I was always under the impression that both California and New York, belonged to the same country. But back to the office, after a weekend long visit to New York, just left me dazed. Im now convinced that I went to a whole new country !!! 😀
Of course, two days was too short a time to see the whole place. So we scheduled the trip rather carefully. Natural History Museum was the first on the agenda. The drive to the place, was interesting, along the coast of Hudson river, watching the state of New Jersey on the other bank !!! Considering the time limit we had and the size of the museum, we needed a helicopter to fly around the whole place !! So we decided on some of the major attractions of the place, which included the dinosaurs, the neanderthal era, the gems and minerals and the space. Well, dumbfounding was probably an understatement for everything I saw there !! The one thing that really caught my eye was the “winding” trip down from the exit of the planetarium, which told me the story of the Big Bang. At the end of this, there was a comparsion on the age of the human era to the age of the universe. One look at it, told me how “inexperienced” we humans are, on the face of the universe, and that just kills the pride !!
By the time we left the museum, the day was almost over, and there was not much time to barge into another place. So we decided to hit the roads !! Well, finding a parking space looked far more tougher than winning a lottery !! An hour after going round and round, we finally managed to find ourselves one. Our hike started on the 5th Avenue, the abode of the rich men. We managed to pass through the Carnagie Hall, the Times Square, the Patrick’s Church, Plaza Hotel, Lincoln Hall. Along the way, I got to learn about the cartisian coordinate system in the city (!!!), where the whole place was divided into avenues and streets, and each place was recognised by an (avenue, street) !! The hike ended in a Vietnamese restaurant, at the southern end of the Amsterdam Avenue. Back home, a brief peek into an old James Bond movie, over a cup of ice cream, and I dropped into bed, sleeping like dead !!
I don’t know what woke me up the next day. It must have been the excitement to see Lady Liberty, but I was all set by 9 !! A drive down to the older areas, which were now the financial heart of Manhattan, and we reached the peir, where we were greeted by a long queue, to the island. But thats where I got to see the diversity of the people in New York. Its not just the people standing in the queue that amused me. There were a variety of performers on the streets, along the path followed by the queue, who came all the way from the southernmost tip of South America (forgot the name of the country there :D) and India too (the guy was performing the National Anthem on the violin). If you love people, then this is the place to be, a land where you get to see the “whole world”. Besides, the sight of the different islands on the Hudson River and the Lady Liberty, was refreshing.
The ferry trip proved rather chilly, when I found my hands so frozen and numb, that I could not hold on to the camera, and the shots went haywire. But I DID manage to get some shots of the Manhattan, which has thoroughly amazed me by far !! We made two quick rounds on the island, since the time was running short. On our return back to the “main island”, the boat was rerouted through the Ellis Island, which had an immigration museum, that kept the records of the ships that landed on the Manhattan Island, long back.
With just another 3 hours for me to get to the airport, we decided to take a stroll through the wall street. Walking through the narrow roads (well, they were not narrow, its just that the “towers” on either side made them look miniscule !!!) on wall street, proved to be a little difficult, when the wind hit the roads rather harshly, tunneling (in its literal sense) its way, through the towers, blowing (always), right opposite to the direction we took !! (murphy’s law ??). I even managed to take a peek at the large chunk of land, where once stood two identical landmarks !!
A ride on the 100 year old subway was another major attraction. We took the subway from the WTC station to the 34th Street, where laid the Empire State Building. A short walk and we were in the front of Empire State building, which stood towering high above where my sight could reach !!! It was unfortunate that I could not go into the place, since I had to catch my flight back a couple of hours later !! A traffic block and a ride through the tunnel under the hudson river, and I reached the airport, just in time for my flight.
…… Was that a long post ?? … it looks like …. :D. It just kept on coming, as I typed … never paused, or turned back… he he !!! And that pretty much summarizes the two days I had in New York. Back to the title….. Two reasons why I call New York a place where the sky is the limit … One is of course the obvious fact, on the towering buildings, so tall that the final few storeys, seem to disapppear among the clouds ;-). The second … there was nothing that seemed impossible in that city… a road right through a building, an underground subway, that looked more connected than the roads on the surface and what not !!!!
PS : Im trying inject some photos in between, need to upload them first !!
Idle thoughts 