This past weekend took a trip down to New York City with another friend at Umass to visit… more friends from UMass. I was shocked to make it to her house in Eastern Mass to be honest, usually not really good at driving the city and its boroughs. Traffic was a mess that day, and after I got to her house and met up with her, took another hour or so just to get into the city and to Chinatown’s South Station, where we caught the 7:00 PM Lucky Star bus to NYC.
The bus ride was peaceful with the Chinese driver pushing the bus to like 80 mph the entire way there, and we got there around midnight or later. Passed the long bus ride by watching an episode of Coffee Prince, and just sleeping and listening to iPod. Steph, Tracie, and a friend of theirs from Rutgers, Ray, picked us up on Grand St. and we headed back to Steph’s place in New Jersey. Seriously people need to learn how to merge lanes, because it took about an hour and half for a football length’s amount of cars to merge into a single lane. We finally got into her town like around 1:30 AM or so and everybody pretty much knocked out right away cause we were suppose to get up at 7:00 AM to head to Corona Park in Flushing for the 18th Annual Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival.
I wake up next morning and it was like 9 or 10 already, and after everyone got ready it was like nearly 11, and we didn’t even get to the park until about noonish. We parked on the opposite end, and on a humid day, it was a tough walk over. I was in awe, I had never been to a Dragon Boat race before, and the atmosphere was electric, much better than the ones on an Ultimate field. We managed to catch Steph’s old team, NJ Dragons in one of their semi-final heats. They had a good lead until about 50 feet left, where HSBC’s team just went berserk and torched everybody in the final stretch. Steph caught up with her old teammates and we just wandered around before all going back to the car, by then it had gotten really dark, and just as we stepped into the car, there was lightning and rain started coming down.
We drove to Times Square, intending to park near there and do some shopping, hit up Korean Town and China Town. It was bad because there wasn’t any parking, and the garages were around 50 bucks for just 2 hours. So instead us 4 drove to Manhattan’s Chinatown and just parked there for 40 dollars till midnight. We then went to Great NY Noodles, where I had some of the best thin string spicy beef noodles. Some really tall (like 6-10) Chinese dude came in and sat down next to us, pretty sure he looked like the Zhang guy who was on the Chinese Basketball National Team last year and the one who played with the Knicks Summer League team this past summer.
Anyways after this we met up with another kid from Bronx, Kai. Apparently he goes to UMass and lived in the same building as Jenessa, but I’d never seen him. We 5 went to the Elizabeth Center for some Sticky Pics!!! And I ate again at another noodle place with Kai because he was bitching that he was hungry, the girls went and got bubble tea. We also called up another friend from Smith College whose family owned stores in Chinatown, and she came over and caught up with us before headed one of her stores. We then took the subway over to Times Square and started shopping for clothe for that night’s dinner, we were going to Blue Fin, a fancy restaurant right in the middle of Times Square.
Shopping sucked, stuff was way to expensive, and after hours of many stores I settled on a Nautica navy polo with white and red stripes, which interestingly matched my 3 UMass bracelets. We walked over to Blue Fin and the place was pretty impressive, there were even bathroom attendants who wiped your hands for you. The food was expensive as hell too, as expected from such a high class place. I ordered a Philly Sushi plate and Yellowtail Ceviche, and the Ceviche was something new, wasn’t too bad, and surprisingly filling. The bill nearly blew my mind; I don’t think I’ve ever had such an expensive meal, with the bill coming to nearly $200 for the 5 of us. After pulling together money we went to Westin Hotel and chilled at their bar, the people there were extremely friendly and we just chilled, drank, and Tracie and I just watched Steph and Jenessa argue with Kai on how insensitive he was.
Kai left after Westin to chill with some other people and we took the Subway back to Chinatown and headed back to NJ for some drinking. We would have hit up the clubs, but Steph and I are just a month or two from 21. So we basically just went back to her house and got drunk (Steph was out after like a beer and half, Jenessa was downing shot after shot of Absolut though).
Next morning we woke up around noon again and drove about 5 minutes to Minado, the Sushi buffet. My god I was like a little kid in a candy shop. My eyes lit up when I was looking at the huge assortment of sushi, any kind you can think of! Had two huge plates filled with sushi, then some dynamite seashells, and topped it off with strawberry cake and green tea ice cream. Bill was in the triple digits and I paid for it, but it was worth it. Then Steph drove us a couple town over for the bus to New York, and we chilled in the car and blew bubbles. After hugging and saying good bye to Steph, Tracie, Jenessa, and I hopped on the bus, and it was crowded. We (along with like 20 others) had to stand in the middle the entire way from Jersey into Port Authority, pretty sure that’s illegal. From there we took a train to Chinatown and Tracie walked us to the Lucky Star stop at Grand St. where she took a train back to Brooklyn and we hopped on the bus.
The bus ride back wasn’t as pleasant. We watched another episode of Coffee Prince, but there was so much traffic again (people’s inability to merge into one lane!) that cost us another hour or two, no to mention the obnoxious and immature people making prank calls at the top of their lungs and laughing and jumping up and down. We left at 6 on the dot, and didn’t get into South Station until about midnight. We called Jenessa’s sister, and while waiting ate at some Vietnamese restaurant in Chinatown, some of the best smoked chicken, duck, and pork with price I’ve had in a while. Since it was late, we decided I would sleep over at her house (surprised her dad allowed it), and so we just chilled and talked after getting back to her house before passing out around 4 or 5 AM.
Left her place around 10 AM and intended on driving to Worcester to pick some stuff up. Think I got on I-93 in the wrong direction thought because I ended up in Cambridge somehow. Managed to find my way back on the highway and was looking for landmarks that I knew how to get back from. Ended up headed in the Logan/Winthrop direction, and from there easily found my way back on the Pike and eventually got to Worcester, picked up stuff and ate lunch, and then drove back to Amherst.
Maybe I'll post pictures later, maybe not.
