trip to NYC: 9/9-9/10

this past weekend a group of us ventured north to new jersey (ben's parents' house) and NYC. we left NoVA saturday afternoon, stayed at the amos 5-star hotel that night :), greyhounded into the city sunday morning, went to a church service in times square, ate lunch at the stardust diner (where the servers are singers too!), went to see "the lion king" (more on that later), walked around rockerfeller center and st. pat's cathedral, bussed back to NJ, ate another amazing dinner (thanks to mrs. amos) and got back home late sunday night. whew, what a great trip! and ben did an awesome job organizing and leading it. view all the trip photos by clicking here and then on the "sept 06" album.


here's our group: megan, sarah, elizabeth, robbie, matt, meg, bill, me, kelly, and ben

random funny story: driving up to NJ, we caravaned in 3 separate cars. megan and i drove in her car. we somehow got separated from the other 2 cars... everything was fine until we crossed the delaware bridge and got on the NJ turnpike instead of 295. i was driving, we're chatting and singing and eating our candy from CVS when we get a call from ben. "we're here...where are you guys?" it was about 5pm and we told him we'd be there soon. after we hung up, we realized that we'd missed the exit (or so we thought). so we passed the Cherry Hill water tower on our left (important detail), got off at exit 4, paid our $1.35, did a u-turn and got back on the turnpike, this time heading south. "the directions say take exit 1B," said megan. so we passed the Cherry Hill water tower on our right and looked for exit 1B. but there wasn't one. 20 minutes later we were exiting the turnpike, paying another $1.35, and calling ben for help. we then got on 295 north (what we were originally supposed to do). about 15 minutes later, we saw the Cherry Hill water tower on our right. "wait a second...that's the 3rd time we've passed that tower. 295 must run parallel to the turnpike!" by this time we're really laughing at our mistake. we finally arrived at the amos house around 6:50pm and when we told them our route they laughed and said, "you got off at exit 4 on the turnpike? you were so close!" so basically we went north 20 minutes, south 20 minutes, and north again 20 minutes. we just wanted to see all there is to see in new jersey. :)


here we are about to see the show (we're supposed to be lions :)


sarah & me inside the theater...what a great view of times square.

okay now more on the show: it was AMAZING to say the least. one quote read that it's "gasp-inducing," and i must agree. i think my jaw hung open for most of it. :) everything was suberb, the acting, the singing, the dancing, the costumes...i enjoyed the creativity in the use of puppets and costumes to make the african savanna come alive on stage. if you ever have the chance to see this show, please take it!


bill at the u.s. open...well, kinda of. they had this thing set up where you could see how fast you can hit the ball. he hit it at about 100 mph!

Megan, Rebecca, and Sarah

here i am interrupting Ben's boundaries on the bus ride back to NJ. he was trying to learn about "when to say yes and when to say no" (to take control of his life). :)