Kat's Adventures: New York City Tour of Garment Industry (Day 6)

Hurrah for today! It was our complete free day to do whatever we wanted for at least 8 hours! The first thing I did in the early morning was become and audience member for a new crime talk show. Our tour guide had connections with a television station and asked her if there were any students interested in going to see the show. Me and a few other students went to be a part of their audience members. It was exciting for me because I love watching crime shows, so this was a truly unique in person viewing of a crime show. But also, the story they were covering was REALLY screwed up. The story covered a victim of an international scam artist who targeted single mothers looking for a new husband. This guy had victimized so many women that he currently has 13 biological children from different places in North America and Europe. The story was insane and you should definitely catch it. The episode will premier June 29 on HBO and other channels, and be sure to check your local listings. And make sure to find a lady in a red coat and black and white striped pants; cause that’s me!

Before meeting Tia for lunch, Carolyn and I got ourselves lost after leaving the station. The location we were in was off the map we had been given at the beginning of the trip and we both were horrible with directions. We got lost for about an hour before actually finding the subway station we were looking for. Thank God we did because I was starving. So the three of us met up and ate burgers at a restaurant called BRGR (I think it was spelled like that, not sure). It was really cool because you could create your own burger with a huge variety of options. Plus their beef was free of chemicals, hormones, and free roamed. They were awesome burgers. But that wasn’t the best part about our lunch. For desert we searched for a place called Serendipity, famous for their frozen hot chocolate drinks. Apparently it’s a very well-known place but I have never heard of it. I had one for the first time, thinking about how silly a frozen hot chocolate sounded. Mine was a peanut butter and chocolate flavor. It was AMAZING. If you ever get the chance to try one YOU MUST DO IT. The serving was huge and I was worried I wouldn’t finish it, especially after a big lunch. SOMEHOW I did finish the whole thing. Literally the giant drinking glass was like as big as my face. It was so worth the $11 though.

After that we headed for our hotel for some rest. Later we looked at another fabric shop that was actually better than Mood fabrics. They had more fabrics, a wider variety of textile options, and carried some incredible fabrics I wished I could just run out the store with. I took samples of some interesting fabrics and took our sweet time looking around.

For dinner we ate at a different Italian restaurant, which was pretty crummy in my opinion. My stomach was hurting that night so I ordered a simple salad. Well, it was like a $30 salad with fixings of my choice. It was a pathetic looking salad. My very small rectangular plate came in with a small pile of leafy greens and my choice side options in small piles sitting on the corner of my plate. I ordered asparagus, chopped apples and pears. What I got was 3 short thick stocks of asparagus (actually the thickest I’ve ever seen; like as thick as a nickel is wide), and small chopped up pieces of my fruit with no skins. It was a very disappointing salad.

Then it was off to our main event for the day, the Broadway production of Phantom of the Opera. I have never seen Phantom of any kind and I was so glad to have chosen this show instead of The Lion King. I just felt that I would appreciate the costumes and visuals of Phantom than of The Lion King. The show was incredible. I really only was paying attention to the costumes and not so much the storyline, but I understood enough to stay interested in the show itself. I was EXTREMELY impressed with the staging and use of props.

There were moments where people would jump into the floor and disappear, props would come out from the ground, and they had their giant chandelier fly off the stage and into place (and when the time was right, fall right back down on stage). They also had intense pyro technics that blinded me at times. Tia, our chaperone Jamie, and I had seats in row “D” at orchestra level. We were so close to the stage that whenever the pyro technics were used we not only were blinded but we really felt the heat from them. Overall the show was incredible. I really wished I could have taken pictures of the show itself but all I could get was of the stage before the show, the intermission, and of the theater itself. Full review coming soon.

I had a tiring day indeed. I walked around so much it might have been the equivalent of multiple running marathons. My feet were killing me and I had been so tired the whole day. I don’t know how I was able to do it all. Every day of this trip we would be doing so much in just as little as 12 hours of day light I really don’t know how it was all done. Well, we at least had one more day left in the city to go back to our southern quiet homes.