The past few days, I took my first real vacation since starting work at this job in October 2002. An old friend had been planning this trip to New York City for a few months, and me and Olivia decided to tag along.
I think I've traveled more and been to more places across the country and around the world than most of the people I know. But I haven't ever been to NYC, so I figured it would be a good chance to see what all the rage is about with the Big Apple.
Mostly, we spent our 4 days there trying to hit the major spots in Manhattan. We stayed at the Grand Hyatt, which was at a great location (pretty much the exact middle of the Manhattan island), and either walked or took the subway everywhere throughout the trip. I'll list the highlights with some pictures below:
*Times Square*
It's a place I've seen a million times on TV before, whether on Dick Clark's New Years broadcasts, or on MTV's TRL, but it was definitely cool to finally visit the famous place for myself in person. We first walked through the area during the daytime, when it was busy enough, but Times Square at night is whole other experience. Well past midnight, the sidewalks were all completely jammed with people, with cops on horses managing the crowd, all sorts of nice cars with tinted windows driving through the street, and LaToya London performing with George Huff on an elevated stage. Maybe the only other place I've been to that would be comparable is the Las Vegas strip, but it's still not exactly the same. I think they say that New York is the "city that never sleeps", and after experiencing Times Square late at night, I definitely can't argue with that.
*Statue of Liberty*
Another thing we've all seen a million times, unfortunately the statue itself has been closed to all visitors since 9/11, but we took a ferry to the island anyways and got some pictures. There's not a whole lot else I can say about the place, other than, it was a little smaller than what I imagined it to be.
*Bryant Park Concert*
Sony was presenting a free outdoor concert at Bryant Park (right by our hotel), featuring Ari Hest opening for Dido and John Mayer. They were all great live performers, even more so because the concert was free to the public. The one negative was the weather, with heavy rain and thunderstorms harrassing us to the point where eventually we had to leave the park in the middle of the concert and listen to the rest of the concert across the street, where the buildings provided some cover. John Mayer had to cut his set to about 4-5 songs, but he covered pretty much all of his most popular hits before leaving. The above picture was taken after we got soaked, and luckily some guy was passing out free Sony T-Shirts so we used those to dry off and avoid pneumonia.
*Billy Koch getting traded*
Not saying the rest of the trip wasn't good or anything, but possibly the best moment throughout the 4 days I was there was when I got back to the hotel on Thursday night and saw the words "White Sox trade RP Billy Koch to Florida Marlins...." flash across the ticker at the bottom of the screen during Sportscenter. Apparently the trade was for some guy I've never heard of and financial considerations (I can only assume that means we paid them to take Koch), but really, it doesn't matter. They could have traded the guy for a bag of crap and I would still say that we screwed the Marlins over. And that's saying a lot, because as you might expect, I don't think very highly at all about bags of crap.
*Ground Zero/Olympic Torch*
Ground Zero is one place where, no matter how many pictures of it you see in the newspapers, or how many images they show on TV, you'll never fully feel its significance until you're there in person. I guess it's been almost 3 years since the tragedy of 9/11, and in that time I've started to forget all the feelings of anger and sadness about the whole thing. But looking down at all the rubble where there once stood these two huge towers, and seeing the plaques listing the names of all the thousands of people who died, really brought back a lot of those emotions and reminded me of just how horrible that time was. I would definitely recommend anyone who has a chance to check out Ground Zero to make the trip.
It just so happened that around the time we were visiting Ground Zero, the Olympic torch was going to pass by. So we hung around the area for a while longer and got to see the torch up close and personal. It was pretty cool, not something you see every day, to say the least.
*Broadway*
Musicals and Broadway shows aren't really my thing, but I guess it would kind of be a waste to go to New York and not see any shows. So we got tickets for Rent, featuring Scary Spice, and watched a Friday night show at the Nederlander Theater. Like I said, musicals aren't really my thing. I couldn't really understand most of what was going on, except that there were a lot of gay characters with HIV in the story. Still, I wouldn't say it was a worthless experience, just that it's not something I would typically choose to do in my free time.
*Central Park*
We only got to walk through a small part of Central Park for a few minutes on our last day in New York, but I was very impressed with the place in the short time I was there. You don't expect to see a place like Central Park in the middle of a huge metropolitan city. I mentioned Bryant Park earlier, and that place is kind of like Grant Park in Chicago - some trees, grass, etc., but you still know you're in the city. Central Park is like its own world, impressive landscaping with lots of hills, small lakes, and not at all like any of the other city parks I've seen before. I wish the picture above turned out better, but I really liked that scene with the view of the skyscrapers in the background, and beautiful greenery in the foreground. Not to mention the highly attractive people in the very front.
*Other*
There's a whole bunch of little things we filled our time with, that I won't go into too much detail about. A lot of shopping, including at the "flagship" Banana Republic store, where I got a whole bunch of clothes that the rest of you suckers can't get to copy me. For example, I got a "plain white t-shirt" and a "gray polo". Then there was a big electronics store (J&R), a big outlet store (Century 21), and Chinatown, among others.
The one guided tour we took was at the NBC studios (Rockefeller Center), which was kind of interesting. We also hit up a comedy club one night, which was a good time too. I think most of the comedy stuff in Chicago is improv, and New York has more of the top standup comedians in the country. Perhaps some proof of this was that the morning after going to the club, we were watching VH1's Best Week Ever in the Hotel and one of the comedians featured on the show was an act we just saw the night before (Chuck Nice).
*****
General thoughts on New York, I'd say that it's a very fascinating city, if nothing else. The people are a really unique mix of tourists, immigrants, and local jerks. Ok, so they're not all jerks, but I did think that people there were noticeably more rude than elsewhere, as advertised. The air is a unique mix of urine, BO, car exhaust, and smoke from the street vendors, it's definitely a lot worse than Chicago, pollution-wise. The streets are dirtier and noisier, and things are generally more expensive too.
But even with the negatives, I'd say that compared to all the other cities I've been to, NYC still belongs among the elite. I already talked about how impressive Times Square is, but just from walking around and being there for a few days, I got the feeling that the city is unlike any other. For one, it seemed like we were randomly stumbling on all these interesting things to do throughout our whole trip, like the concert or the Olympic torch thing. I don't know if we were just lucky, but things don't typically happen that way in Chicago (or Palatine or Darien, for that matter).
I can't see myself ever living in NYC, or spending more than a few days there at a time, but I still might want to go back to visit again sometime in the future. Overall, I think it was a good trip. Not really a vacation though, considering how tired I was coming home. On this trip, I was reminded of all the reasons why I hate travel. I hate airports, I hate airplanes, I hate airlines. I hate packing and unpacking all my stuff, and I hate living in hotels.
But most of all, I love home sweet home and I always will. Sometimes, it's good to get out and see different places in the world, but in my heart, there's no place like Chicago.
