Off to see the wizard and "do you take credit cards?"

As I sit here and write these notes out, we are in Cape May, New Jersey. Actually, we are in Wildwood but close enough. We made the run from New York to Cape May yesterday off the coast of New Jersey and the weather was great.

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Our boat has been parked at Liberty Landing Marina:

It’s on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River on the edge of Liberty Landing State Park and the Statue of Liberty. The dogs love the place because early in the morning we let them off their leashes and let them run. The park is never really crowded either so it’s a nice place. Only problem is, the dogs seem to find the bird poop very tasty and it’s a battle to keep them out of that. Why do I buy special dog food for them again?

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On Wednesday, our goal was to head uptown around Times Square for lunch and see where the Gershwin Theater was. We had tickets for Wicked and wanted to see how long it took to get there and make sure we wouldn’t get lost and also grab some lunch. To get to the city, you take a water taxi over and then walk to a subway station. The water taxi drops you off in Battery Park right by the World Trade Center site. Of course I didn’t bring any map with me and the times I’ve been in NYC (probably 20+ times) I’ve always had someone carting me around. But how hard can it be…

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So we head on over to the Park Place subway station and here we are looking all knowledgeable on how the subway system works:

Note the spiffy “Nantucket Reds” I am wearing…

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So buying subway tickets becomes a challenge. They have these machines with touch screens but the “touch part” is mounted about 6 inches above the actual screen so you have to touch it multiple times and you end up touching things you don’t want to touch… Also, it won’t let you buy multiple tickets for multiple people so with 6 of us, I have to buy them one at a time (no one else wanted to touch the dirty screens a million other people touched). I don’t have enough “small bills” for this thing and a Metro card is like $7 each. No problem… I’ll just stick my credit card in it multiple times.

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I normally carry 3 credit cards with me. I do this because when I travel a lot, one of them always gets turned off because of “fraud alert” problems. Well… I put my first credit card in the subway machine and get a ticket.. put the card back in and get a second ticket… put the card back in a third time and BAM! The credit card is rejected and gets locked. Hmm.. no problem .. I have another credit card. I do the same thing and sure enough, I get two tickets and then that credit card gets locked. Down to my last credit card, I buy two more tickets (I now have 6 tickets for us) and that one gets locked. Great!!!! What a picture. Here I am franticly trying to find credit cards to put into a subway ticket machine hoping they don’t get rejected or locked over some $7 tickets. All my cards are locked by now! Oh well… we got down to where the train was running.

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Here’s Timmy demonstrating how to look for a train coming:And how NOT to look for a train coming:

And here’s a picture of credit-less me sweating trying to figure out the damn subway map. I can read a nautical chart, but what the hell is with all these train 1, 2, 3, I, V, N, L, express, etc. etc. things. All we want to do is get up to 50th street station from Park Place. We can’t exit the station as I have no credit left to get more tickets.It appears the only train that stops at 50th street is train 1… but train 1 does not stop here… so we get on train 2… going the wrong way. We get off train 2 going the wrong way at the next stop (I think it was Atlanta, GA) and get on train 2 going the right way.

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An hour and a half later (no joke), we arrive in Times Square on train 2:

The kids were very hungry by then so we hopped into ESPN Zone and grabbed some burgers. Finished lunch and gave the waitress my credit card… she returned several minutes later:

HA HA HA HA…

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We walked around a bit. The older boys wanted to find someone called the “Naked Cowboy” but he was no where to be found. We headed on back to the boat (only took half the time) and let the dogs run and got ready for the theater.

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So here we are waiting for the water taxi at Liberty Landing yet again as we are heading to see Wicked:

And this is the oldest trick in the book after you take someone’s picture: “Is your zipper down?”

Off across the Hudson River:And we made our way on the subway to 50th street with no delays and found the Gershwin Theater:

We decided to get some dinner at a little English Pub place called “The Playwright”. I didn’t get a picture of the frickin’ restaurant but I did get a picture of the napkin:

And John:

Walked over to the Gershwin Theater and we had great seats for the play. Orchestra seating and dead center to the stage.

Wicked was a wonderful play. I thought Timmy would fall asleep but he was really into it and the story was just fantastic. The plot takes place before and during the time of the Wizard of Oz and explains the story of the Wizard of Oz witches. It also gives some depth to the other characters. I had no idea what to expect and the interpretation of the original story by the writer was very well done if not a little twisted… I did sneak a picture after the play during the applause:

And if you are reading this and haven’t seen the play, I’ll ruin it for you and tell you the death of the wicked witch of the west with the bucket of water was staged and she ended up running off with the scarecrow to live happily ever after.

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The following day, Friday, was a “free day in NYC” for everyone. I thought the older boys would go off on their own but they ended up tagging along with us for awhile. The younger boys wanted to go back to Times Square and go to the big Toys-R-Us that is there and a few other places.The Toys-R-Us in Times Square is HUGE. It has an indoor Ferris wheel and this big honkin’ T-Rex that groans and moves around:

They also have piles of Webkins… Like a virus they are everywhere. Webkins chickens:

Webkins turtles:

Even as we were walking around the city, many stores have Webkins signs in the window:

Damn Webkins

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Timmy had saved up his money from doing chores on the boat and bought some cool Star Wars toys:The older boys did take off on their own in search of the Naked Cowboy. We found them later after they had been in the Hershey’s store:

Susie and I found an antique store off the beaten path. We saw two 4 foot pedestals we liked for the house and bought those and had them shipped back to Williamsburg. The credit cards are working again.

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We then walked on back to the boat. I was exhausted… and broke:

My left foot (the one I had surgery on) was swelled up and hurting pretty bad. The broken toe on that foot also now has the “black and blue” spreading… I needed to get off my foot. We were going to head up to Hoboken for steak at Arnolds but that just didn’t work out. We went back to the restaurant at Liberty Landing and then crashed.

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I could write for weeks on silly things one sees in New York City. For example, what in the world does this sign mean?

I guess there is “No Parking, No Sweeping, and No Littering between the hours of 9 to 10:30 am on Tuesday and Thursday.” Any other time, one is free to litter and sweep.

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My son breaking the law:

Friday morning came and the weather looked great off the coast of New Jersey so we needed to get ready to book out. As Susie was finishing up some wash and the kids were walking the dogs, I was filling up the water tank. When it was done, I pulled the hose out about 10 feet from the nozzle and the damn thing comes snapping back and the metal tip of the hose embeds itself into my right foot’s big toe:

What are the ODDS OF THAT?! Now my GOOD FOOT is bleeding and probably needs stitches. Also, I was told by someone earlier in the trip if I get New York water on an open sore, there is some flesh eating virus in it and I could end up getting sick and losing limbs… GREAT! I wrapped it up and we headed out anyway..

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Zipped on by the Statue of Liberty:

And made our way down the coast. We are now in Cape May waiting for some storms to pass so we can head over to the top of the Chesapeake Bay... and find an Urgent Care.