Winter Trip - New York: Part 1

I'm so glad to find out that I wouldn't have so many homework this week. I've finished up my homework for one of my Thursday classes, and another Thursday class would be a field trip, which means I pretty much don't need to turn in anything.

Well, last time, we covered two parts of Ann Arbor, but let's hold up Ann Arbor stories just for a bit because after the day we ate at the Mongolian BBQ, we were actually leaving to New York for a couple of days. Elda and I actually visited the city priorly with our own parents, but I personally never get tired to this city, especially when the city gets lit up even brighter at the end of the year due to its thick Christmas/Winter vibe.

We left in the afternoon with a taxi that took us straight to Detroit airport. We were supposed to catch a bus that would leave from Downtown Ann Arbor to Detroit Airport, but the tough weather condition made it hard to go there. The bus to Downtown Ann Arbor from Elda's apartment never came, so in order not to miss the flight, we had to go for the plan B, which is to take a taxi that would bring us straight to the airport. Yeah, the part where we had to let go a certain amount of money we had spent to book for the bus round trip was a bit painful, but at least we figured it's better than missing the flight.

Elda and I bumped into Elda's friends in the airport, who were heading to California for vacation. We chatted for quite a while before we had to part to different gates. They were so fun! I wish we could all catch up with each other some other time.

I figured out that La Guardia, the airport where we were going to land, wasn't located as far as JFK and Newark. This was proven by the fact that the airplane actually passed over the busy part of Manhattan from Philadelphia, where Elda and I had to transit just for a short period of time.

When we landed, we took a shuttle straight to our hotel in the 50th St. The shuttle got stuck in a heavily congested street somewhere near the Times Square. That was when the driver turned to us and said. "Your hotel is down that road. I can take you guys there right now but we have to walk just a bit." I'm good with that, but what was crazier is, since the traffic was standstill, he literally left the shuttle there in the middle of the congested road and walked us to the hotel.

That was like five minutes walk from Times Square, which is good because Times Square is pretty much where all activities in New York are concentrated. The hotel shares its building along with adjacent restaurants, stores, and even the entrance to the subway, so it gets a bit hard to find the entrance of the hotel, because it is actually as big as the entrance to any other stores and restaurants along the street. The hotel room is pretty small too, but I get that idea and the size doesn't bother me. I'm that type of a person that doesn't spend a lot of time staying in the hotel room during vacation. As long as the water's good and warm, the bed's clean and soft, and the room temperature is decent, I'm good. All hotel rooms in Times Square are about the same sizes to squeeze rooms, and also considering the building size as well as the number of guests staying in as. I'll show you the picture of the room later.

We got an information from the front desk that there was an Ippudo Ramen restaurant just down the street. We quickly walked there to book our seats for dinner, but the wait would take up to two hours. I put my name in and the staff told us they would call me when the seat was close to be ready. In the mean time, we walked around Times Square and dropped by in this chocolate heaven called Hershey's.

Nice chocolate packaging!

And of course, we couldn't miss our visit to Times Square without taking pictures of the tourist's most favorite spot.

Yeah, the place was packed just like what I remembered. My phone rang shortly after with a text that said our table was ready. Elda and I literally ran through the crowd for three blocks to Ippudo. Thank goodness we didn't miss the table otherwise I'd cry my eyeballs out. However, I was slightly heartbroken to learn that they only had Tonkotsu ramen and another beef ramen that wasn't even its specialty. I had always loved Tonkotsu ramen, until the day my friend told me Tonkotsu means pork broth. So I had to stop eating what has always been my favorite.

I could've just ordered Tonkotsu ramen and pretended it was beef, but I wasn't so comfortable with that choice and decided to go with the less popular beef ramen selection they have. Here's the thing, in ramen restaurants, I always pretended to be a vegetarian, at least to the waiters, because I knew all meat contained in the ramen (at least after my friend notified me about that), is nothing but pork. Anyway, the beef ramen that I ordered was slightly more expensive than the usual Tonkotsu one. It had a smaller portion, less soup, fancier bowl, and colder ramen. I finished it within five minutes, that's how small the portion is. I had to say I regretted having it for my dinner because I was really looking forward to have a good hot bowl of ramen in the cold weather. However, I still had fun chatting with Elda and our talk melted the situation.

My hope rose when the waiter told me they had Miso Ramen (for vegetarian) in Ippudo located in the East Village, which is a bit further from where we were. Then Elda and I decided we'd go there for dinner the next day.