And the Adventure Begins........

On a Tuesday night, at 10 PM, four coach buses pulled out of our high school parking lot to travel to NYC for a performance trip featuring our chamber orchestra and madrigal choir.  Approximately 200 people total.  I was chaperoning four girls, all seniors, including Middle Child.  About three hours into the trip, one of my girls began to get motion sickness.  So, at 1 AM, I was dealing with a girl I didn't know, vomiting in the dark into a little bag she found hanging under the window, and me, trying to figure out how to get it to the front of the bus with multiple kids sleeping on the aisle floor.  Twice!  Good times!

We rolled into an IHOP somewhere in New Jersey (Roxbury??) around 6:30 AM.  They were ready for us.  I was not ready for the tiny bathroom with two sinks and over 100 girls attempting to put in contacts and do their makeup.  We made it to Liberty Park at 9 AM.  The photo above is the line inside the train station waiting to get through security to board the ferry to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.



I was glad our one sunny day was this one.  The view of the city was fantastic!







Here is the entrance into Ellis Island.  The architecture was beautiful, inside and out.  We didn't have much time to explore (and none of my ancestors came through since they were all here prior to 1880), but I know some kids did manage to find their ancestors' names.  As was par for the course on this trip, we were in a rush, so my group grabbed some lunch in the cafeteria and ate outside along the bay.





Next stop was the lady herself!  Gorgeous!  The last time I saw her, she was covered in scaffolding, so this was a treat.  We walked to the bottom and got some nice shots from a lot of different angles, and the sun was cooperating.  Then it was back on the ferry to Battery Park.







Here is what's left of the World Trade Center globe which was relocated to Battery Park.  It was formally in the plaza under the twin towers.  My husband did his co-op job in college with Customs at the World Trade Center.  I have a photo of him sitting near the globe back in 1984.  I was glad to have a few moments by myself at this small memorial with the eternal flame in front of it.  We were supposed to go to Ground Zero, but ran out of time and were only able to drive past it.

Here's Joe.  While waiting for the buses to pick us up, Joe entertained our crowd.  Being music/drama kids, some of the boys joined in with his performance.  Surprisingly, it was our only encounter of strangeness on the trip.


We headed up north on West Street, passed the Intrepid (HUGE!) and to our hotel, The Roosevelt, located at E. 45th and Fifth Avenue.  By this time, I'm seriously ready for a shower.  Unfortunately, I see The Roosevelt sign and we go right on by.........there was no where for the four buses to pull up and let us (and all our luggage) out, so the drivers circled the block..........which literally took a freakin' hour!  By this time, it's 3:30 PM and we had to be at Planet Hollywood at 4:30 PM for our group reservations.  You can imagine the chaos of that many kids, with their luggage, attempting to get through a small set of revolving doors, get room keys from the tour bus director (who did not seem all that swift), wait at the slowest elevators in history and find their rooms.  I made sure my group was safely in their room and then I ran to mine to take a 5 minute shower and get ready for the dinner and Broadway show.  Did I mention it was 'dress up night?'  Whose dumbass idea was that??  My roommate never got her shower in because her group of girls' room was not ready.  Chaos, I tell you.  But here's the lobby of the hotel.  See those steps?  No ramp to wheel your suitcase up to the elevators there!  I guess handicapped accessibility would have ruined the integrity of the hotel's architecture (it truly was beautiful).

The buses were retired for the day, but we managed to get ourselves to Planet Hollywood on time and then to the show.  For those of you who haven't heard, Spiderman Turn Off the Dark has had more accidents than the curse of Macbeth.  In fact, I think it's going dark again this week.  Fortunately, no accidents occurred during our performance.  The stunts were amazing and to see Spiderman perched on the ledge of the balcony right in front of you was incredible.  Also, music by Bono and the Edge! But for the most part, I was not able to follow the story line (not being a comic strip fan), and I was having a really difficult time keeping my eyes open, not having had a wink of sleep on the bus the previous night.  We got out of there around 11 PM and I spotted one of the teachers and told my kids to keep up with him because I didn't have a map with me and had no clue how to get back to our hotel, which was about 8 blocks away.  We made it back safely and I was in the room long enough to get my pajama pants on when my roommate enters and says, "What are you doing?  We have a chaperone meeting in the lobby now!"  That was Day One.