I HEART NY

On Friday we had to drive down to NYC between 10 and Noon to pick up our visas and the Swedish Consulate. We left Syracuse at 4:30 am and drove to Beacon, NY to catch a train to Grand Central Station at 8:22, which would have got us to Grand Central at 10:05. The drive took longer than we planned because of freezing rain and the road, and our windshield, being coated with ice. We even saw an Xterra spin out on the road and into the ditch behind us as they went around another car. They did about a 720 before it went into the ditch, but it stayed upright and got back on the road a little bit later.

Anyway, we didn't make the 8:22 train and had to take the 9:08 one, and made it into the city at 10:32. Fortunately we only had to walk two blocks from Grand Central to the Consulate's office. The weather however was not in our favor as we arrived in the middle of a crazy rainstorm. We, mostly me, were soaked by the time we got to the building the Consulate was in and that was after we spent $10 on a big umbrella from a guy on the street outside of Grand Central. I bet that guy made a killing that day. Unfortantely the rain was so bad that we had to cut our sight seeing short. We did get a few pictures of things that were between Grand Central and the
Consulate. Oh well, next time.

We were worried about not having enough time but there was only one other person there so it took about 20 minutes to get our visas entered into our passports and collect some brochures on Swedish culture. And a Swedish fashion mag. Score.

We had lunch in the train station at Juniors, home of New Yorks best cheesecake, which we got to go because we ate too much for lunch. It was really good when we got it home though.

The Swedish Consulate office was on the 45th floor, which is the highest I've ever been in a building.

We caught a train back to Beacon after deciding it was way too wet to do anything else and then drove back to Syracuse via Scranton, PA. We had this great idea to record our drive through Scranton and post it with the theme from The Office, but again, the weather was terrible and so was the traffic at that point, so it didn't turn out. We made it back to Syracuse about 7:00 that night and found out that the interstate was closed right behind us. So we got our visas and then bought our plane tickets this weekend. We found a direct flight from Newark to Stockholm for just over $400 each for next Monday. Not bad for a week before our flight. We'll rent a car and drive down to Newark and then off to Stockholm.

This lady seriously had an umbrella for her dog... New Yorkers.

The UN building, this was as far as we wanted to walk in the rain.

The "World" part of World Tower stands for its location near the Turkish Building in the background.

"Cham pag ne?"

Some pictures from Grand Central Station. Definately one of the coolest buildings in the world, regardless of how you feel about Aestetic Zoning regulatons (a joke for all the lawyers in the crowd).






























Outside of 100 United Nations Plaza. Diplomatic immunity perhaps does not apply to dogs.

A very cool picture of a building I took. Not hard to do in New York I think, just look at a building and click.

Another cityscape picture. Neato.

A smeared picture of Yankee Stadium, as it should be. No I kid, the stadium is cool and historic, it's the team that's lame.

Man it felt as though we were never going to get there for awhile, but now that we have visas and plane tickets... it's a little scary, but it's going to be legend... wait for it... ary!