New York/New Jersey

I "heart" NYC!

Me and Kyla :)

Dinner in Little Italy with friends!

Times Square

Grand Central Terminal is beautiful!

My traveling buddy, Mike, along withnAlex, Dave, and Herb looking at the view of NYC.

I arrived in Newark Airport on Saturday, September 6th, in the evening and it was raining like crazy. Tropical storm, Gustave was moving through the area and there were reported 2-4 hour delays at all the airports. Somehow my flight was only 20 minutes late! This was a nice surprise; I thought we would not be able to land so quickly or at all. A nice, but very nervous taxi driver took me to my hotel in Jersey City and I was happy to get there safe and sound. Sunday was sunny and warm and I didn’t have to meet up with co-workers until 2pm. A co-worker whom I seem to travel with a lot named Mike, and I took the PATH train over to Manhattan and did fun tourist things. We saw Times Square, Rockefeller Center, and Grand Central Terminal. We walked everywhere and had a great time. The only store I allowed myself to go into was Sephora. Monterey doesn’t have any of those stores, so I walked in and was encircled by beauty products. Even though I don’t wear a lot of makeup I was in awe of my surroundings. I bought a few things and decided to leave while my total was still under $100. Mike and I hopped back on the PATH train to Jersey to meet up with some co-workers. As it turns out Alex (the head of these experiments) only needed a few of us to help him setup antennas on the ship, so he let the rest of us go. Mike was tired and I needed to get a run in, so we went back to the hotel after a stop at Starbucks. That night, a group of us hopped on the train just after one stop we got off in a cute little town called Hoboken. We ended up at a restaurant a long the water and that was recommended to us. On Monday, we found our way over to the shipyard docks and spent the day boarding a huge container ship that was the length of at least 2 football fields. That experiment could have gone better and it was exhausting. Walking on hard steel all day is really painful for feet! That night we went back over to Hoboken and went to another restaurant, where we sat upstairs and dined on more delicious food. Tuesday, it rained in the morning for two hours and it put a damper on the experiment. We eventually got some tests done and then called it quits early. This was nice because I got to go back to the hotel and relax before heading back into the city. That night I was escorted into New York by Mike and two other Coast Guard guys that were participating in the experiments. We met up with my friends from the OC, Kyla and Jeff. They were vacationing in Little Italy randomly at the same time I was there. We went to the little apartment where Kyla and Jeff were staying and got to check out an authentic New York-style apartment….very small!!! But, they were able to rent it way cheaper then they could a hotel for 7 days. Afterwards, we walked around Little Italy until we found several restaurants that looked good. We were trying to decide between 2 across the street from each other, when both hosts walked out and tried to convince us that we really wanted to go to their particular restaurant. They were battling for our business. When we were still unsure, they started offering us “extras.” One offered us a free bottle of wine and the other finally offered us a table outside, which is what we really wanted. We had a wonderful Italian dinner on a sidewalk in New York with great conversation. I was really happy to spend time with my friends in New York!!! The next morning we had an early morning flight to Richmond, VA to continue the experiments.