July 9^th

Parking in NYC is hard. Very, very hard. The-Prettiest-Girl-in-the-World and I learned that last night when we came back from New Jersey. It took an hour to find a place near our place and by ‘near our place’, I mean somewhere on Manhattan Island. We weren’t allowed to leave the car at the rental place cuz, reasons, and everyone in NYC who got back before 10, had already found all the available parking spots.

Good lord.

An hour. Plus a 40 min walk back to the apartment.

But in the morning, I marched back to the car and returned it to the rental place where I found out that returning with an empty tank was the thing to do. See, it’s a scam of sorts. You have to fill up a little (we filled up a lot) and who wants to drive around on the big E trying to return it on E? So we eat the extra cost.

Bastards.

But the rest of the family slept in. We didn’t get going until about 2 when we made our way to The-Oldest’s 2^nd MUST-Do – See the Empire State Building.

Oddly enough, it’s not easy to see when you’re wandering around the city as it’s surrounded by massive skyscrapers. It’s like trying to find The-Prettiest-Girl-in-the-World in a crowd of basketball players, but find it we did (after almost walking by it).

“Hey, that’s a nice building.”

“That’s not a nice building, that’s the Empire State Building!”

I can understand why The Oldest wanted to see this one and not, say, Top of the Rock. It’s a classic building—old school. There is not a lot of steel and glass. This is concrete, marble, and brass. This is Art Deco. This is the architectural equivalent of a great piece of music.

There weren’t a lot of people there, which is not to say it wasn’t busy, just not, you know, rub-yourself-against-your-neighbour busy. We got to see a cool display of rivet workers tossing rivets at each other and the boys got to stick their fingers in the noses of metal statues. The-Prettiest-Girl-in-the-World got to live out a fantasy of being groped by King Kong and I got to take pictures of pictures.

We sure know how to have fun, don’t we?

But as much as I LOVED the art deco, we’d come for the views, and boy, they did not disappoint. It’s hard to realize just how HUGE Manhattan is. How many skyscrapers sprout out of the ground like spears, and how many little neighbourhoods can be seen? Wait, there’s our apartment? Wait, isn’t that Times Square that The-Youngest hates so much? Wait, isn’t that one of the water towers I took a picture of (no one could prove it wasn’t, though they did try.)

We looked down upon the Brooklyn Bridge that we’d passed under just a few days before. We could see Central Park that we didn’t know we’d never get to. We could see Brooklyn and New Jersey and Queens (also places we’d never get to).

Honestly, there was just so much to see, if (a big if), you like looking at buildings. If you don’t, then there was always the marble stairs with brass railings or pictures of famous people who got their picture taken on the Empire State Building.

Oddly, I think all of us kinda liked looking at such a huge, gigantic city. I mean, Manhattan is just a small part of NYC and Manhattan makes Vancouver look like an Amish community beside a pretty mountain.

All of us looked at some of the individual buildings with those cool binocular things you see in the movies, and for once, even though the sun was out, and it was hot, we didn’t care because we were so high up, I thought I could touch the sky.

We spent a good hour, maybe 90 minutes there. I honestly don’t know if it was everything The-Oldest thought it would be, but he seemed to be having fun. Ok, maybe not ‘jazz club’ level of fun, but like he was seeing living art and walking through it.

I would recommend seeing the Empire State Building to anyone who likes a building with class. However, if you want a similar view, there is also the 30 Rock building (Rockafeller Center) something called the Edge and, of course, the One World Trade Center.

Before we left, we forced The-Oldest to buy something for his girlfriend at the gift shop while The-Prettiest-Girl-in-the-World bought a few nicknacks for her friends and family.

After that, though, I got to do a Joe-MUST-DO – We visited a legendary gaming store. I know, that’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but for me, it was like being teleported to the past when I was just a pre-teen and I had not yet discovered girls, at least in the way I’d later discover them. It took me back to a time when I would wander the game store and touch everything (like The-Youngest) and dream of the day I could afford to buy that game or model or set of little toy soldiers.

Nostalgia is a powerful thing, yo, and it’s an interesting thing – a memory from the past brought to life by something in the present.

Like the old days, I roamed around and touched everything, finally buying two games that I hoped to play with my brother.

So, Jackson got to have his adventure, and I got to have mine.

But wait, wasn’t today supposed to be the day we made it up to The-Prettiest-Girl-in-the-World?

Well, the day wasn’t over and before it ended, The-Prettiest-Girl-in-the-World got to have her BEST experience in NYC (and no, it wasn’t more groping by King Kong, though I think that came a close second.)