More vacation stories…
It probably seems extremely odd that I had been to Iceland before I ever visited New York. True, I flew out of New York to get there but time spent at JFK really doesn’t count as visiting the city. I just never had a reason or much of a desire to visit the city. I always claim that it is part of my Chicago bias. I grew up in a big city that is the best place in the world so I never saw any reason to go to New York, which from my understanding was just a more crowded and less polite version of Chicago.
But it was time for me to go to the big city and I have to say that I was rather impressed especially given what it took for us to get there. We decided to take an airport shuttle van to our hotel, which was a major mistake as a) it took us an hour and a half to actually get to the hotel and b) we were packed in like sardines to the point that we had to breathe in unison. You really don’t want to have your first impression of the city be mainly “get me out of this freaking van.”
We did make it to our hotel in Times Square and I have to admit that it was quite a sight. Outside of a few parts of London I don’t think that I had ever seen anything quite like it. The sheer mass of humanity was stunning. My years in KC and Delaware have really hidden me from the density of a true big city. New York just has people everywhere. Chicago has an unbelievable amount of wide open spaces in comparison. Also, things just move fast. There is that natural sense of everyone needing to go somewhere quickly. None of this meandering stuff.
We only had one day in the city so we mainly did some touristy stuff. Had breakfast at a deli so I could have a real New York bagel, which tasted surprisingly like every other bagel I have ever had. Toured the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which was awesome though I have to admit that I am not a big fan of the Dutch Masters. I just prefer the Impressionists; it is just more my style. We did a lot of shopping at places like the M&M store (yes, they have their own store) and the largest Swatch store in the US. We even saw a play because that is what you do when you are in New York.
I will have to say that I was pleasantly surprised by my time there. I would have no problem going back and exploring the city some more and let’s face it; it’s not like I even scratched the surface on things to do there. I don’t think that I could actually live there because I like my wide open spaces. It’s not that I have to live out in the middle of Montana but I like having at least a modicum of personal space. True, there is everything that you could ever want to experience in that city except for the possibility of peace and quiet. Good food though and really smart cabbies. Got to hand it to any town with good cab drivers.
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