Well it was a long day today! Mike and I got into New York late last night, dropped our bags off at the hostel and went out in search of food since we were hungry. We bumped into Nolan and Mike on their way back from their dinner so they lead us to a fast food/sit down hybrid restaurant where we had some pretty good wraps.

After a quick bite to eat we returned back to the hostel and got ready for bed with a quick stop to use the internet to check our email.

The next morning we got up early at 8:00 to head for the Museum of Natural History here in NY city. We were meeting up with a couple of people we know from CS who were also in NY, so we needed to be there pronto when then museum opened. The museum is *huge*! When we quickly realized just how big it was after spending an hour in the first corner of the museum, we split up and agreed to meet up at 1pm for lunch so that we could all move just a little faster in small groups. Mike S and I wandered around from the top floor down while Nolan and the other Mike worked their way up from the bottom (this wasn't really planned, it just sorta happened that way). There was some really cool exhibits including many many rooms full of animal displays, information overload and interactive booths.

Our break for lunch was at a small place a few blocks away that was pretty tasty, though I think I'm getting a little tired of spending so much money eating out every day. It'll be nice to get home where the food is cheaper!

Ken and company had to leave after lunch so they did, but we wandered back to the museum to finish looking at the parts of the museum we had missed for about an hour and a half. There sure was some pretty cool things to see (though I don't really have time to look into it)!

After meeting up again, we decided to head over to the Intrepid which is an old aircraft carrier which has been converted into a museum. We were pretty late in their operating hours, but we had about an hour to explore which was actually about right for me. If I had to spend much more time there, I would probably be a little more annoyed at the military propaganda that was everywhere in the carrier. It was still pretty neat to look at everything, and some of the views of the carrier both into the bay and into Manhattan were pretty nice!

When the museum closed, we decided to walk down to Times Square to take a look at this famous area. Crazy! The place was packed with people and this was only a random Sunday evening. What really struck me was the garish-ness of the ads placed *everywhere*. I realize that the area is prime ad-space for companies, but the combination of all the ads with scrolling lights, video, movies added with all the people left me a little dazed at the whole scene. It helped that I had my camera to take a picture once in awhile so I could zone into just parts of the scene so that I didn't have to take it all in at once. Ugh.

We wandered down and saw the outside of Madison Square Garden, which was not all that exciting, but we can say we did it. From there we caught a subway over to Little India to go have some Indian food. Yay for good Indian food! After eating some really good food we returned back to our Hostel. Now its after midnight and I need to get to bed so that I can be up tomorrow morning at 8 again. We're gonna push to try and hit several big things to see including the statue of liberty, the WTC site, and several other things over on that side of Manhattan ... should be fun!

Heraldk