ROUND 2

Sanrio Travel the World event:                                            http://blog.hellokitty.com/traveltheworld

For the first time in ten years, I left a two-state-wide area. For the first time in seventeen years, I rode an airplane. It may not have involved me “traveling the world,” but for a person who apparently doesn’t get out much, 800+ miles may as well have been a global expedition!

This entry is about my trip to New York City from Wisconsin this past September.  My boyfriend and I went to visit some of his family and also to meet two of my pen pals (yes, old fashioned snail mail letter pen pals!) for the first time in the nine years I’ve written to them!

One of the first things my boyfriend and I did in New York was tour Times Square:

I loved the excitement and crowds there, even if it was a bit noisy!

Here’s a picture of the M&M Store there at night:

That night, my boyfriend and I saw Spamalot on Broadway:

It was incredibly funny! Monthy Python and the Holy Grail is my favorite Monty Python movie!

On another day in the city, my boyfriend and I explored a whole bunch of places on our own. (We even navigated the subway somehow!) We started at Madison Square Garden because that’s where our train came in:

One of the first places I wanted to stop?

NYC’s Sanrio store, of course! (Especially since the closest one to me at home, in Illinois, closed earlier this year after many, many years of my patronage. ;-;)

But guess what?! NYC’s Sanrio store was closed!  I guess they were remodeling and I came during the short window of time in which they’d be totally shut down! Nooooooo! I guess Sanrio stores and me aren’t meant to be. ;-;

I did snag a picture of the store’s cute facade, though:

To cheer me up after a Sanrio dissapointment, my boyfriend suggested we go across the street from Sanrio to Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Odditorium:

There were way more strange things than cute things, but it was a lot of fun!

Check out this actual vampire-hunting kit (just in time for Halloween!):

An ancient maple-encased bee, kind of like those mosquitoes from which the scientists extracted dinosaur DNA in Jurassic Park:

An ancient Chinese sculpture of a ship made of ivory:

And… this… thing! (An elephant sculpture, I presume.)

That day, we also stopped by Rockefeller Center:

No ice skaters yet, of course! (As my cold-weather-hating boyfriend was glad to see.)

And we made it up a few more blocks to see a little of Central Park:

We were so tired from walking at that point, though, we didn’t go very far into the park. But a Central Park bench sure makes a relaxing resting spot!

Another day we ventured into the city, one of my pen pals came along, too. The first thing we did was visit the Empire State Building:

That picture came out as good as a postcard, I think! (Which is way more than I can say for the majority of grainy ones!)

After riding an elevator up 80 floors and climbing the stairs up another 6 by stairs (which definitely made the thighs burn–better than waiting twenty extra minutes for the second elevator, though!), we were greeted with this crowd at the observation deck:

Wow! Never had I heard so languages spoken in one place, too! It took us a while to find space to look out all four sides of the building, but it was a nice cool day with a mild breeze, so we were in no hurry.

Here’s a view of Central Park:

And Macy’s:

The East River:

And the Statue of Liberty. (The speck to the right out in the Hudson River. Seriously, that’s best view I got of it the entire trip!)

Back on the ground, my boyfriend, pen pal, and I checked out a few more places, including Bryant Park:

The New York Public Library (which I recognized from Spider-Man and Ghostbusters!):

And F.A.O. Schwartz, where you can here see the outline of gigantic dragon stuffed animals (seriously, their wings were as big as doors) “on sale” for only $2500! What a steal! ^-^

Those were some of the highlights of my trip to NYC. (^0^) Although my visit to a Sanrio store was not meant to be, if you take a look at some of my souvenirs, you’ll see:

A Build-A-Bear NY t-shirt I got to fit this teddy bear my sister made, a Statue of Liberty Monchichi keychain, and… An “I *apple* NY” Hello Kitty plush keychain! How did she get in there? I found her for sale at the Times Square Toys ‘R Us.  It looks like I found Sanrio in NY after all. (=^-.-^=)