After a sleepless 12 hour over night Greyhound stint, stuck sitting next to the bathroom, Manhattan can seem a little daunting the first time you see it from a distance. And from there, it only gets worse. You climb off the bus into the August heat, trying to find the right Subway entrance. You have you map, your hostel reservation and the driving need to experience everything “New York”.

Whatever your actual itinerary looks like, bus or plane, hostel or hotel, weekend or several weeks, New York can be a little overwhelming on your first visit. Here are a few tips to maximizing your first trip in NYC and keeping your wits about you. I’ve kept frugality in mind since I was just about broke when I got to New York.

1. You won’t learn to navigate Manhattan if you stay hidden inside your room. When I was in New York I stayed in a run down hostel, in a room with a tiny window and no fan. In the middle of August. It was horrible to be in and smelled like curry and peanut butter. I found a cockroach in the bathroom. It was perfect. I never wanted to be there for any reason which motivated me to spend all of my time wandering around and taking in the sights. Taking a break in the room was never an option. Even the Subway was preferable since it had air-conditioning. While you don’t necessarily need to book the worst rated hostel you can find, but consider the fact you’re not in the city to enjoy a nice room. NYC is big and scary but hiding in your room won’t help you learn the city.

2. Get the New York City Pass if you’re planning to go to most of the major tourist attractions. If you end up going to even half of them you’ll have saved yourself quite a bit of cash. A lot of the bigger sites also have special fast-tracked line ups for people who have their tickets already which is a huge time saver (especially at the Empire State Building).

3. Spend your evenings in Central Park. Assuming you’re in NYC in the summer, Central Park offers the perfect place to relax and cool your heels after a long day of roaming the city. It’s a great place to people watch and grab a late night pretzel or slice from the surrounding shops for a picnic dinner. If you’re especially into getting a romantic New York experience, make sure to catch the lightning bugs coming out as soon as dusk hits. Central Park is like the eye of a hurricane, a little rectangle of calm in the middle of a hectic city. If it’s good enough for the hardened New Yorkers to use, it’s good enough for even the most frazzled tourist.

4. The Staten Island Ferry gets your reasonably close to the Statue of Liberty. I had a discount ticket for an actual Statue tour, but it was almost four hours long. I just wanted to see the statue, not learn everything about it and be stuck on the island for four hours wasting time with a bunch of people wearing fanny packs. After asking a nice agent at the ferry terminal (who made my friend and I imitate Terrance and Philip from South Park, because we’re Canadian) let us in on the fact you can easily see the Statue of Liberty from the Staten Island Ferry and, best of all, it’s FREE!

5. At least make yourself a rough plan before you go. I’m not a fan of the over-planning but if when I went to NYC I only had three days and I had quite a few places I wanted to hit up. The night before we left my travel partner and I sketched out a rough map of the city and placed all the places we wanted to go onto it. Using a highly technical “circling” system, we grouped the destinations into three days. Manhattan offers a lot and if you don’t employ some sort of planning you’ll end up spending a lot of time running around and catching the Subway and trying to get all over the place. Try and roughly group where you want to go according to where the are located so you can do them all in one shot rather than going back and forth.

6. Give yourself at least an afternoon just to wander around aimlessly. Try to do this as soon as possible in your trip to give yourself some pace of the city without over-thinking where your are trying to get to. Let yourself fall into the pace of the city, learn some of the landmarks, how to navigate if you have a map, and just wander. It won’t be a total waste of time either. Guaranteed you’ll see some attraction or building you forgot to put on your itinerary. If I hadn’t spent some time aimlessly wandering the the streets I would have missed the Central Library, Grand Central Station, Wall Street and the Flat Iron Building altogether.

7. Pick and choose which museums you really want to see. New York has hundreds of museums to chose from, even aside from the bigger name ones like The Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, and the Guggenheim. If you have a limited amount of time you might want to choose just one or two or you could find yourself spending your entire trip inside museums. The Met and the Museum of Natural History can each easily consume five or six hours of your day on their own if you truly want to appreciate them and get your money’s worth. Considering the sheer amount of places you can go in New York and everything there is to do, make sure you are setting a realistic amount of time for museums.

8. Don’t get your hopes up about everything you go to do and see. New York is built up as a giant romantic metropolis teaming with interesting things to be discovered. There’s supposed to be excitement around every corner. Reality strikes quick though, and you need to be prepared for that. Not everything is going to meet your expectations. You will stand in line for at least at hour at the Empire State building only to realize the deck is so full you can hardly see over the ledge. The World Trade Centre site will look more like a construction zone than a memorial site. You probably won’t understand most of the art in the Guggenheim. Don’t let the occasional disappointment turn you off of enjoying the rest of the city, these things are to be expected. New York has some big hype surrounding it and not every aspect is going to live up to your expectations.

9. It might be tempting to stick with what you know and grab Starbucks and McDonald’s but eat at the local places. I’ll admit I was pretty sick on my last night in the city and chicken nuggets seem to contain some sort of Pepto Bismal medicinal properties, at least as far as my stomach is concerned, so I opted for for the Golden Arches. Aside from being sick, it was my least favourite meal during my stay. Between warm pretzels, fresh garlic bread from pizzerias and fresh fruit from a local market, your common fast food joint just isn’t going to cut it. Make sure aside from eating you stay hydrated too!

Alright, this is just ridiculously overdue. Two weeks and then some! My own laziness is what is to blame! I should have blogged about this so long ago, I’m just sad that it took me so long. There’s really no excuse, I haven’t been up to much lately, just sitting around not doing much of anything. Reading a lot to make up for the sad lack of reading that took place in April.

Anyways. The trip was excellent. I went with J, my friend who lives in Guelph whom I visited not too long ago. He was supposed to be coming in for work, but his work moved his schedule around a little, but he decided to come out anyways, and since he missed the mountains invited me to tag along. He was lucky enough to score a hotel in Banff (on a long weekend no less), so our trip to Banff (only a few hours outside of Calgary) wouldn’t have to be excessively short.

The drive still took a while and there was a considerable lineup to get into the National Park (plus a hefty fee, of course). But we were full of Annie’s breakfast and had some snacks we picked up from Superstore (a plug just for you J!). Our first stop along the way was some dinky lake just outside of the Park gates. I’m not sure what it is called, put there’s always lots of cars there, we we decided to pull over as well and take a gander. I love how it’s this gorgeous lake against the mountains, and that’s where they decided to stick a huge ugly factory. Wonderful! We took some pictures, realized the lake was fairly lame and it was all foreigners there who had no idea that the lake certainly was not representative of the actual splendor of the Rocky Mountains!

After the dinky lake, we decided we’d haul ass up to Lake Louise. I truly, honestly, and fully did not expect the lake to still be frozen. That was stupid, because why wouldn’t a mountain lake still be frozen in early May? It was sort of disappointing, really, it lacked all of it’s character colour and was just a cold white icy blob up against some mountains. We only were there for a bit, which was sad because of the amount of time it took to drive there and back, but the glare from all of the white iciness and all of the tourists were just a bit much to handle. Plus, all there is to do there is look at the lake and walk around, but you can’t do either of those when everything is still under snow and ice. Ah well.
We eventually made it back to Banff, where our hotel was. Though J had given me an ominous warning that we were to be staying at the Banff Voyager Inn that put me off a bit, I was pleasantly surprised by the hotel. It was basic, but it had something I have never experienced before: a balcony! Not only did it provide a nice cool place to sit (and drink hehe), it also allowed for some nice mountain views in the evening and the morning. There was lots of traffic going into the hotels around us, lots of tour groups unloaded and reloading at almost all hours of the day and night. Luckily I brought my ear plugs with me to drown out the noise of the tour groups and drunks during the night! That evening we had some dinner at Earl’s and did a bit of shopping in the downtown strip, but decided to retire to the room for a few drinks and 80s tunes.

The next morning we got up fairly late and checked out of the room with only a few minutes to spare. We stopped by some restaurant J wanted for breakfast, but the line was ridiculous and I wasn’t feeling up to eating much anyways. We ended up back in the downtown area at Tony Roma’s, where I had never been before. I only had the potato skins, but they were damn good! I was feeling a bit off that morning, but things started to look up when we saw a horse drawn carriage “for hire”. We went for it, how could we not? It was a slow tour of Banff, the downtown area, along the river, and back through some houses. Over all it was so amazing, I’ve never traveled that way before, even for a short stint. It was so much fun! We did a bit more shopping and touring, of course getting some fudge, which is something you must do while you are in Banff.

We left Banff and the National Park soon after, taking a quick detour to Bragg Creek, which like everything else was full of tourists and sort of boring. We headed back to Calgary, finishing our trip with some dinner. Overall it was a blast and I have to thank the J and Cal team for another awesome time! I crossed a few things off of my summer mini-list, too. As always, check out my photobucket account for all my pictures from the trip.

Alright, so I have some grand plans this summer, and there is even some talk of going to Atlantic City to see Foreigner! Woo! This is, of course, not enough for me (queue Adam inquiring “is anything ever enough for you?”). I have decided to make a summer mini-list, since I am in the habit of letting my summers slip away from me and going “oh I wish I had _____________” at the end of it. So here is my awesome list for summer activities. Check out my past mini-list for Southern Alberta (which is sadly uncompleted but ah well).

1. Go to Banff
2. Spend a weekend in the mountains
3. Go to Bragg Creek
4. Take a road trip out to B.C.
5. Go to Waterton Park (and get out of the car – ps I heart you Adam)
6. Go to Cochrane and get ice cream!
7. Visit Adam’s parents at Ghost Lake twice or more
8. Raft/float-y boat on the Bow
9. Walk in Carburn Park
10. Have a picnic
11. Eat special brownies with Gwen (omg hah – and bring my mom pffft)
12. Try deep fried cheesecake at Montana’s
13. Go to Edmonton
14. Drive along the Cowboy Trail

So my lovah-lovah Adam planned a nice and semi-surprise trip for me on Sunday. It combined both my giant list and some of the mini-list for southern Alberta that I made a while back.

We made our way down to the Remington Carriage Museum, which is located in Cardston, quite near to the US/Canada border. The drive was quite nice, though it was a particularly shitty day out. We arrived at the museum around noon, and found there to be a quite expensive admission fee

($18 for us both – NO CARRIAGE RIDE INCLUDED!!) The museum itself is pretty boring, which is actually why I put it on my list. I wanted to completely mock it. But Adam was so totally into it, reading every sign and getting into it. It’s a bunch of old carriages! Jesus. It was fun though, and some of the carriages were nice to look at.

I totally feel gypped about the carriage ride though. After the museum, we ate some lunch in the car (so ghetto, but so fun), and then headed westward towards Waterton Lakes National Park. Let me tell you, the road between Cardston and Waterton Park is effin’ creepy. It just seems like a place tourists go to die. We did not end up stopping in Waterton since it was snowing and we couldn’t even tell if it was open or not.

There were nice views, despite the clouds, and we even saw some deer and a female elk hanging out. They were really close to the road, so we slowed down for both safety and gawking purposes. We also saw bunny tracks with was SUPER cute, as Adam is a huge fan of bunnies and rabbits and such things. After that we drove through Twin Butte, but the sign wasn’t big enough to warrant stopping to get a picture. So we drove right on through. I’m surprised by the amount of Butte places in Alberta and Montana. Seems every other town is named “Picture Butte” “Twin Butte” “Butte” or some other variation of a description ass.

There was one sign that did require a turn around. Spread Eagle Road. Priceless and then some. I of course, got out of the car in the foot of snow that was drifted around this farm’s driveway to get a picture. I was super excited about it, let me tell you what.

We then made our way to Pincher Creek, to get a picture with their giant pinchers, which I just find too hilarious for words. Seriously. Giant pinchers. They also had a “Hoe Hardware” which I hope to god sells sex toys.

Then we headed home, and onto thesurprise event which I will blog about later on.

I leave for Ontario tomorrow night, so there will be a lot to talk about. I crossed another thing off my list (not a surprise, it is listed under Completed if you need to know, but I will be making a blog entry about it. I also have my march book reviews coming up. Too much going on!!

Check out my photobucket for all of the pictures from the day.

So a while back I made a mini-list about things I wanted to do in Southern Alberta before I move back to Calgary this April. My super awesome mom came to visit me this weekend, and helped me cross quite a few things off of the list! We of course got photo evidence of the whole shebang!

She got here Friday at around 10 and helped me finish my dishes like the doting mother she is, and then we went for lunch at the Red Dog Diner (we she enjoyed as much as I do!). Then we did some unexciting things like getting groceries. In the afternoon we went to the Galt Museum and Archives, which was so much fun! We had the whole place to ourselves, so we gallivanted around and did as we pleased. This included, making an awesome newspaper article in which I stated I would most remember “not learning Blackfoot”, as all of the Blackfoot sound recordings weren’t working. There were also awesome medieval dress up clothes that you could wear (meant for kids) but that didn’t stop me! We also played some stupid medieval game neither of us understood and I battled with a knight. After the excitement at the Galt museum, we went to find where these stupid giant tower things are by the river, but you can’t get to them. We found the road there, but it’s some business access road. I still don’t get it, why they have this ancient water tower and lookout deck but you can’t get to them. Odd!

The rest of the evening was pretty low key, we went to dinner at Montana’s with Adam and then went home bloated and watched Amnesia which wasn’t that entertaining for a show with Dennis Miller in it.

Saturday we got up early, had a delicious breakfast and headed out to do my recycling. We decided on a whim to go to Taber, as I had some things on my mini-list there. Taber is hilarious, it’s just such a little town/city with NOTHING going on at all. We saw the giant corn stalks and giant woman, and stopped at the library to ensure we’d found the giant woman and so I could use their gorgeously clean bathrooms. There were also Hutterites on the computers which my mom found funny. We saw about 100 churches and the best museum ever (which was closed) called “the Irrigation Impact Museum”. IMPACT Museum haha. I think everything except the Walmart and library was closed in that place.

Coming back from Taber we stopped at a place called Chin, thinking they had a sign we could get a picture by because it’s an awesome name for a place. They didn’t seem to have one,but they did have a giant garbage heap, I mean this thing was GIANT! It was also creepy, because it was on someone’s property and they have about 25-30 cars just crammed full of stuff, with trailers and stuff. It almost looked like a place tourists went to die… eep. And they also had a bunch of old PMQs as houses, which we found strange.

Once we got back to Lethbridge we stopped for lunch at Sam’s Donair and Hamburger for the best burger’s EVER. I want another one right now in fact. We got bloated and full, and then headed for Fort Whoop-Up. Well, we had a stop over at the wind gauge in Lethbridge on Scenic Drive. I don’t get it, but whatever. Historic point of interest or something.

Fort Whoop-Up was pretty fun, but a bit creepy. It’s only like 5 bucks a person too! You can sneak in really easily though, and most of then rooms only are accessible from one door, so you end up trapped in these smelly little rooms. There are some neat setups of western-esque rooms, with a bar, and lots of axes laying around randomly. Since no one else is there, it was sort of creepy. It was fun nonetheless. I tried roping fake cattle, got another picture with a buffalo, and saw how short people used to be. We bought candy and souvenirs, including $2 rabbit pelts (yes rabbits died so Fort Whoop-Up could make $2 a pop) for the cats at home to see if they would like them. I got a bear purse and a little white buffalo statue. After the Fort, we wandered down to the river and got some pictures, but it was too creepy for us there too, too many bushes and no one around.

Click here to see all of the pictures from the weekend

Alright, so I have been living in Lethbridge since September and not done much in the way of exploring here. I have found some rockin’ food establishments and a good place to drink, but I don’t think I have experienced the full potential of Lethbridge.
So I am making a quick list of things I want to do before I move away in April
1. Go to the Red Dog Diner
2. Go down to the river
3. Spend a day hiking along the coulees
4. Go to the Japanese Garden
5. Walk around Henderson Lake
6. Go to Head-Smashed in Buffalo Jump
7. Go to Fort Whoop Up
8. Take a trip to Waterton Park
9. Visit the Galt Museum
10. Visit Picture Butte because of the name
11. Go to Taber and see the Giant Woman and Giant Corn Stalks
12. Go to Pincher Creek and see the Giant Pinchers
13. See the giant wind gauge in Lethbridge

So there’s my Mini-List