I am back from New York City! What a town! Everything I ever heard about it is a myth! This is what I heard: The subways are dangerous. The city is dirty. The people are unfriendly. Nobody says “Have a nice day” like they do in the Northwest. The cabbies are rude. It’s hard to navigate such a big city. The streets are crowded or scarily empty, with a purse snatcher or mugger around every corner.
All of it is untrue! The subways were great and the people in them just like any other people on mass transit anywhere in the world. They can get you anywhere you want to go very quickly, making it very easy to get around, thus trumping the other myth about navigating the city.
The people were very friendly—the store clerks were helpful and said “Have a great day!” when you left. The cabbies were the same and it was impressive how they could maneuver their way through the crowded streets. There was lots of honking—that’s something you see in movies and on TV that is true. I didn’t see anybody flipping anybody off though.
The city was very clean. We went to a Halloween night parade in Greenwich Village. There were thousands of people on the street, eating, drinking from paper cups and bottles and throwing stuff on the street. The partying went on into the night, but the next morning there wasn’t a trace of it. I noticed that storekeepers hosed the sidewalks off in front of their shops every morning. There are dogs being walked all the time and their poop is dutifully picked up by the dog owner. Crews must be out there in the middle of the night cleaning—every morning there are big plastic garbage bags ready for pickup.
I never felt unsafe, even in the big crowds at the parade. We took precautions before the parade, only took money for dinner and ID with us, no purses to snatch, but I noticed many woman with their purses. There were some incidences that night, probably caused by too much drinking. All those people had come into the city and were making the most of it. It was noisy for hours after we went to bed.
I had 5 days of apartment living and though it is drastically different from living in a house in the Northwest, it is certainly doable. The restaurants were everywhere and wonderful. We have a hard time here finding a good one within driving distance, whereas there you could throw and rock and it would land on one within walking distance. We ate Cuban, Austrian, Lebanese, Chinese (Peking Duck no less!), French and American food. With the exception of the Chinese place everything was within walking distance of the apartment we were staying in. This is a wonderful attribute of city living.
You can tell, I’m sure, that I loved my visit to NYC. I got so mentally stimulated by the diverse culture and the fantastic places to go and things to see that I can’t sleep without dreaming of it. I haven’t downloaded my pictures yet. I’m hoping for a good one from the parade and I’ll share anything that is interesting.
