Jersey City Day 2 (NYC exploration)

OKAY, let me preface this by saying Texas weather can suck it! It was in the 80s and low 90s all of today in Jersey and NYC and people were complaining that they might 'die of heatstroke,' HA!! So, reason number one I'm happy as a clam is the weather--even though it rained on and off all day. Reason number two for my extreme happiness is that my friend Mickey and his family are unimaginably nice! His mom even dropped us off at the Lite rail station this morning so that he and I could go into NYC about 9am. Then, Mickey went to work and I wandered around the city! Here are some photos!
This (below) is Mickey, my couchsurfing pal whom I absolutely adore!
Below is the adorable kitchen of their home.
And here are Mickey's rabbits!!
And their garden! (view from my attic room window)
And my wonderful room! Ahhh, I cannot get over how lucky I am to have found such a wonderful place to stay and with such spectacular folks as well!

So, onward to discuss my day. I got off the PATH train at Christopher Street in Manhattan and wandered in circles for a bit before deciding to walk down to Battery Park to gaze out at the Statue of Liberty. Unfortunately, at this point it totally slipped my mind to take pictures, but I remembered about the time I settled into a lovely bakery (Dragon Land Bakery) in Chinatown for breakfast. I had an apple bun and mango juice with pearls for breakfast...mmmmmmm!From there I wandered Chinatown for a couple of hours. You guys, I'm seriously in love. Chinatown rocks for innumerable reasons. After breakfast I walked East and found a practically deserted park on the water between the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges where I sat and wrote a little before wandering through some of the neighborhoods on the lower east side. Below is a fenced-in wall-ball area outside of one of the public schools there. You can't really tell, but there are great murals painted on both sides of the wall.
Then, I went back to Chinatown for these delicious cherries--and I mean DELICIOUS! (and only $3 for nearly 3 lbs. of them) I shoved them in my bag and walked all the way from Canal Street area to Central Park where I snacked on them until they made my stomach hurt. And what a walk it was--nearly 70 blocks!
After my snack I continued on through Central Park until I got to W100th Street, and by that time I had probably walked a total of 200 blocks that day, so I took a subway back down south and found a cute coffee place at the corner of Murray and Greenwich called Kaffe, where I sat and had two cups of coffee and a chocolate chip cookie and read nearly half of the book Emma sent with me (Written on the Body, Jeanette Winterson) from about 4-7pm. While I was there I met this neat chick named Beatrice who was in NYC for work and may come stay with me for SXSW this coming year. After this Oren, from the train yesterday, called and I met him and his roommate for dinner at this great little place up near his apartment that I sadly cannot remember the name of. I had a good chat with the both of them (it was really nice to have someone to interact with after being alone all day) about various things including, but not limited to, untimely deaths of lab rats, collegehumor.com, and suicide by train in Japan. Great guys. Then I hopped the PATH back to NJ and the Lite rail to Mickey's, where I was greeted warmly, of course! Also, while on the Lite rail, I sat next to this neat older-ish Coptic Egyptian woman who I chatted with in Arabic the majority of the ride back, about her childhood in Alexandria. Below is the view from the waterside Lite rail station at Hoboken.

Whew, so that was my day today (I'm sure I left plenty out). Tomorrow, while Mickey is at work his mother and I will go to the Tear of Grief Memorial (Russia's 9/11 Memorial Gift to the USA) by the water and have lunch before I head to JFK for my evening flight to London.

I miss all of you so much already, and please realize that you are going to be completely spoiled with really detailed wonderful posts for the next week or so before I have homework!! After that, I cannot promise anything, but I will do my best to update weekly!
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PS!!! you can click the photos for larger versions, although the quality isn't the best because I had to re-size them for this website. Full quality photos when I return!