Now for the trip report. The trip was divided into two parts, New Jersey and New York. As you may now, the farthest east I've gone was Vegas so all of this was a new experience. One thing you immediately notice is the temperature. It was hot and humid, even at night. As we would see, it would stay hot throughout and would finally cool down when we left.

So the first three days were in New Jersey. My aunt moved from SoCal to the Garden State for her husband as a new job opportunity opened up. They've got 3 kids with 2 boys, 7 and 5 if I remember correctly, and a girl almost 3. All are into art, as evidenced by the art gallery of paintings in the basement, doubling as a massive toy room.

It seemed as though they lived in the middle of a forest. Trees are just everywhere and even louder animals. At night, it's very noisy with some kind of animal (its name escapes me) chirping louder than crickets. My sister and I stayed in the aforementioned basement, so we didn't hear much.

Since we got to the house at 1am Sunday morning, it was a good time to turn in. So on Sunday, we went through the surrounding locale. They live close by to Princeton University so we visited its shops, buildings, and art gallery. It's a nice place to visit. I could even see it as a much cleaner Berkeley with buildings more spread out and made of bricks. We had dim sum that day, supposedly the best one in the area. It was adequate but I'll go back home to eat with some more quality. And for some odd reason, I never did see a green onion in anything I ate. Only yellow onions. I know, petty comment but I like green onions.

The next day was spent in Philadelphia. We just had to go see the Liberty Bell. It's what the city is known for, as is its Philly Cheese Steak. Sure, you can have one almost anywhere, but now you can eat one in its hometown. Then it was to Chinatown and some mall near Chinatown. An interesting place to be at but an advertisment said to spend two days instead of one in Philly, something I can't imagine doing. I'd rather spend the extra day exploring the rest of Pennsylvania if I had a choice. Wouldn't you rather go to Hershey?

On the last day, we went to a sculpture garden named Grounds for Sculpture. It's a very simple place; get a plot of land, hire some people to build and maintain outdoor sculptures, and charge people to see it. It was a nice place to visit if it didn't get so hot.

And you know what, just like that, New Jersey was a faded memory. Came Wednesday morning, we were taking a NJ Transit train to the heart of New York City at Penn Station. I was told I acted as if I lived there once we got to NYC (or should we call it 'the NYC' like 'the OC'? I tell ya, that show is hilarious). Well of course I wanted to. I didn't want to look like a tourist. It was easy to play the role though with the many pictures that were being taken, so I had to limit my tourist stench somehow. One way was I knew where I was going. That helped a lot. We stayed at the Hilton New York. When most people stay in NYC, they like to use the small hotels since they provide better service than most chain hotels. But this being our first time, I thought it would be best to stay with a name brand, hence we chose the largest hotel in the city. Stayed on the 33rd floor. Not much of a view; it was an office building next door. Small bathroom. But the room was of a decent size and it was quiet. That's all you can ask for when most of the time, you probably won't be in the room. We got to NYC at noon. So a little sightseeing around the hotel was the order of the day. Basically walked in a circle. Went past Radio City Music Hall and into Rockefeller Center. From there headed west to Broadway and walked up, past the Letterman studio up to near Central Park. By this time, with the sightseeing, shopping, walking, etc., we were all dead tired and hungry. So we ate at the first place we saw. That happened to be the Hard Rock Cafe. I know, they're everywhere with half-decent food, but hey, it was there, we were filled and we were off.

The next day started bright and early. It was 8am when we headed to Rockefeller Center to try to get on the Today Show. On the way, we stopped at Fox and Friends too; they were giving out free donuts. It was 8:30 when we got to Today. From a distance, we saw the Rockettes, Matt Lauer and Ann Curry. Katie was on vacation. Soon enough, Al Roker came by to our section of the railing. With many people in front of me, I didn't make an effort to be seen, though I saw the camera, so if you watched real close, you probably could see me. My dad on the other hand was jumping like a maniac waving wildly. The NBC people took a picture of us so we headed to the NBC store to buy our photo. While there, some sales guy coaxed my dad to try out a virtual experience machine over there. They dragged me in there not knowing what was going on. It was going to be an interview with Jay Leno. I don't know if you can tell, but let's just say I'm not a Jay fan. I wasn't too thrilled to be on-camera. We definitely didn't know what was going on, and as a result, we didn't buy the tape. Missed opportunity for you to see me act like an ass. You'll just have to wait until you see me again.

Later on, we headed east toward Grand Central Terminal. It was recently remodeled and then destroyed when asteroids hit it and... oh wait, that's Armageddon. But there was a great mural on the ceiling of the constellations and a nice (read:expensive) food court where we ate lunch. Further east was the United Nations. Security is really tight over there. Gates everywhere with SWAT teams and security guards swarming. But the amount of history there is amazing. Everyone there though was in a somber mood as UN Headquarters in Iraq was destroyed earlier in the day by a car bomb. We moved back west on 42nd Street toward Times Square. I really didn't appreciate it during the day but luckily I saw it again at night and that's when you get to see its beauty of lights and whatnot. Passed by ABC and MTV. You ever see those commercials on MTV about the MTV store? How it's a can't miss? I think you can miss it. The store is as big as my apartment. On the other side of the spectrum is the Toys R Us. 4 stories of toy shopping with a large T-rex roaring on the top floor and a big ferris wheel operating in front of the store. Once we were done, we kept on moving south to Macy's and the Empire State Building. Macy's is billed as the world's largest store, something I can believe. It's a whole city block. It's bigger than anything I've ever seen plus they were remodeling.

At that point, it was still hot and we needed to freshen up so we taxied back to the hotel. Boy, those taxi drivers amaze me. I don't think I could last 5 minutes driving in that town. Later that night, we were to see Phantom of the Opera. Before that, we ate at Carmine's, an Italian restaurant down the street from the theater. They specialize in family-style eating which means the portions are huge. This was evident with the calamari. When you order calamari at say the Olive Garden, you're lucky to get a few pieces per person. Here, calamari could be the meal itself. They just stack it up on a big place and say enjoy. All the other dishes were good too, especially the different pastas. Now, before you ever see a Broadway show, look for discounts. I found these on broadwaybox.com. The Phantom tickets were in the 5th row and usually priced at $100. We got it for $45 and it was an excellent show, even with 2 understudies performing in the major roles.

Oh geez, it's already the last day. Where had the time gone? This day would be cut short since we had an early morning flight the next day. It was devoted to Lower Manhattan. That meant a trip on the subway. The subway is a speedier but dirtier version of BART. Many people take it and it can get very hot down there. The trains luckily are air-conditioned but the stations aren't. At least the popular trains come every few minutes. Our first stop was Chinatown. And you know what, it didn't look very Chinese. No Chinatown can be called Chinatown when it has McDonalds, Burger King, Starbucks, and Haagen Daz within a two-block radius. It should be noted that these restaurants have their names in Chinese, to at least blend in.

We subwayed to the Staten Island Ferry to see the Statue of Liberty. Due to security concerns, you can't go inside the Statue anymore, so why bother going on the island? Besides, the ferry is free. And that's a price you can't beat. Afterwards, we stopped by the World Trade Center. It's nice to see they've begun construction on the memorial. Large screens blocked off most views of the disaster site, though I'm sure they'll be opening everything back up for the 2nd anniversary. From there, it was a short trip to Wall Street. You can't go inside the New York Stock Exchange but you can still see the big flag that covers its front. Across the way is the site where George Washington was inaugurated as president. We ended up at the South Street Seaport, the closest thing NYC has to a mall.

And that was the trip. One day later, I was back in Berkeley, ready, but tired, for the first day of school.