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This past weekend, I took my first trip to the Big Apple, New York City. We arrived at Central Park around 2 p.m. after our bus arrived at our school one hour late before we got underway. We got to explore a small portion of the park from the zoo to the band shell. Very nice and interesting but I wish I could have seen more of it. I did like seeing many of the street performers there. But as visiting San Francisco, I would have like to see more

After that we went to our hotel in Englewood, NJ and got changed to go out to Mars 2112 that night. Let me just preface that by saying, OUR DRIVERS WERE TERRIBLE, we got lost multiple time and had only about an hour to eat and get to the theater for our show. The food was below average, our bun seemed cold and stale and the burger was lukewarm, the fries were okay, but the whole meal got a C-minus

So then we went to the Imperial Theater on Broadway to see ‘Dirty Rotten Scoundrels’ and let me tell you, if you have never seen a show on Broadway before, this is one to start on, it was HI-LAR-I-OUS. Basically the story is two con men on the French Riviera make a bet to con a woman out of $50,000. Whoever loses has to leave town. If you have seen the movie, you know how it ends up. If you haven’t, the two actors who play the main characters do a fantastic job.

After that we’re outside the theater and we see a huge crowd across the street, waiting for none other than Julia Roberts, and I mean the Julia Roberts. I’m not even sure that I caught a glimpse of her, but I did somewhat see her.

We didn’t get back until about 1 A.M. and we had to get up at 6:30 the next day for our performance (we were on a band trip if I forgot to mention). After the performance we took a ferry to Ellis Island to see the museum, when I saw the listing of the names of the people who passed through the Island, I found about 25-30 people that had my last name. I was amazed to say the least.

Then, we went to Times Square. And let me tell you that if you haven’t seen the square you haven’t seen NYC. We went to that huge Toys’R’Us across from the ABC studios where shows like Good Morning America and ESPN’s NBA Shootaround are shot (I actually saw the studios where the shows are taped). After a few minutes of shopping, where I acquired ‘God of War’ for $20, we went to have pizza at a brick oven pizza place, buffet style. Being lent, and me being Catholic I was restricted to just cheese pizza but it was still very filling.

We then went to Rockefeller Center, still with the Ice Rink out, and we toured the ‘Top of the Rock’ and saw the entire city, so gorgeous.

So we then got on the bus, got lost again and got back to hotel at 1:30 in the morning.

After sleeping we had a meal at a ‘Medieval Times’ show and let me say, the meal fills you up! Chicken, a rib, it just fills you up. And the show was okay but after Scoundrels, this paled in comparison.

Then after we got a guided tour of the city and saw Ground Zero, Chinatown and Little Italy, we left to go back home to Virginia.

Great Trip!