USA: Lights, camera, DRAMA! - Day 22

This was a chockablock day which ended in complete drama. After brekky we set off into the city to Madame Tussaud's where we met the likes of Brad Pitt, Beyonce, Johnny Depp, Jennifer Aniston, the Spice Girls, Justin Bieber and more. There was one part which was a dark scary tunnel with skeletons and people jumping out to freak people out and Ryan laughed at me the whole way through as I was about to pee my pants. We then went over to the NBC studio for a "behind the scenes" tour which turned out to be kind of lame. We saw the Saturday Night Live set, the broadcasting room and the Today show set, but it really was not exciting as there were no famous people and not that much to marvel at.

But fear not, as the day was not over, we hopped on a train to Harlem and dined on soul food! Basically it's waffles with any meat or fish you can think of. Ryan and I both ordered waffles with fried chicken and were way too full by the end of it. There was a fair bit of rain by this time, but seeing as we were in Harlem already, we trudged through the rain to visit the Cathedral of St John The Divine, the world's largest cathedral. (Decided it was worth a visit despite reading a review on Google that said this place gave false advertising as praying didn't guarantee entry into heaven). Turns out the cathedral is huge. Spanning the size of two football fields with extremely high ceilings. Inside was very grand, with stain glass windows (what else), a massive organ and four beautiful hanging tapestries which were actually made in the 17th century on the Papal looms in Rome.

We still had the afternoon so we headed back to the city to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) to try and be cultured. Some of the oil paintings were truly beautiful, especially the ones by the famous peeps e.g. Van Gogh, Picasso. But most of the modern art left both Ryan and I flabbergasted at how it is considered art. One piece was literally just a single piece of string shaped into a face and stuck onto the canvas. Some just had a black border. Things got weird.

Needless to say, we didn't stay for long, but to make things worse, someone stole our umbrella at the umbrella holder! It was pouring outside so we just took someone else's and headed home for a rest. Got to about 7pm and we were pretty hungry so we called a Thai place and ordered food for pick up. That's when the drama started. We left to pick up our food and when we came back Ryan realised he didn't have the key to the apartment. It was still pouring but Ryan went in search of the key and found it had fallen out of his pocket and was just lying in the Thai restaurant. Relieved we went home and ate our food. That is, until Ryan wanted to use his phone and realised it was gone. We started a frantic search through the apartment, overturning the couch, swiping things aside, even looking in the cupboards, until we were sure it was gone. Ryan immediately went downstairs back to the Thai place to see if it was around there and borrowed their phone to call it. I stayed in the apartment waiting to see if I could hear the phone. I started to get worried about Ryan when he'd been gone for 30 minutes. Thankfully he returned in under an hour WITH HIS PHONE! Turns out a guy had seen it lying on the street and picked it up. Ryan called the phone and the guy answered! He was having dinner with his girlfriend a couple of blocks away and gave Ryan the address, so Ryan ran in the rain to the restaurant. When he got there he felt super awkward as the bartender was like "uhh hello.." And Ryan had a frantic face on and was like " uhh hello..my phone... I'm meeting someone...my phone", confusing the bartender even more. Anyhow, he explained himself and found the guy and his phone so when he returned we were both extremely elated. Woo!