Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New-York Historical Society, the Apollo, Harlem where I saw a Malcolm X parade of some kind, Grant's Tomb, Riverside Church, The Plaza Hotel and a ton of horse and buggies with flowers just like the movies, and probably more.

It's so much!

In between that and the Night tour where I could see the city all lit up, my camera died, and I had to do the campfire squat pee over an indoor toilet in a Starbucks because someone either had a seizure or is just a real jackass. Unacceptable. I don't care what city it is, I don't do outdoors for this reason.

I wanted to wait to take the Night Tour until 7:30 p.m. because it would be sunset, even though it was gray and overcast and you couldn't see the sunset, it would be darker for most of the tour than if I went at 6. So I hung around and talked to a lot of the ticket agents, one who shook my hand and didn't steal my ring (shout out to Gabriel!!).

The Night Tour took us around Times Square into Downtown and over the Manhattan Bridge into Brooklyn to get a good look at the Manhattan skyline which is the best reason to take that tour. The guide new a lot too, I thought he might pass out he was talking so fast and giving us whip lash, "look right, now left, now right..."

I got my first look at the Statue of Liberty. It was very small, but I saw it.

I got scared going over the Manhattan Bridge--both times; it was on my list of things to do to walk the Brooklyn Bridge at sunset because I read it in a book, but that'll probably need to happen during the day. I'm ok with that.

I saw the Bull that everyone takes pictures of with their heads up its rear which I've always thought was funny but never wanted to do myself, but the guide said it's apparently good luck to rub a Bull's balls so I might have to do that. I saw the Fulton Fish Market which is now a Museum for dead Bodies which are my second favorite kind of Bodies. I saw Madison Square Garden; all 4. The largest Post Office in the U.S. There's a Museum of Sex. I'm so there. There's an African Burial Ground Memorial.

There was literally so much. This tour was something I've associated with New York for as long as I can remember, and since then I've wanted to do it and it was the best decision I could have made. I still have no idea where I'm going in this city but I am so glad I took this tour even though I froze my na-na's off.

So I went to the wrong subway stop on my way back to Monica's, finally found the right one, and realized why everyone had waited earlier this morning. The trains have letters! And you can see them from the outside! So I got on the right train and felt confident enough to put in my earbuds, but the thing moves so freaking fast I still peed in my already, not my fault, wet pants. And while all I had to do was walk straight ahead towards the Entenmann's I chose to walk down one wrong street, then back, then down another wrong street, then back before calling Monica but figuring it out anyway. But then I had to call her again because I couldn't unlock the door to let myself in. It really is the little things.

Things I learned:

--Trail Mix can save your life. Instant protein.
--If I were to get lost on purpose while here it would be in Greenwich Village.
--7 buildings were destroyed on 9/11 not 2.
--You continue to sway with the bus long after you've gotten off it.

Tomorrow's Goal: Brooklyn tour, Museum of the City of New York, Central Park, Night Tour to get a picture of the Manhattan skyline in lights.

A few of my favorite pictures:

Tiles for America. 9/11 Memorial.