Weekends on Long Island are a hot ticket. They are an especially hot ticket if you have a hotel full of wedding guests… and bachelor party guests… and bachelorette party guests. Let’s just say that sleep was nobody’s first priority the night we arrived. It might have been OUR first priority, but nobody cared.
After a bad night’s unsleep, we made our way to the hotel’s complimentary breakfast buffet. Considering how late the other guests must have been up partying, the breakfast buffet was alarmingly picked over. I can only believe that the partying went on until breakfast. The revelers probably spent the evening, night, and wee hours of the morning courting frivolity- then went marauding over the breakfast buffet, taking the spoils back to their rooms to sleep it all off. We ate some scraps and started out for the train station to get us into Manhattan.
I have to say that figuring out the whole railroad adventure was something that I had been dreading. I didn’t know exactly where the station was. I wasn’t 100% sure of the schedule or what line we needed to take. I had no clue as to how I was supposed to pay or when. I had certainly spun a web of anxiety over that aspect of the trip… long before we ever booked a flight. I thought it was going to be the most difficult part of the trip. It turned out to be the easiest. The Long Island Railroad was a piece of cannoli! I found the station on the GPS’ first try. The line and timetable at which I had guessed turned out to be the right ones. I easily inserted my credit card at the vending machine on the platform and was rewarded with two roundtrip train tickets. It was a nice sensation to feel competent again.
Full of misplaced confidence, we arrived at Penn Station at around 10am. It took me approximately nine and a half minutes to find a place in the station selling crumb buns. Because searching for authentic New York crumb buns is one of my holy grail memories with my mother, I refused to move until I purchased this confection and consumed it. I’m not sure a train station crumb bun quite qualifies as “authentic,” but it was pretty yummy and I’m calling it a win.
We found our way out of the terminal to realize we were adjacent to Madison Square Garden, and we were staring directly across from the famous 34th Street Macy’s (of “Miracle On” fame.) The shopper in me whimpered and we decided to make a quick detour into the store before we found the hop on/hop off bus. It was certainly a Macy’s of a different color I can tell you. It felt fancy and luxurious while managing to be kind of kitschy and touristy. It was fantastic with its art décor environment and the wooden escalator and the piano keyboard from the movie Big. It was also huge… I have been in entire malls that were smaller than this store. I kept looking for Edmund Gwenn… or at least anyone with a Santa suit and long white beard.
I pulled myself away after a quick run-through. After all, as fabulous as the Macy’s was, it was still a department store, and it seemed ridiculous to me to come all the way to New York to spend my vacation in a department store. Thus says the woman who spent the vacation commemorating her 50th birthday at the Mall of America.
But I am older and wiser now. I knew that I wanted to see more than Macy’s on our abbreviated sightseeing trip. I had the New York Public Library, Rockefeller Center, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the Central Park Zoo, the Central Park carousel, and a carriage ride through Central Park on my agenda. We had tickets for the hop on/hop off bus. My plan was to use the sightseeing bus as much as a mode of transportation as a guided tour of Manhattan. Someone hawking tickets stopped us every fifteen feet or so. I always explained we had tickets and asked how to get to a bus stop. They always pointed up the street and said, “keep going.”
A mile later, we finally found a bus stop. The driver said they were full, but there was nobody on the lower floor of the bus. When I pointed that out, he told me that we were welcome to sit down there if we wanted. We settled ourselves and waited for the tour to begin. Then, it didn’t. The bus started moving, but there was no narration at all. There was not even any announcement of where we were and what stop was approaching. I decided that maybe you could only hear the narration on the top floor, so I took matters into my own hands. I decided to get off the bus where I thought we should get off to walk to the library. I do not know if it truly was the right stop, but- after a lengthy walk guided by spotty GPS signals- we did find our way. The library was wonderful and I got to see the original Winnie the Pooh stuffed animals that A.A. Milne purchased for his son. Those stuffies later inspired the world of the Hundred Acre Woods and its inhabitants.
When we finished at the library, we grabbed some McDonald’s so I could quickly eat something that would allow me to remain upright. Then we started back to where the bus dropped us off. At least, I thought we started back to where the bus let us off.
It felt like we were walking and walking and walking without seeing anything that looked familiar. I tried my trusty GPS, and it told me we were .3 of a mile away from the bus stop. That seemed promising. However, the next time I checked, we were .8 miles away. I switched directions, which seemed like a smart thing to do if I was getting further from my destination with each step. The next time I checked, after walking in the theoretically “getting closer” direction, the distance was reading 1.7 miles. At that point, I surrendered and decided to get an Uber to take us to Central Park.
Uber seemed like a great option. I got a response almost immediately, telling me that our driver, Leo, would be there in a white Camry within three minutes. The problem was that I could not identify specifically where Leo was going to pick us up. Uber mentioned the intersection we were approaching on our forced march through Manhattan. However, by definition, an intersection has four possible corners. I was certain that, whichever one I picked, I would be wrong. We waited for awhile and I kept my eyes peeled for a white Camry. My heart surged when I saw one coming towards us. When it stopped in traffic, I stepped off the curb and into the street to consult with the driver.
I never knew I had hijacker potential. The driver kept saying that he was not our Uber, but it somehow did not register with me. He became more and more wary as we chatted in the middle of the street. I am probably lucky that my refusal to believe his protestations that he was not my Uber driver only confused him and did not spur him to violence. Finally, I asked, “But aren’t you Leo?” He firmly denied that he was Leo and sped- or creeped- away as the traffic moved. Left in his dust, I consulted my App again. While my potential hijackee did have a white Camry and did have a license plate that started with the same two letters, the rest of the license plate number did not match what the app listed as Leo’s.
Apparently, white Camrys are the vehicle of choice for Manhattan Uber drivers. There were a lot of them. Indeed, after Leo texted me to tell me he was not working and would not be picking us up, I tried again and we ended up with another Uber driver- also in a white Camry with a license plate number starting with the same two letters.
The ride to Central Park was blessedly uneventful. However, all the time I had spent wandering around trying to find my way back to the bus and accosting a poor Manhattan motorist took a toll. There was not enough time to take the carriage, go to the zoo, and ride the carousel. I opted for the carriage ride, which was lovely. I left Central Park with FOMO, though.
I opted for a taxi to take us back to Penn Station. It came up when I tried my Uber app again. It seemed as though this time, it was going to be fairly easy to locate the taxi who was responding to the request. I could easily see and get to all four corners of the intersection where the app said our driver Adam would meet us. In a couple of minutes, I had confirmation from Adam that he was in the immediate vicinity and would be there within three minutes. Sure enough, a cab appeared. This time, I checked with the driver first. “Are you Adam?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said, “I am Adam. Where can I take you?”
He was not Adam. Adam is probably still circling around Central Park looking for us.