Milking NYC transportation for all it's worth

 *As a fun exercise, I will number each of the forms of transportation we used during this outing. 

To celebrate NYE in NY during a pandemic, my roommate, Jenny, and I decided to visit Dyker Heights. This is a neighborhood in Brooklyn that is decorated exceptionally well for Christmas. We originally had plans to visit Dyker Heights before Christmas, but due to my Covid experience, we had to push it. Dyker Heights is not easy to get to if you don't have a car, but we had a game plan to take a train and then a bus, which was supposed to get us relatively close. The metro part of the plan goes well (1). While waiting at our bus stop, two buses come to a complete stop; however, neither is our bus, so we continue to wait. Our bus finally arrives, and I swear the driver speeds up as he passes our stop. Now we are going to have to wait 8-12 minutes for another bus. We aren't feeling particularly keen on buses at the moment, so we decide to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge (2) and try to catch a different bus in Brooklyn. 

Once we get to the other side, we see that our options are now saying it will take us two hours to get to Dyker Heights. It was supposed to be 90 minutes from our apartment. Jenny suggests we take a Revel. Revels are a scooter service in NY (think moped) that were temporarily discontinued due to safety concerns, but returned with new procedures such as immediate suspension for driving the wrong way on a street and photographic evidence of wearing a helmet (they think big here). Jenny loves them, but I'm not the biggest fan due to my hatred of motorcycles and the safety concerns. However, when in Rome, right? The streets aren't busy–and I do trust Jenny–so we hop on a Revel and continue to our destination (3). The Revel runs out of battery after about 15 minutes, so we have to get off. We are STILL two hours away from this place according to CityMapper. Exhausted and cold and very excited to just see these lights, we just get an Uber to the final destination (4). 

The lights were super cool! I have less to say about them than I do about the journey, but here are some pictures: 

The best part of this is that you literally just take the Q all the way back to our apartment. Of course, we wanted to have a nice NYE dinner. We decided on pizza and Schmackary's. It made more sense for Jenny to stay on the Q to go to UES for the pizza, and I would get off at Times Square to pick up the cookies. I also REALLY had to pee, so I was anxious to find a place in Times Square to do that. Times Square was fun, because a massive section was blocked off for the NYE show that no one could go to. I had a game plan to sneak into a hotel for a luxury bathroom experience. There was one hotel that had a lot of people going in and out, so I casually walked in behind a couple (because you had to have a key card for entry). There was no bathroom in the first lobby, but I just walked down the stairs, through the lounge, and viola! I was very proud and felt so so much better. 

Schmackary's was closed, so I decided to go to Magnolia's. It was just the perfect distance that it made more sense to walk, and then Magnolia's is the perfect distance from our apartment, that it also makes more sense to walk (my logic --> if it takes less than 7 minutes more than public transportation to walk, I would rather just walk). So I walked all the way back from Times Square (about 53 blocks). 

We ended the night watching When Harry Met Sally and eating our well-deserved dinner. The NYE scene came on directly after we paused the movie to hear all of the cheers for ringing in 2021. <3