Originally for our Aniversery, I was going to take Mary  desertrosemas up to Toronto to see the new Dirty Dancing musical. As it turned out Sarah had two tickets to see Lion King in NY that she was willing to sell to us. So we took the opportunity and instead taking a trip to NY.(Thanks Sarah!) This is a tale of 3 cities, 3 days, a musical, a shot transmission, and a fallen construction crane...

Mary and I left Friday afternoon for the 4 hour trip to Haddonfield NJ. The drive was mostly incidental... that is until I took the wrong exit and ended up in the bad part of north filly with no transmission. Well ok so at least I had first gear. Which was barely enough to keep me alive on the NJ Turnpike during rush hour. (Hey they aim for you when you have a NY plate, Trust me!)

After arriving and meeting up with Marianna (My awesome Russian co-worker) We all took a train to Philly to enjoy some jazz and some much deserved food. Saturday was a bit of a rush, the train from Haddonfeild takes about 3 hours to get into New York City, and the play starts 2 two. We had it planned out to arrive about an hour and a half earlier, only we couldn't make one of the connecting trains and were forced to spend that hour waiting for the next train. The scene when Mary and I arrived at Penn station and hurriedly rushed to hail a taxi, resembled a movie I have seen but can't recall the name of. To make an already long story short we arrived just in time for the musical (Though regrettably we left a mother and child in our Dust, Sorry! Hope you made it)

The Lion King was amazing, if you haven't seen it, see it, even if you don't like musicals, its literally breath taking and the way they portray the characters (being anthro characters) was unique and very enjoyable. After the Musical the reality check set in as we received calls from both our parents wondering if we were ok. Apparently a few blocks down a construction crane had fallen and crushed a building, Killing at least four. When Mary and I looked in the distance of 51st street, we saw a very eery site indeed. An almost innocent looking tower, precariously lying against a building. A picture can be found on my picture site (URL given at bottom of page)

Then later that evening I managed to snap one of my favorite pictures of Mary which can be found in my gallery.

The next day was Atlantic city, Now I'm not one for gambling or any of that so our main goal in going was to show Mary the ocean for her first time. I had a good time picking up Mary and chasing the waves threatning to throw her in. Later Mary and I decided it would be a shame to come all this way to Atlantic city and not gamble atleast once, so we split a ten dollar bill which we dumped into a slot machine of each of ours choice, and then promptly lost each 5 dollars with a single button press... I don't understand gambling. I used to be in trouble for spending 5 dollars in an Arcade when I was younger, but dang atleast with 5 dollars in an arcade you press a button more than ONCE. And it actually is entertaining, not depressing.

By this time, as you can imagine Mary and I were very exhausted, and so began our 4 hour drive back home which again was mostly uneventful until the freak snow storm in PA. But all ended well and it's safe to say this was one of the best, all be it shorter vacations I have had.

Pictures from the trip can be found here at my new photo site:
http://pics.brianweis.net/v/travels/