"Some have compared the tempest to the so-called Perfect Storm that struck off the coast of New England in 1991, but that one hit a less populated area.
"The Perfect Storm only did US$200 million of damage and I'm thinking a billion" this time, Masters said. "Yeah, it will be worse." - Reuters.
When a storm has it's own website then things ought to get interesting.
Will try keep updates coming, but it's forecasted to pass right over top of where I am and power outages are expected.
Pennsylvania has declared a state of emergency in preparation for this event and my university has sent out multiple emails giving us information about what to do. One of the emails did say to go home if that's where you feel most comfortable... but somehow I don't feel like that is a viable option for me just at this moment.
For now I'm just going to hang out in my room and do some school work for the weekend, expecting it to hit some time Sunday.
I have a couple of options of places to go in case we get told to evacuate, but for now I plan to sit steady and tough it out. Whatever "it" is.
Well we eventually came to Broadway and had a wonder around on our way up to Times Square. It was getting close to dinner time so we zig-zagged backwards and forwards searching for a local place to eat (btw if you are ever in NY do not go to food places you know, go to the local food places! Live a little!).
Times Square.
After eating, we walked up to Times Square. This place is amazing! So many people, so much going on. It was night time, but felt like day with all the lights. We snuck into the Toys R Us store and I just about died... A 3-4 level toy store with half a floor dedicated to Lego! I literally could have spent the entire day there!
Lego Liberty.
Back out to Times Square and we quickly noticed a bunch of people looking up at a giant television. Oh hey, we were on it! Was some interesting "tweet who you want to get dunked" game and then motion sensed the crowd pushing the beach ball toward the target. This was a lot of fun! And yes, she got dunked.
On the jumbotron.
After that, it was getting close to our departure time so we stopped by at Starbucks to grab a coffee and then continued few more blocks to our departure location. When we arrived back in Philadelphia, we caught the train back out to Eastern and we arrived home around 2am. Needless to say I slept like a baby that night.
So on Thursday my room mate suggested that we should go into NYC for a day over free fall days and this blog is about our adventure.
Our day started around 8am when we woke up and went for breakfast. At 9:20 we went to the train station where we rode the train into 30th Street Station in Philadelphia to catch our 11:30am bus to NYC.
Heading into NYC.
We arrived in NYC and the first place we went to was Madison Square Garden, if it was open I would have gone inside but it was undergoing renovations so I couldn't. However it was absolutely amazing to be right beside the Mecca for basketball.
Audge then convinced us get lunch at Grays Papaya, the closest one was 1.3 miles (2km) away. This was the start of our walking for the day. With Ryan and my stomachs grumbling at every smell and food place we passed, we were hoping that this place was worth the walk and the hunger. When we arrived it was a smallish hole in the wall style food place, it didn't look promising at all. I will be going back there next time I am in NYC. It was great!
About half way complete.
After lunch we took a 1.7 mile (2.7km) walk down to Ground Zero. There really isn't too much to see around there now. The old site has been fully fenced in for construction of the memorial and two massive new buildings are going up either side of it (I think one was halfway complete at 140 floors).
We walked around there for a bit following the crowd and trying to see if we could get in, you need to book a time now and there were none left for the day we had in New York.
Ground Zero.
From there we went to Brooklyn bridge (another 1.3 mile walk) and walked across about 1/3 of the way before deciding to turn back and catch a train back up to E34th (about 5 miles) street on our way back up to The Empire State Building and on our way to Time Square. When we first jumped on at Brooklyn Bridge station, I think that was the first station as we were the only ones in our carriage. I was thinking this isn't as bad as people make out, the train was reasonably clean and spacious... The next stop about 30 people walked on and by the next about another 80 people crammed into the train. This thing got full fast but was a blast to travel this way.
Empire State Building.
We walked (0.2 miles) to the Empire State Building with the idea of climbing up to the top, but at $39 a piece our pocketbooks were saying no (I'll just have to get mum and dad to come next time!).
Searching for a place to eat dinner we stumbled across a group of Asians (I assume they were Koreans because we were in Korea Town at the time) singing worship songs. This was awesome, and they weren't half bad either.
