Second Half of Day 1

After the slow start to the first morning, we headed over to the Empire State Building by subway. As we approached the building, we tried to find the little slivers of street that had some sunlight. It was so cold this weekend. We were told that it was 20 degrees below normal, and the high temperature we felt during the weekend was about 40 degrees. At the Empire State Building, there were tons of people in bright orange and yellow jackets that accost people and try to get them to purchase a trip up to the top of the Empire State Building. After informing us that it would cost 30 dollars or so to get to the 80^th floor and 50 to the top, we quickly decided that the view of the building from the ground was more than sufficient.

Enough view for me

The Manhattan temple and Times Square were two other things we saw that morning. I have to admit that the Manhattan temple was somewhat underwhelming. Usually when you think of a temple, you imagine sprawling temple grounds with beautiful landscaping and a beautiful white building that rises far above the horizon. Obviously, this is not possible in Manhattan, where it is dwarfed by surrounding buildings. It almost stands out in its simplicity and in its size. If not for its Angel Moroni statue, you would never pick it out as a temple. We struggled to find a good shot for a picture, and never really found a good one.

See Moroni?

In Times Square, I found a sporting good shop that was displaying the new jersey (technically referred to as a “kit” in soccer) that was to be worn in the game on Saturday. This kit was red, with a blue sash going diagonally from the left shoulder to the lower right hip. The store had set up a photo booth in which customers put on the new kit and get four photos taken. I did that, but my mind and body weren’t quite up to the challenge this time and I was disappointed with the photos I took.

By then, it was about 1 PM, and Ryan and I had about had it. We hadn’t slept much, and were exhausted from hauling our heavy backpacks with us all morning. Mentally, we had expended a lot of energy to get through the morning. We were so disoriented and tired, we walked into a movie theater and contemplated going to see a movie just to relax and get our energy back. I suspect that had we done so, we would have both been asleep within 10 minutes. As much as we wanted to see Sucker Punch, we decided against it and opted (wisely, I believe) to start the trek to our hotel.

Our decision to go to the hotel wasn’t without some incident, of course. We had no idea how to get there. You’d think we’d have planned out our routes so that we wouldn’t struggle to get from place to place in a strange, massive city. MMmmmmm, not so much. We huddled for a while, and still couldn’t figure it out. After calling the hotel, we got some directions that seemed like Greek again. Times Square? Port Authority? Bus terminal 51? Get off at the Toys R’ Us on John F Kennedy avenue? Ok, whatever you say hotel lady. Once again, we took it one mass transit device at a time, and we made our way there. It was sweet relief to check in early and collapse into bed at 3 PM, and we drifted to sleep almost immediately.

Times Square

"By George, we did it!"

It is truly amazing to me what fatigue can do to a person. When we walked in the hotel room, we didn’t care about how our hotel was right on a highway in a rather run down part of New Jersey. We didn’t much care that the room reeked of cigarettes even though there was a strongly worded sign indicating that this room was a non-smoking room. All that mattered was letting our minds and bodies recover after a truly exhausting 18 hours or so. Earlier in the day I was texting Tim about what we wanted to do the next morning. I told him that we were heading to the Hotel and that we had had enough and needed rest. Tim sympathized, but wondered if we might be better off just sticking it out and seeing a bunch of other things and catching up on sleep later. I felt like I was catching my second wind at the time, but I was wrong and sacrificing a few hours of New York City ended up being a good decision. It allowed me to enjoy the rest of my weekend. Sometimes an ounce of prevention really is worth a pound of cure.

A good decision

I woke up a couple of hours later. Ryan slept for a while longer. When he woke up, I requested that we go to an Old Navy up the road so that I could find some kind of thermal to wear underneath to avoid a potential back injury from my shivering. We grabbed some Sonic on the way back, and I called my grandparents in Schenectady and we talked about a variety of topics. After that, I went right back to sleep at around 10 and slept until about 8 or so the next morning.