After a lazy morning in the hostel, we finally started making our way down to the rental shop about 1 pm. The shop was at La Guardia airport, because we didn't want to drive through Manhattan at rush hour, so we had a bit of a trip to pick up our car. After standing next to a subway map looking confused for 20 minutes, we managed to get to Penn Station, hoping to find a bus to the airport. It turned out that was a bit complicated, and we ended up taking some kind of airport transfer minivan to Grand Central, then a proper bus to La Guardia, then a small shuttle bus to the rental agency about a mile off the airport.
Anxious because we were 3 hours late, we told the nice people there that we wanted full insurance and a GPS system. And boom, our price just doubled. But not to worry, we asked for directions to the I95, brought out our driving instructions and went out on the street. But then our GPS said: Heavy traffic ahead, recalculating.
Getting lost in New York
Driving by GPS instructions was a bit difficult, and we missed a couple of turns, mostly for staying in the wrong lanes, or missing exits. So we ended up on a bridge. Looked like we were heading back into Manhattan. Shit, that was just what we wanted to avvoid! But we barely avvoided Manhattan, and the bridge took us to Bronx. We ended up on the northern interstate to Portland, a huge detour. And as we got stuck in heavy traffic time after time, we noticed the Estimated Arrival Time kept creeping closer and closer to when the concert was supposed to start.
The gates were supposed to open 8, and we had to find the ticket office, park the car etc, and there were probably a lot of lines everywhere. So we figured we needed about an hour until we were seated for the concert. So when we were stuck in traffic and the ETA slowly climbed from 7 to 8, we were very worried. Hungry, tired and stressed, we were tearing through traffic at 20 mph above the speed limit, desperately trying to make the concert. But then we hit traffic again, and the ETA crept all the way up to 9 pm, and our mood just crashed.
Thankfully. Chris knows exactly what to do with a bad mood, so we stopped at a food station, and were thrilled to find a Subway sandwich shop there. Back on the road, after a delicious roastbeef sandwich and a bottle of coke, we hit lighter traffic and found some nice music on the radio. The rest of the trip was a breeze, as we cruised through the forests toward the native American reservation. We made the venue at exactly 9 pm, and ran to the ticket office, 3 people in line, picked up tickets, got inside, got a local girl to buy beer for us (our ID was not accepted there, should have brought passports), and rushed up to find our seats. We sat down in the middle of a field of black people, feeling a bit out of place, and saw a countdown on the screen, saying 9 minutes 40 seconds. Plenty of time!
The Jay-z performance
We got to sit and breathe for 10 minutes, then Jay-z exploded onto the stage, and everybody in the place jumped to their feet. The hits kept lining up, we especially liked the old stuff and the songs who were featured on Collision Course: Dirt off your shoulder, Big Pimpin, Izzo, 99 problems and Encore. He has a very strong presence, and got some nice crowd interaction going, people were standing the entire time, jumping, dancing and singing along. He often got the crowd to do the "diamonds in the air" handsign, fun stuff.
My favourite part was when Jay-z did a a capella performance of a song from his next album. On the rest of the concert, a huge band was backing him up: two on drums, a DJ, keybord, base, guitar, trumpet, trombone and saxophone. All in all the concert was excellent, a very enjoyable performance!
On a bus stop in Queeens at night
Afterwards, the crowds headed out, and we drove the shorter route back, on the I95 by the coast. Traffic was light and we had few real problems finding the way backto the rental shop. But afterwards we found ourself waiting for 40 minutes on a bus stop in the middle of Queens, at 3 AM at night. Not the safest place to be, a big crowd outside a club across the street, playing loud spanish music. We dodged the crowd but went upstairs to get a beer. It was really nice to relax a few minutes, we were really tired and still had a long way back to the hostel.
After a while the bus finally came, and the bus driver laughed at us when we tried to pay him in dollar bills. Only coins and electronic bus passes allowed. We tried searching our pockets, but he just gave us a friendly laugh and told us to get aboard and sit down. We talked a lot with the driver on the trip, he was really friendly and talked about things we should see, and areas to avvoid at night. After we came to his last stop, he got out of his bus, gave us 2 free tickets, and walked us to the next bus stop to get back downtown. We're really grateful to meet such people here, and riding on a community bus was a fun experience.
We got off the bus at 54th street, and walked past Times Square to our hostel. We got our camera out, and after 10 seconds a bum approached us from across the street. And sure enough he got a dollar from each of us, and we got a picture of him. After that we avvoided a fight outside a club, got lost a couple times, but eventually found our way home. Satisfied with a well-filled day, we finally got to the hostel at 6 am. Instant sleep. :-)
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