drive-by sightseeing

seriously, are you getting sick and tired of these recaps yet?  we still have, oh, at least five or six more to go through.  then again, my life is a bit boring uneventful right now, so i suppose it's good to have something to talk about.  heh.

as my friend trish pointed out in a comment, the algonquin hotel has a mascot - matilda the cat.  she sashays around the lobby like she owns the place, and judging from the regal bed situated near the door, she likely does.  in fact, the password for the hotel's wifi service is "matilda."  don't tell 'em i told you.

we'd hoped to get an early start on our day, with plans to stop for a visit in philadelphia before heading down to D.C.  and we managed to get up at a decent hour.  the hub headed out to pick up the rental car and left us to finish getting ready, pack, and check out of the hotel.  we were making pretty good time, too, and i was excited for sightseeing in philly, since i'd never been before.

but you know what they say about "the best laid plans..." - turns out i'd managed to fuck up our car rental reservation.  apparently, i'd requested to pick up the car the day before.  shit.  the hub and i had a few, uh, discussions via text and phone, and he informed me that the rental agency was still willing to give us a car - at double the price we'd reserved it for.  crap.  as it was, a one-way rental is already way higher than a round-trip one, and i freaked out for a bit.

but as luck would have it, hotwire (which offered better pricing than priceline) still reflected the same rates as i'd booked the week before.  phew.  we ended up leaving a handful of hours later than we wanted to, but we had a car.  it was a big, ugly mercury marquis (the ultimate edition, thankyouverymuch), and the teen muttered "do we get a light to put on the roof, too?" but at least we had transportation secured for the longest part of our road trip.  crisis averted.

a tunnel, a bridge, and several toll plazas later, we arrived in philadelphia just in time for lunch.

the rental car snafu put us so far behind schedule that we had to settle for a driving tour of the awesomely historical city's sights.  i'm still super bummed over not getting to visit betsy ross' house.  does that make me a super nerd?  probably.

this is the closest we got to the liberty bell.  and i was bummed not to pose cheesily with rocky and run up the steps of the art museum.

this rather menacing-looking group reminded me of the scene in "forrest gump" where he punches yet another of jenny's abusive suitors at a gathering and mumbles "i'm sorry i ruined your black panther party."

more cool-looking, probably super historic buildings and cobblestone streets.

heading back onto the highway, i was plunged into random and slightly vague flashbacks from my childhood.  i even looked up one of our old houses - its address is stuck forever in my long-term memory:  404 royal beach road, pasadena, maryland, 21122.  yup.  want the phone number, too?  301-647-3821.  don't go calling that shit now.  i was about five years old when it was ours.

i would've loved to pull up directions (it wasn't far from where we were at all) and do a drive-by of the place, but we had places to be and stuff to do.  i settled for looking at the satellite map via google, and we moved on.

as we pulled into D.C. and drove through their chinatown (every metropolitan area in the country seems to have one, huh?), i giggled at some of the familiar signs, translated into chinese.

before checking into our hotel for the night (the renaissance downtown, again pricelined for $100, yay), we drove around a little.  being the day before the big independence day holiday, a lot of streets were blocked off and there were lots of people milling around, but we still managed to see some cool stuff.

this is as close to arlington national cemetery as we ever got.

the bean was unfazed and didn't really give a crap about anything besides watching spongebob squarepants on my phone.

the teen was a little less than interested, too.

but everyone was happy to get out of the car and stretch out a little in our comfy room - with TWO beds!  whee!

and don't tell him i said so, but the hub was pretty stoked at the high(er)-end toiletries.

well, okay, i was digging them too.  i was already trying to figure out how to score on some extras before we checked out.  i'm ghetto like that.

big apple awesomeness

the one thing that the teen really wanted to see in NYC was the statue of liberty.  so as soon as we got up and out of the hotel, we headed straight to the nearest subway station to make our way down to battery park.

while the hub and the bean went to buy our day passes, the teen and i studied the map.  after all, we didn't have my cousin r to guide us this time around.

the hub carried the bean on his back, and she played hide-and-seek with me and the teen as we found seats on the train.

at battery park, the teen and i went to join the line for ferry tickets inside castle clinton.

sadly, with crown tickets sold out for the day and a 1.5-hour wait in line to board the ferry, this is the closest we got to visiting lady liberty.  boo.

slightly dejected, we decided to climb aboard the subway again in search of lunch.  since we'd just had italian grub the night before, i thought it would be good to head to chinatown and yelp for a good recommendation.  there were lots of interesting sights along the way.

 
and this sign made me think of my good friend.

man, if only asparagus were this cheap at home.  it's my favorite vegetable, but i rarely buy it because it usually costs about four times this much!

after lunch, we took a nice, long walk up towards central park and the metropolitan museum of art.

the bean, who'd fallen asleep, woke up and decided she was hungry.  so we followed the signs to one of the eateries inside the museum.

she decided to hitch a ride with her sister to go check out the sights.

yes, i am 8.  and so is the teen, as we both giggled our asses off at some of the statues.

the hub was awed by this - a giant gate which was part of a super old cathedral in europe somewhere.  yeah, i didn't pay much attention.  i'm really not very artsy-fartsy.

picasso was one weird mofo.

after that last one, it was time to get the heck outta dodge.

last time, we'd just taken a quick carriage ride through central park.  this time around, we took some time to walk through a bit of it.

we were a little pooped, so after a quick break at the café near the alice in wonderland statue, we hopped aboard one of those horse-drawn carriages. 

it let us out right in front of the posh plaza hotel.

this, of course, led us right to all the sch-wankay shopping on 5th avenue. 

we'd just read an article online about the giant hollister store being closed temporarily due to a bedbugs infestation.  ewwwww.

because the bean had been cooped up in the carrier quite a bit, we decided to head to the american girl store and let her run around a little. 

the teen pointed out this doll-sized chaise lounge.  "i want one of those in my room, mom," she said.  heh.  too bad i couldn't get away with THIS one, rather than a people-sized version that'll likely cost about six times as much.

passing rockefeller center, we reminisced again about our last trip, when we'd done a little ice skating.

i thought of our cupcake/food tour with my cousin r as we sashayed past magnolia bakery.

after our dinner at carnegie deli, we stopped in times square one last time and were in awe at the sheer number of people milling about.

the teen and i drooled over the ginormous forever 21 store.  sadly for us, we were stopped by security as we attempted to take a few pictures inside.  it was the biggest freaking one we'd ever seen, with three floors of cheapy fabulousness.

ah, we love new york.