USC Concert Choir Tour, Spring 2007
Day 1:
We left the school shortly after 1pm and drove two-and-a-half hours to Fayetteville, NC. We set up and rehearsed and then we had our performance. It went fairly well with a few spots that needed work. Dinner was wonderful, chicken cordon bleu. Mmm. The church didn't have enough people to put us all up so about half of us got to stay in hotel rooms. That was nice! :)

Day 2:
We drove to Washington D.C. and had two whole hours there to eat lunch and sight-see. I went off with three of the grad students, we had parked by the mall so we headed towards the Washington Monument. We saw that, the World War II memorial, reflecting pond sans water, and Lincoln Memorial.

We decided to go find food and after wandering around a bit we located a little deli near the campus of George Washington University. We made our way back to the bus which was a good bit of a longer walk than we realized.

After we got on the bus we headed for Springfield, VA and set up and rehearsed at the church there. Had dinner and sang. Then headed for our host homes. The house the six grad students got put up at was rather large (seeing as how they could take six of us) and had a pool table. We ordered some pizza and played pool. I had a room to myself this night, nice!

Pictures:
Washington Monument
From the Reflecting Pond, WWII Memorial.
Lincoln Memorial
Lincoln Memorial
Lincoln Memorial
Lincoln Memorial
Washington Monument from the steps of Lincoln Memorial

Day 3:
Drove up to Middletown, NY, about an hour north of NYC, and set up, rehearsed, ate, and sang. We got back on the bus and drove to our hotel (the Red Roof Inn) in Manhattan. After getting checked in (I got pushed into a room with 3 undergrads because the two graduates that I was rooming with were both heading out the next day so they didn't want to pay for a private room for me but it wasn't a bad deal) and getting our stuff into the small rooms I headed out with X (Xavier, the NYC native in our choir) and a large group of people, he was going to show us around but most of the group ended up going up in the Empire State Building.

Some of us had been up it before (X and one other girl) and some didn't want to pay the $18 (myself). Then some people wandered off in another direction so it was just myself, X, and two girls I hadn't met before, Sarah and Haley. We wandered past the library from Ghostbusters and into Times Square. We wandered around there for a while then headed back, stopping by McDonald's so X could get something to eat.

I went to bed before anyone else was back and didn't notice when they got in.

Pictures:
Empire State Building
Empire State Building

Day 4:
We met in the lobby to head for Penn station and take the subway to La Guardia High School which was where our last performances were. We were singing for their choirs and doing the college recruiting thing. La Guardia is the magnet school in NYC for performing arts, also was X's high school. We sang for five choirs, 3 in the morning and one after lunch. For lunch a group of us headed towards Central Park. We found a little deli a block or two away and ate on the sidewalk.

We went into a church there (The Church of Saint Paul the Apostle) which was very pretty and had nice acoustics. There was a mass in process so we didn't stay long or anything. We walked back past Lincoln Center and stopped by the Julliard bookstore before heading back to the high school (which is on the corner across from Julliard).

That afternoon I slept as did a few others and then when I woke up I found some of the grad students who had mentioned going out for sushi and the three of us and three girls went across the street for sushi. The area around our hotel had a lot of Korean shops and such in it. The sushi was good.

Pictures
The Met
Banner for the opera I went to
New York City Opera
Avery Fisher Hall (home of the NYC Philharmonica
Julliard
Pictures of Times Square

Day 5:
Woke up at 10, got dressed and got my stuff together. We had to check out by noon. I took my stuff downstairs to put in the storage room (while we checked out at noon we were not leaving the city until midnight) and found the grad students and a few other people and we took the subway to Chinatown. We walked to Little Italy and found a place to eat, Il Palazzo. Lunch was very good.

A storm system was moving in and it was getting cooler out and had started to drizzle. I was able to zip up my jacket and be fine, it was better than navigating with an umbrella among a crowd all using umbrellas. We let the girls do some shopping (that area is sort of like a giant version of the French Market) and then took the subway to the Village. We wandered around there, went into the K-Mart so a couple of the guys could buy warmer stuff to wear, and then went to a coffeeshop and and had some coffee, it was pretty good though not great. Wichcraft is the place. The chocolate sandwich cookies were great. The americano was pretty good.

We started walking back to Times Square but decided that since it was about 25 blocks we'd take the subway. Got to Times Square, went to Tkts so a couple of the guys could get tickets to see a show that night, and to a Chinese place for dinner. I wasn't as impressed with that place as the others we had been. I don't remember what it was called.

I took a cab back to the hotel with Sonja so we could meet our groups to see the shows. She was going to see The Color Purple and I was going to see Die Ägyptische Helena at the Met. After my group was all there we walked to Penn station and took the subway to Lincoln Center, got in and met the rest of our group and found our seats. The first act I thought was rather slow. The second act wasn't as slow but I still didn't care much for the opera itself. A lot of people, however, didn't like the set design and production in general and the production team got booed when they came out for curtain call.

The first tenor lead was fighting a throat infection and didn't sing for the second act. The replacement I thought was better but I would imagine that is just because the first guy was sick. It sort of sucks that my first opera at the Met wasn't that great. (Though I thought that the production was great, and loved the set and all, just didn't like the opera itself) The singers were wonderful.

We made our way back to the hotel on the subway and I went to the corner deli to get some water and the hotdog stand on the other corner for a couple of hotdogs so I wouldn't get hungry on our trip back (and also because I wanted to have a hotdog as my last thing before leaving. I had gotten one in Times Square earlier.
We loaded the bus (chaos) and headed out, just missing the worst of the bad weather.

Pictures
Il Palazzo
Tiramisu
Little Italy
Little Italy
Me in Little Italy
Chinatown Subway
Chinatown Subway
Chinatown
Evil invades Chinatown
Three story K-mart with no restrooms...
Street we were walking back on
Ditto
Random church
Random church
Random church
Inside the Met, same window the banner is on
Large, bright chandalier in the Met
Grand staircase in the Met
House at the Met
House at the Met

Day 6:
Drove all night, I slept some, off and on, and we stopped somewhere at a Shoney's for breakfast. We figured we'd be in Columbia by 1 but around Fayetteville traffic came to a standstill. It took us 2 hours to get off the interstate and onto another 4-lane highway headed in the same direction, which was almost as slow, we got onto a 2-lane and headed for Lumberton, NC for a late lunch (it was 3 by now). A tanker had run off the road that morning and spilled a few thousand gallons of fuel. The road didn't open until sometime today from what I read later.

We got into Columbia at 6 and I loaded up my car and booked it back home, making it in 50 minutes.

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All in all it was a great trip. I really enjoyed NYC after I got used to being in a big city again. I think I could even live there for a while. The subway amazes me. Thus far I had only been on subway type trains in places where you mostly use them to get into the city from the surrounding area as I have never been anywhere that was NEARLY as big as NYC. So the fact that it works so well amazes me.

I hope to go back one day and visit the museums, see a good opera, see a New York City opera, see the NY philharmonic, see some Broadway shows, visit the Statue of Liberty, ground zero, get to the Village Vanguard (some people were going to try to go Wednesday but didn't make it back from their shows in time so I didn't go) and eat lots more food.

You can go see the rest of my pictures in my photobucket account. I took my parents little digital camera so some of them didn't turn out as well as others. It doesn't do well with far off objects at night. But then, it would have been hard to get goot pictures of those things quickly with a film camera. I was able to carry it in my pocket which was very nice.
- posted by Nick @ 3/18/2007 12:10:00 AM | 0 comments