Travel High!

(NYC travelogue, March 2005)

People, seriously New York is THE place to be in…I totally love the place! I’m groping for words here, you cannot capture the city with just a few sentences! Now where do I start from? No, begin at the beginning does not work here! I don’t want to talk about the usual places here like the Statue of Liberty or Empire State Bldg or Times Square or Rockefeller Centre or Central Park or Wall Street or the WTC site or Macy’s (one of the largest stores in the world, and they have this pretty flower show inside that changes every season), the Brooklyn Bridge, you can see all this in any book/movie/pics. I’m not even going to explain how tall the buildings are, ‘coz well, they ARE skyscrapers which means they’re really really TALL and you all know it’s an overcrowded place and the buildings are spaced soooo close to each other. One thing I noticed, most of the apartment complexes there are sooo similar (I kept remembering the apartment in ‘Friends‘)

I felt like a villager coming from Scottsdale to the big bad city I think I love the culture of New York…it’s so cosmopolitan…you have everything here, EVERYTHING…all kinds of food, all kinds of clothes, people, crime, entertainment, art…it can serve anyone from anywhere… The whole city is filled with of Mexicans, Chinese, Japanese, Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis etc. I did meet one of them, a cab driver and he offered to waive off the meter reading ‘coz I am from where he belongs (Asia)…but of course I didn’t accept that, I frantically searched my entire bag and fished out 5 dollars in change and paid him!

 My fav mode of transport was the subway…I must tell you it’s an awesome mode of travel, cheap,  fast, safe and best…and it’s crowded like crazy…there are so many things you notice in the subway…you’ll instantly know if it’s morning/noon/night (not that you need to travel in a subway train to know that, but you get my drift here) depending on what people are wearing and doing…Mornings you’ll see people carrying/eating breakfast with a newspaper and coffee cup all precariously held along with a bag/briefcase and they ALL have a look of being extremely busy…You get to see the latest fashion in town especially if your passing thru’ 42nd street(Times Square) or 34th street (Penn Station, Herald Square)…You also get to see the latest audio players in town, every third person in the train will have an iPod or a Dell juke box or some such thing…not many people read these days you know, such a pity…tch…tch…and you get to listen to so many languages!! You really won’t feel the time pass…

I travelled within the city in the buses too and the cabs but I swear by the subway. The Penn Station has multiple floors (under the ground ofcourse), it has something like a mall inside!

The weather was just perfect, the first day it snowed and it was BEAUTIFUL…aaaaaaah…what a feeling that was…the cars, houses, trees all covered with a film of pure white…perfect <sigh> The next couple of days was warmer but in the night it got breezy and cold…

The Manhattan/NYC skyline I something I want to talk about…here’s the scene, am in downtown(that’s Manhattan), all awed with all the power house buildings there, it’s the financial district(you can literally feel the amount of power this place commands over the entire world) and walking towards Pier 79 (I guess) from where you can see New Jersey and Hoboken island(it’s a one square mile island and it’s great, I went there too, nobody goes there really, ‘coz it’s not a tourist spot, but am glad I went) and then we get into this ferry (from a  floating dock) and am all kicked…wind in my hair n all that, looking at some beautiful bridges on either side…and then I turn towards the Pier to see how far away from it we’ve gone and I stop…as in total freeze of facial expression, I saw the Manhattan skyline and the New York City skyline side by side, it’s fabulous…I could even call it an engineering marvel!! And the best part, the sun set and all the lights came on and it was picture perfect I tried capturing it in my brand new camera and well, I wasn’t very successful…but I did manage a couple of ok shots.

People have absolute disrespect for rulesin NYC…I was sooo reminded of Bangalore when I was crossing(running is more like it!) roads in the middle (and not at the signal light), waiting for vehicles to pass u by(it’s usually the other way round most of the time since pedestrians have the right of way).People break speed limits all the time here and I got to listen to sooo many honks (here in Scottsdale, I hear a honk like once in 2 days or something!). And the legendary traffic jams…Drive in NYC and the whole perception of a traffic jam will change! It’s maddening.

I missed out on watching a Broadway play, a concert in the Radio City Music Hall, pub/bar hopping, the lounges, the food places in Greenwich village, the museums…NYC has soooooo much to offer, it’s impossible to experience everything in just 4 days…Maybe I’ll go back…I HAVE to actually…

I could go on and on and keep writing about it, but I’ll stop here, not because I want to give you all a break (you actually think that can happen???) but because you cannot put New York in writing …have to experience it…and there’s no way I can cover everything I did there in just one mail!! I absolutely love New York, period.

I went to Niagara also; it’s breathtakingly beautiful…especially since a part of it was frozen. And the drive form NYC to Niagara is simply super; it’s one of the best drives ever.

NYC rocks!