Day trip to New York City Pt.1 picture heavy

I recently go the chance to go to NYC for an art field trip. The majority of the time was spent in the Metropolitan museum of art, but I got to hit up a few spots with the remainder of the free time.  I decided to split this into two posts: One post for shopping and experiences, and another post for what I saw in the museum. SO, in the words of Mario, "Here we go!"

Before going on this trip I made a list of places I wanted to visit. I've only been to NYC once before, and spent most of my time in Chinatown. I would be spending most of the time near 5th ave. which has a pretty popular  shopping district. This is where all of the high end stores like Gucci, Nordstrom, Coach, L'occtain and Dolce and Gabbana were. Naturally, I.... skipped right past them and headed straight to the Nintendo center. The Nintendo center in New York is actually the only Nintendo center in the U.S. It actually used to be a poke center but eventually got a makeover. 

When you head towards the Nintendo center you'll see a golden Mario statue outside. Once you enter the store you will see a couple of failure faces. Toad and Luigi are on the left side of the stairs and seem very excited to see new people.  There's also a Donkey Kong with a barrel shaped usb charging station. 

There was also a plethora of Apparel that's exclusive to the store with a good range of sizes. (Most of the tops were oversized, and felt more like athletic wear than your typical t-shirt.) Once you head upstairs, you'll see Mario at the top of a pole with a large piranha plant perched in the window. The second floor has plenty of demo games, and counsels setup for customers to play. There was a ton of pokemon march. Giant pikachu pillows, Jirachi plushes, and a whole lot of memories. Familiar Pokemon like meowth could be found next to newer generations, and plenty of customers reminiscing over the release of each season. 

The second floor also has a ton of Zelda merchandise. Things like apparel, bags, art books, the world of Zelda lore, and games for sell. Kirby, a cord favorite, has a corner all to himself with plushies, t-shirts, and key chains. I was pleasantly surprised to see a section for Splatoon. This game isn't incredibly popular with those in my local area, but I'm glad to see that it's being represented well. 

I decided not to spend all of my time here, so I grabbed a t-shirt, snapped some pictures and set off to find Book-Off.

I heard of Book off from a friend who absolutely loves all things geeky. I've seen a few tours on youtube and decided to check it out.  This store is A-MAZ-ING! When you first walk in the door you'll see baskets full of cute knick knacks  for sell. There's a whole wall full of small figures and badges that are around $1-5 a piece.  I ended up buying some for my brothers and my dad (I always try to bring my family something, even if it's small. They're usually too busy to go adventuring with me, so I like to bring some of that "adventure" home.) I picked up a couple of badges for myself too. The bottom floor is full of manga, anime, and comic books. You'll need to pull out some of the grey drawers at the bottom of the book cases to access more comics, but it's super fun to rummage through hundreds of failure titles. I don't  read very many comics any more, so I decided to get some for my brothers as Christmas presents (shh, don't tell them)

I saw one of my brother's favorite vocaloids and just had to get it for him. I was more interested in finding  Dino from Reborn!












At this point, my feet where killing me. I decided to get some drinks (It was just water, don't worry guys) and catch a taxi back to the museum. Oh! Yes, the taxis are actually yellow, just like in the movies!