The Big Apple- Bite 1

Finally...after postponing it over 10 days, here I am finally jotting down the experiences of the 3 days I spent in THE city to visit in USA....

Times Square

Yes ladies and gentlemen, you guessed it right (and shame on you if you did not!!!! there is only one city called the Big Apple!!), I did finally get a chance to go to New York. And that too during what would possibly be my last long weekend here (at least for the time being). Turns out, while the New Yorkers step out of the city for the 4th of July, the rest of the country (or may I say world!) steps right in....so the delta population in the city goes up just a trifle :-)

But the city is a must see for anyone who is visiting the US, worth every penny one would spend in reaching there. You know what was my first thought when I landed there? If New Delhi and Mumbai were to have a child, it would surely grow up to be New York!!  (cheeky right?? :) ) But I mean it....New York (NY from here on!) has the life and pace of Mumbai, the style and luxury of Delhi scaled up 10 times!!!
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When I thought 10 days of postponement was a shame I should rethink the timeline for feeling ashamed :). Here I am resuming writing after more than a month of the successful completion of an amazing holiday and that too from my office sitting in between the tension of a Go-Live (talk about sincerity :D ). I can blame it on work but you know better (read laziness!!!!)

So my 3 day long adventure started with an overnight flight (we Indians call it overnight and these Americans call it Red-Eye!!! which is quite true cuz I could not sleep a wink thanks to the crying baby and the whining dog around my seat and ended up getting off the flight with....wat else....red eyes :) )

Cop Horse!

The flight landed early enough for me to feel guilty about waking up my friends to come receive me, so I had to search for cheaper or for that matter any available alternative to reach my hotel. The option that we finally chose was a shuttle service taking us from JFK to Manhattan...Times Square (yes yes yes.... I was staying bang at Times Square at Crowne Plaza and not some shady place!!  long live the Hotel points!!). Anyways let me snap out of the glee of staying at Times square, and continue the narration :) So this shuttle service pretty much took to all the by lanes leading up to Manhattan. These by lanes were interspersed with Sardar ji uncles selling newspapers and very scenic parks (which I think were made on top of gutters, cuz trust me they smelt &#^$*#*). The journey which normally takes around 30 odd minutes if one would be driving in a personal car, took us around 1.5 hours....but it was all super cool....looking at the skyline and the river and the bridges and the Mumbai style fast paced people rushing all the time everywhere :))

Anyways, when we finally reached the hotel (37th floor with a view of the Hudson (supposedly one could see the 4th July fireworks from there)) and me being me, crashed on the bed and dozed off....(talk about the time saving with Red Eye!). It was not before noon that I stepped out to meet my friend and to get the first experience of the ultra hot  NY!!! (and they were not kidding me when they told me it was hot :)). When God was distributing intelligence I think I was caching a nap somewhere. Not only did I not take the NY is very hot comment seriously, I went one step ahead and was dressed up in Jeans, black T shirt and sneakers!!!! (Sweat just trickled down my brow just in this Air conditioned room just rethinking how hot it was!!!)

Spot me!

Step 1 was to go see Duffy's square, THE centre of Times Square (by the way my hotel was right opposite M&M store...just thought I'd tell!! My God I think I fell in love with the city completely :) ) At Duffy's square is I think the biggest store of a brand called Forever 21 (I was one of the lesser initiated till sometime ago, now I pretend I know all the brands :) ). They have a huge hoarding which takes snapshots of the junta standing at Duffy's square. So I waved to myself and clicked a customary snap (as one of my colleague puts it "Patel shot") and walked on. There was so much energy that one cannot help but walk with that pace. Crossing the streets even when the pedestrian crossing shows a stop sign (So Delhi!!!!!), hustling past hoards of people (so Mumbai!!), jumping into small eateries on the sides of the roads all famous for something or the other (SO Delhi and SO Mumbai!!!), huge animated hoardings of Broadway plays, brands, soccer matches and you name it (So NY!!! :) )

I did not realize when we walked and walked and reached a huge Apple (or was it a strawberry (i think it was an Apple (you know NY being the Big Apple))) made out of Legos.

Big Apple (Strawberry?)

PS- did you notice the thought within the thought within the thought? :) (Inception Inspiration!!!! advantages of writing a late blog!!!)

Lego Dragon

Anyways back to the Legos, I was standing at the Rockefeller Center, which I was told was the heart of Midtown Manhattan (wonder where my guide was picking these snippets from? Guess it comes from walking too much in NY :) ). So this Lego store prided itself in having a whole Rockefeller centre created out of Legos as its centrepiece. Also the store had the cutest and hugest Dragon (again made out of Legos) trailing the whole store. I was tempted to buy a Lego Taj which I would then assemble back at home, but decided against it since it was so heavy!

There were other things which one could see at the Rockefeller centre but we decided to continue walking (you know I love my complexion so much that I was hell bent on ruining it in one day itself!). For those who are planning on spending three days, I advise you cn follow my itinerary to check out most of the important places. But if you have more time than that, there is soooooooo much to see. contact me and I will tell you all that I missed :) For One was the NBC studios. I am told that they give backstage tours. Then there is 'Top of the Rock' Observation deck. I left it since I was going to see the view from the Empire state. But if you have time, then why not!!!

Rockefeller Centre

I just read through all that I have written till now in the post and I realize that it is such a touristy post and no adventures like my other trips :) there is always a first time, right?

And we are walking.....

Not too far from the Atlas man (little trivia...my project's name too is ATLAS :) ) infact right opposite it, is the St Partick's Cathedral. I looked so inviting that we could not help walking into it. And trust me, was not the least bit disappointed! I had seen other cathedral's too but the glass work in this church was so exquisite!! It would have been nive to just sit there and relax (selfish motive of escaping the heat outside should not be mentioned here though!!) but time did not permit that.

St Patrick's Cathedral

It had been a couple of hours that we had been walking. But I guess when you are walking for leisure you do not realize that. If I had been asked to walk this much for work, I would have possibly collapsed long back and filed a complaint suing my company :) But this was not the case. Not only was I up and about walking the streets of NY (wondering and getting confused about the street nomeclature of streets and avenues), but was vigilant enough, not to let a photo op pass by :) It would be later at the end of the trip that I would actually count how many pictures that I clicked and wonder in amazement how a 3 days trip could have 600+ pictures (and a record 100 of them mine :) )

Jai Hind!

While I rambled all of this, we had already walked 9-10 streets and a couple of avenues (I just types what I heard from my friend...I still don't know what streets and avenues would be) and reached an Indian flag right opposite the Central Park. I proudly got picutures clicked alongside The Pierre (owned by the Taj group) and walked into Central Park. Manhattan is a 5 mile or so island and a good about 2 miles of it is covered by this park loacted, where else, but at the centre of the island :)

Oh but did I forget to mention that before I stepped into Central Park, I saw the flagship store of Apple in Manhattan. A Glass cube...too crowded for anyone to stand for more than a minute! So we went in and came out :)

Junk musician

Apple Store

Cental Park

I have not heard about parks in other cities, but the ones in Delhi (you know the Buddha Jayanti park types?). But Central Park was anything but that. It was so full of activity. There were performers dancing, singing, playing buckets and pans, people jogging around with their ipods, caricature artists painting tourists faces and ice cream and Pretzel (I did not like pretzels!!) vendors handling out goods with hand and scooping money with the other (little surprise that most of them were our Asian bhaiyas!!!). On popular demand that when I write the memoirs of this trip I should mention this, I am writing this out, that they guys jogging around in Central Park were really check outable (if there is no word like that I just coined it!!). So after, licking half an ice cream and throwing the other half (God....these americans eat huge portions of everything!!), walking a lot and talking even more, clicking a few pictures here and there, we realized that we had been walking in the park for over 2 hours!

With this realization we also realized that it was 3 PM and all we had eaten since the morning was ice cream!

But we parked the hunger aside since we exited the park righ oppsite the Museum of Natural History! With 2 hrs remaining before the museum closed, we walked in with the idea of quickly seeing the important areas of the museum where the movie "Night at the Museum" was shot. Though a very huge museum, I would not say that one could spend 2-3 days there. 2 hours were more than sufficient to see the place. 

I was about as tall as that!

Noteworthy there was the section with dinosaurs....it was WOW!! There were skulls the size of a fully grown human being. There were weird looking animals which could easily have been called the missing links between sea creatures and land animals looking like fish with legs....After walking amidst these giant creatures when we stepped into the other areas of the museum displaying different cultures, I suddenly felt like I grew from being a pygmy to a normal sized person :) They had a whole section dedicated to Indian culture..with Indian weddings from no specific state (mixture of Bengali and Gujarati attire :)!!! and Bengal Tiger! We heard a growl....and it was not the tiger...it was my stomach...so it was time to leave in search of food!

I had been lured to NY in the name of good food. and one of those food I was looking forward to were Kaathi rolls. It has been 7 yrs! since I left Pune. So we went to this place called The Kati Roll Company. A very small corridorish place lined with Reshma Shera type movie poster and simialr songs playing....and they had Thums Up!!! So I had achaari paneer kathi roll (1.75 of those!!) and a Thums Up!

In between the never ending conversation and waiting for our friend to come (in 20 minutes as was promised to us) my friend realized that the guy sitting on the table opposite to ours looked familiar. Well the other person thought so too :) So these guys chatted for most part of the waiting time. And later we realized neither remembered each other's name and were too shy to admit! Bu guess neither cared too much too!!

So after the promised 20 minutes the group size became bigger, we chatted a little more and ate a little more, then walked to Times square and clicked a little more then went shopping for a party the next day. We just about managed to get into the store before it shut down at 11PM. After all the ghareloo shopping for brooms and mops, we decided that it was time to go watch a movie. At 12AM we watched Knight and Day and a not at all empty theatre!! Talk about active night life!!

By now I was tired and sleepy and had 2 more long days to walk around....I think I bit more than I could chew for a day!!! But so totally worth it!!

Keep watching this space for Bite 2