Blog 11: New York City Bus Trip

On Sunday March 22, I went on a bus trip to New York City that was sponsored by SET and the Hillel Club. The cost of this trip was only fifteen dollars and included transportation to and from New York City and a ticket to see an off Broadway production of Avenue Q.

When we got to New York we were given several hours to walk around the area and do whatever we wanted. So of course, my friends and I started our day with the Disney store. I browsed all of the wonderful Disney merchandise that I could not afford, and left with a small Olaf Tsum Tsum for my mom. If you do not know what this item is, I suggest looking it up. It was kind of creepy looking, but at the same time I felt like it needed to have a home on my mom’s work desk.

After the Disney store we went to Ellen’s Stardust Diner. This was the best dining experience I have ever had. Instead of having music on in the background, the wait staff takes turns performing. Everyone who works there has either been on Broadway and is in between shows, or they dream of being on Broadway. Every one of them was amazing. At one point it was our waitress’s turn to sing, but she was in the middle of doing normal waitress things. Because of this, she started her song and continued to swipe credit cards and pour coffee, and it had no effect on her performance. When she was done with what she was doing, she walked to the stage to complete her song. The stage was the ledge between the booths and I had no idea it was the stage until one of my friends told me they would be walking right behind me.

At one point, one of the performers was singing on the stage behind me. Then I felt my hair stand up and realized he was messing with me. After that, he began to sing to me, so I sang back. He pointed the microphone at me and I got to sing about one and a half lines of the song into the mic before he took it back. It was pretty awesome getting my five second solo.

When we finished lunch, we went to the Hershey and M&Ms stores. My goal was to buy a piece of chocolate that was bigger than it should be; however, I decided to save my money to get a souvenir from the show.

After shopping for chocolate, we went to the show. Avenue Q was hysterical, but it was definitely an adult show. There were some children in the audience, and I am assuming their parents had no clue what happened in the show. One of my friends pointed out, “Once you sit with your parents and watch puppets have sex, your relationship never goes back to what it was.” That was in fact one of the scenes in the show, and I am assuming those children have been scarred for life. Although some scenes made me uncomfortable, I laughed throughout the whole show.

I was really happy with this entire trip and I am excited to go on next year’s New York City bus trip.