I swear this place is made for me. It reminds me of Oxford St. in London, with just about every store I know (and actually shop at, unlike Madison) nicely packed into a few blocks around Broadway. The first time I came to New York was for to renew my passport and I only had a couple of hours, which I spent strolling Madison Ave. (I wanted to go to the Met, but apparently they are closed on Mondays). Madison was beautiful…and jaw-dropping-expensive. I guess the closest UK counterpart would be Bond St. (I keep talking about London because it’s the only other major city I’ve spent a significant amount of time in). SoHo on the other hand is a lot more realistic for me, and I’m not sadly restricted to window-shopping :). When I first Googled the building that I’ll be working in for the next four weeks, I could not have asked for a better office location. If you know me, you can very well imagine the bliss I felt when I saw the plethora of store names that are in the immediate vicinity of the office.

On the other hand, the greater part of today was kind of excruciating 😦 As per usual, I did not have nearly enough sleep to function normally (4.3 hrs, to be exact, which is about 3.5 hrs short). In fact I was so sleeping during my trip, I didn’t even bother to eat the sandwich I bought for lunch. So I was suppose to get the keys to my apartment once I’m here…but I couldn’t reach the people with the keys. When I finally managed to drag myself and the two suitcases (it was a major ordeal since smart me opted for public transportation. I wish someone told me that NYC metro stations don’t have escalators or elevators.), the key girl finally called me back to tell me she’s out of the city on holiday (since when do people get Monday after July 4th off? I thought it was just universities >_>) and won’t be able to come back until 7-8pm. Joy. So there was me, stuck on the corner of Prince St. and Broadway, with two suitcases and nowhere to go. I then did the only thing I could do – head to a cafe…except the closest cafe was majorly claustrophobic; never thought I’d miss suburban chain cafes/chain bookstores so much 😦 I ordered jalapeño poppers…except they are less than half the portion, twice the price of what I got from Satis in Durham and not nearly as good *sigh*.

Just when I thought I was doomed to spend the rest of the day pulling my luggage around SoHo in the 95 degree weather, my boss called me to tell me that he booked a hotel for me for the night. Since I had just about enough dealing with my luggage, I decided to call for a cab…except I got turned down by the cab driver, who told me my destination was only a few blocks away and implied that I should just walk. So silly me actually walked. It wasn’t a long walk, to be fair, but again…two suitcases (one of them weighing 50.5 lb) makes it feel twice as long. When i finally got to the hotel, I was nicely told that I had no reservation. Turns out my boss booked the hotel in Expedia and Expedia failed to fax over the information. Joy. I spend the next 30min sitting in the hotel lobby as my boss and the hotel managers tried to get Expedia to send over the damn papers. 3 hours after I landed in LGA, I FINALLY settled into my room. Only to find out that one of the jars in my cosmetic box opened during the trip and the powder got everywhere. I spent the next 30min cleaning everything.

I think it must have been around 5 when I finally got around to eating the sandwich that was suppose to be my lunch. By then I was pretty much dead tired, so I napped for a couple of hours before the key lady finally called me. I got my key and planned on going to Brooklyn to check out the apartment, but as I got into the metro station I found out that I had left my metro card in the hotel. So I went shopping instead 🙂

Whew…that was a long post. I’m gonna go shower cuz I feel absolutely disgusting and I’ll probably have to get up tomorrow morning and finally move into my apartment. I’m taking the cab this time.