new jersey

My roommates and I decided that we would take a little trip this past weekend. We went to see a few bands by the names Deathcab for Cutie, and Franz Ferdinand. I'm not big into either of these bands, though I have heard a few of their songs, which are for the most part good and enjoyable. I mostly decided to go on the trip for a chance to get out of Rochester for a while. The concert was in NJ. Getting to NJ was quite an adventure of its own. There was a freak snow storm, followed by hail in the middle of PA. This led to many accidents and turned-over vehicles, and general slowdowns. Once we pasted Philly, Camden was just a hop across some river (Delaware maybe?), then we had hours to kill before the start of the concert. This is what we did...

We parked near the Tweeter center, and across from our garage was this Aquarium. So we decided to check it out, at first we thought it would be expensive, which according to the main gate it was! It was like $16 per person, plus it said it closed at 5 (the current time was about 4). So we were like no way would we pay that much. So we went to the back and people seemed to be exiting a building. So we checked it out. This exit turned out to be the exit for the Aquarium, and other people were going in as some were going out. So we went in too. Man we're we suprised.

The first exhibit in the aquarium is the Hippo exhibit. Hippos are ginormous! They are also suprisingly very graceful underwater, which was a very cool feature of this place, to be able to see them swimingly underwater. We then checked out other things such as octupus, seahorseas, and jellyfish. But the coolest part was a walk through shark exhibit, where you walk through a tunnel, and sharks are literally swimming all around you! It was pretty amazing.

After that, we were really hungry, so we decided to get some eats. Frank saw a couple of girls and yelled "Hey, do you know where we can eat?" They said they were looking for a place too. So we tagged along, introduced ourselves, and made some friends. We searched for quite a while, because little did we know Camden is really really rundown. We walked down whole city blocks that were completly deserted and boarded up. We found one restaurant at the end of a series of deserted buildings. We went in and ordered some food. The food turned out to be not so bad, it was a small old fashioned Italian joint.

We then went to the concert, and continued to hang out with our new friends. We didn't go to our assigned seats, but it didn't matter. It was all fun. The ride home was pretty exhausting. We left NJ at around 11:30 and got to NY around 4 am. Around Syracuse I noticed TJ driving more erratic than he had the last few hours, he started breaking for no reason. When asked about this later he claims he saw "Arms growing out of the truck ahead of him" and "Shadows that I thought were people". So I drove the rest of the way home after that, we got back to Rochester around 5:45 am.

All in all, an awesome trip! I will put up some pictures as soon as I get them from TJ. Oh! And I was talking to someone later about the trip, and they informed me that they were from NJ and that they avoid Camden whenever possible. When asked why he said because it is America's Most Dangerous city. Camden Who knew we were risking our lives walking through Camden?