A New York Experience

I’ve been here close to a week now. Six days maybe? And yesterday, good old lucky me took a trip from New Jersey up to New York with my brother-in-law Vlado.

The trip up to New York was uneventful. I’m not sure which Parkway we took to get to New York City, but I do know that we ended up going through Hoboken (apparently it has quite the night life over there), Weehawken and then we took the Lincoln Tunnel to get to Manhattan.

Call me biased, but I found New York City to be beautiful. What I saw of New York City I loved. Perhaps it’s because it was Manhattan, but well I liked it anyway. When we got out of Lincoln Tunnel I couldn’t help but to think “Wow… I’m in NEW YORK CITY!”.

You see it on TV all the time, you hear people talking about it, news writing about it but today here I am in New York City itself! True, I probably sound very much like a silly tourist but who cares really? I enjoyed the whole unbelievable day.

The original plan was to go to the St Francis Church in New York first, and then we’d spend the remainder of the day traveling around New York on foot. However, we had a horrible time trying to find parking. Paid parkings were unbelievably expensive, ranging around 20 Dollars per hour to 25 Dollars per hour. Free parkings were almost non-existent, as it’s now the holiday season and a lot of people are in New York.

Eventually we found parking on the side of the road on 9th Avenue, 25th Street. I had to quickly get used to the American parking system as we drove around looking for parking because they have a lot of unique rules set for almost every street. Certain parts of the road says “NO Parking/Standing Anytime” meaning you’re not allowed to park there, ever! Unless of course if it says below “Except on…”. Some parkings even have a fixed time where you’re allowed to park. While this may seem common to others, the rarely traveled Malaysian in me was nonetheless surprised by it.

But even as we drove around Manhattan itself I was busy enjoying myself. I really like the overall feel of Manhattan, and this isn’t just because it’s “OMG NEW YORK!” but because I like how most of the buildings look aged.

When I got down of the car the first thing I felt was the cold punch in my face. The temperature wasn’t too bad, only about four to five degrees celsius. However, wind chill is a large factor to how bearable or unbearable a day is and when I first got out of the car the breeze was quite strong. Good thing for me is that this time I came prepared, so after slipping on my gloves and cap it got better. So, a note to travelers, be very prepared to stay warm! Lol.

After we parked, we began our journey in New York. Our first stop was Madison Square Garden for three reasons. Firstly, it’s close by. Secondly, Vlado knows the way from where we parked the car to Madison Square Garden. Lastly but most importantly, Vlado had to use the toilet. Lol. Now, one very important thing I just absolutely have to say is that Vlado is much taller than I am. His strides are much larger and he walks in a faster pace than normal and at a very constant speed as well. So for every step he makes I have to take an extra one step or more. In short I was mostly in a state of half-jog throughout the day.

So he walked (while I jogged) and we got to Madison Square Garden in no time at all. Madison Square Garden’s renowned for a few things. Firstly there’s a large sports stadium there. We didn’t go in, but Vlado was quite a good tour guide filling me in with all sorts of information. It hosts many Ice Hockey and Basketball competitions, and apparently it can switch the floors in merely 30 minutes. Secondly, there’s an exhibition center AND a theatre in the building in front of it. It’s called Madison Square Garden as well (imagine my initial confusion). Apparently the insulation is so good that an exhibition and a concert can be held at the same time without either being interrupted. But like I said we didn’t go in Madison Square Garden. We did however enter the train station in front of it.

The train station we entered was called the Pennsylvania Station. It’s one of the larger hubs, allowing people to switch trains and such. It was quite crowded inside and I was told that it’s already very good yesterday. I was told that at peak times it can turn into a human bumper car stadium. So Vlado rushed into the toilet, and right outside the toilet was a tourist stand where many flyers and brochures are left there for ignorant travelers such as I. When Vlado came out, we found a map for NYC and from there we planned our journey onwards.

Our first stop was Times Square. Times Square anyone? Big flashy lights with all the fancy shows going on? Yeah we walked along Fashion Avenue all the way up to Times Square. Times Square, my friends, was an orgy of bright flashing lights. The buildings there were all plastered with advertisement boards advertising all sorts of shows, services and products. Oh I got so unbelievably excited at that point. I couldn’t find Rent the Musical being advertised there but I did find a host of others that I’ve never heard before (d’oh). There were so many blinking, flashing lights you can’t help but to feel overwhelmed by it. In fact, even the New York Police Department booth had blinking colorful lights. I now regret not taking a picture of that.

Oh, by the way? My favorite ad so far is the Keira Knightley Chanel ad. No flashing lights, no distracting colors, and it’s just at the bus stop! Go google the ad!

Oh one more thing about Times Square? I Am Legend was filmed there!

Vlado was nice enough to get me a cup of hot chocolate and a french culler for me when we were leaving the Times Square area. The change was drastic to say the least. From Times Square we walked to Rockefeller Center. At Rockefeller Center was a large skating and (I was told) THE largest Christmas Tree in New York. Oh it was beautifully decorated but sadly for me I couldn’t get any shots of it. It was so huge! Vlado told me that about two weeks ago, they had a huge celebration there to sort of officiate the holiday season. They turn on the Christmas Tree lights as a sign of officiating the holiday season. And hey, the tree? It has a Swarovski crystal made Star topping it!

From Rockefeller Center we headed north to Central Park. On the way we stopped by St Patrick’s Cathedral and Donald Trump’s Trump Tower. After Trump Tower, I chanced upon Apple’s concept store in New York and just couldn’t resist the temptation and I went in. Oh golly all the Apple goodness! But the price! Oh golly to that too!

The Apple store was just at the side of Central Park so we had a clear view of Central Park when we walked out of the store. Central park isn’t only huge, it’s really beautiful too. A large green park amidst the concrete jungle. We had two surprises before we really started walking around Central Park though. The first was from a group of street performers calling themselves the Breeze Team. I missed most of the performance but what I saw of it was still pretty cool. They’re a group of breakdancers I believe. The funniest part was at the end of it, they cracked pretty hilarious jokes to convince people to donate money to them. I would if I had the money but well unfortunately for them I did not.

Second surprise was a small group of protesters. As protests go, they’re probably the mildest of them all. They just stood at the side of the sidewalk with a really large banner saying “PITY THE HORSES!”. I didn’t stay to ask them questions or anything though. But I guess it worked because I did end up pitying the horses that pulls the carriages in Central Park.

We didn’t walk much of Central Park, only up to the 65th Street. From there we headed west towards… the one and only Juilliard School! For those that do not know, the Juilliard School THE most renowned place to study performing arts. I asked Vlado to bring me there and I had to brief him a little on the significance of the place. Not really surprised that he doesn’t know. The Juilliard School was surprisingly very down to earth. It wasn’t fancy or large or anything like that. Perhaps I missed out other buildings of it but the one I saw was very down to earth. The Irene Diamond building was the one that I saw and took pictures of.

From Juilliard School we started our way down south once more. We walked along Broadway and eventually got back to where we started, Madison Square Garden. We had chinese food for lunch (really expensive my friends… the equivalent of Malaysian economical rice for the price of 9.80USD) and from there we headed east towards the building that two behemoths once climbed in movies (Godzilla and King Kong). We went to the Empire State Building and even though it’s such a well known building, I didn’t see many tourists near it at all. Quite intimidating though.

After the Empire State building, we went to St Francis’s Church. Vlado had to attend mass, and it was my first time attending mass and to be honest I was excited as well. The building was beautifully decorated, the music was nice and I just followed whatever it was that others was doing. The only thing I didn’t do was taking the piece of bread(?) given during communion. It was fairly entertaining, and very short as well. Funny when I think of how intimidated I was when I first decided to go with Vlado.

It was already about six p.m. by the time the Mass was over. But we still had one more place to stop before we started our journey back. We went to Flatiron District and I checked out the renowned Flatiron building. It’s a tall building block shaped like a Flatiron and I immediately recognized it as the place where I crashed and burned in the game Godfather. Amazing how games can sometimes educate people hmm? Hahah.

Anyway, that’s all for today. Pictures coming up soon!