Third Day in the Big Apple

Friday, March 2

Things started off at the shady hostel we were staying in.



It was a fairly gross hostel.

We got on the subway and headed over to the UN building. We met some guy named Rohaid from google India on the way! Pretty neat, huh? Because I'm a big jerk, I forgot about him shortly after we started the tour.


Follow me guys! (Reference to the Jim Gaffigan bit we saw our second night in NYC)... notice our security clearance tags or something. Awesome expressions all around guys.


A slightly smaller version of the buildings. We were in the shorter/flat building.


It's a really nice building with insane amounts of tour groups. INSANE. They also spoke pretty much ever language there is, including Danish.


The front courtyard... look you can see it rain.


Security chamber. Look familiar?


Interpretation, what?


We were sitting where they used to have visitors sit, but visitors/media aren't allowed in anymore.

There's these dials:



And you pick which language you want. There are six languages at the UN, English, French, Russian, Chinese (I can't remember if it's Cantonese or Mandarin), Spanish and Arabic.


It's like her blue steel pose.


It's a pretty huge room.




Look at us! We can pretend to be special. Ann, Karen, Ashley, me...looking like I just sneaked into their photo.


Mandates of the United Nations


I think this is the financial chambers.


Pretty.

After that, we headed over to a hall that was about war.

Of course I was looking out the window.


What? There was water.


This stuff is from Hiroshima.


Make music, not war.


A gift?


Then we went to the big chambers where all the countries sit. Each month or three months they pick a new letter at random, and the countries sit in alphabetical order starting with that letter. I guess if you don't like your alphabetically neighbouring country - tough luck.




We felt so important...except that all those delegates you see are in the not-related-to-the-UN UN Private High School.


Look at us being important...and me never-smiles


Outside the UN. No more war.



When we got outside, it had stopped raining and it was sunny. yay!





The UN from the outside.

After we were done with the UN, we headed over to check out Grand Central Station.





Leave it to me...

How hilarious is this? Oops. I meant to take a photo of the constallations on the ceiling.


Oooh. Artsy.




Karen and Ashley. It's big, but I expected that main part to be bigger...and where are those benches that people always sleep on in the movies? Different area?


Shaky hans strikes again.

After wandering around and being ridiculous tourists, we headed downstairs to grab some lunch... er at like 3:00 PM. We ate and regrouped. We figured that we wouldn't split up as originally planned: Ann + Ashley off to the Metropolitan Museum of Art ; Karen + me to MoMa, M-o-m-a, Moma. Instead we'd all go to the Met to keep things simple in case Ann had to rush off to meet up with her friends.