How not to spend a day in Albany

Welcome to Albany, state capital of New York and booooring city

If it weren't for my very dear friend Karo, Albany, NY, definitely wouldn't have been included in our travel itinerary. But here we are and after two days of eating pizza and Ben & Jerry's and watching movies, we felt that there MUST be something more exciting to do in Albany. So we decided to rent a car, and drive up to the Catskills for a hiking and swimming day. Sounds like a fabulous idea, right? Wrong! This was the beginning of our 42-step misadventure in Albany...

1. Map out a perfect day in the Catskills and plan the logistics.

2. Find a car rental online.

3. Check the address on Google maps.

4. Realize that it is one of the few car rental places that is not located at the airport and make a reservation for an early pick-up.

5. Go out and buy groceries and then prepare sandwiches for the hike.

6. Get up early the next morning.

7. Decide that you will leave the food at home to pick it up later with the car.

8. Go to the bus stop.

9. Wait 30 minutes because the bus doesn't arrive on time.

10. Get off the bus and walk fast towards the car rental place because you are running a little late.

11. Start to sweat because it is getting hotter and hotter.

12. Craving coffee.

13. After 30 minutes walking, realizing that you started at house number 400, and now you are only at number 450. The address of the car rental place is 941.

14. Asking a fireman to look up the address on his iPhone.

15. Realizing that the car rental place is all the way up at the airport.

16. Deciding to try to hitch a ride.

17. Being frustrated because nobody wants to stop for us.

18. Stopping at a library and paying one dollar to check the bus schedules to the airport online.

19. Finding a bus stop close by and a bus that will leave in a couple of minutes.

20. Getting there when the bus has just left and the driver refuses to open the door for us.

21. Getting coffee.

22. Waiting for one hour until the next bus comes and being really really hungry.

23. Getting to the airport and finding out that we have to call the car rental to pick us up from the airport because they are even further away.

24. Reading the bus schedules and seeing that the last bus back to Albany leaves already at 8.30 PM. It is 1 PM now.

25. Arriving the car rental.

26. Learning that our reservation had been cancelled and that we have to pay more for a car now.

27. Asking the manager if we can get a ride back into town because otherwise we won't have enough time for our trip any more.

28. Getting a big, fat "no" for an answer.

29. Getting into a fight with the manager.

30. Leaving the car rental, frustrated and without a rental car.

31. Taking 2 more buses back to Albany.

32. Finding out that we could have gotten very cheap day bus passes instead of paying for every single ride.

33. Deciding to go to Troy to do at least something "exciting" and postponing breakfast/lunch until we get to this "really awesome Lebanese place" in Troy.

34. Starving.

35. Joking about the Lebanese restaurant being close.

36. Arriving at the Lebanese restaurant and seeing the big "Closed, we are on vacation" sign.

37. Invading a Greek restaurant in Troy at 4.30 PM.

38. Fighting over the Greek salad entree.

39. Eating the probably most delicious Greek food we have ever had. (The fact that we hadn't eaten anything all day might have had something to do with this assessment...)

40. Falling asleep in a park in Troy.

41. Heading back to Albany.

42. Finishing the day with pizza, Ben & Jerry's and a movie.

Conclusion: If you want to do something fun in Albany: Get pizza, buy ice cream, and watch a movie!

We want ice cream and pizza!