Skip to main content

New York - The fun city

New York Skyline

 

From One Square to Another


When you travel from the historic cities of Prague and Munich to the commercial capital of the World called the New York – the contrasts are stark.  In Prague we could delve in one historical building after another for many days. There was culture in every corner.  In New York, we were just checking which building had more length and which place had more lights! There were perhaps as many people in Old Town Square of Prague as they were in Times Square. While the Old Town square had those amazing architectural wonders in the shape of churches, houses and buildings – the Times Square was all gloss and glitter. At any given time of day or night it was full of action. Most of the people were just there so that they could be at Times Square. I mean they were not doing anything but sitting down on the famous steps and just looking around. Then they would look up as a larger than life attractive model advertising some clothing brand would almost like walk out from one the large hoardings on one of the tall buildings. Times Square never sleeps. All the 4 nights that we were in New York, we spent each evening at Times Square doing what others were doing – Nothing !

Experience the Broadway Musical- the less expensive way.


The Broadway. The Lion King is one of the most popular musicals.

Our hotel was near the Times Square. So this effectively meant that we had to cross Broadway to get to the square. Each day we would see the glittering hoardings advertising the Broadway musicals. We had seen a couple of them during the last visit but we were keen that the children get the experience of watching one. I did some research and zeroed in on ‘Pippin’ after deciding to eliminate ‘The Lion King.’  The prices of the musicals are pretty steep and some of the latest like ‘Book of Mormon’ were going for almost $ 350.00 each. I was told discounted tickets were sold in booking counters under the steps of Times Square. I also read that on Wednesdays many theatres had matinee show and discounted tickets would be available under the steps on the same morning. Very diligently I went and stood in a serpentine queue under the hot June New York Sun. Dear wife and children kept providing me with snacks and drinks. Many old people who stood in the line were flushed pink and it seemed that a couple of them would collapse due to heat. But they held on and moved with the line. I marveled at their enthusiasm. In about 75 minutes I came out victorious. I had 4 tickets of Pippin for the matinee show at 50% discount!

Popular Broadway shows need to be booked much in advance
The musical itself was nice and I think all four of us had fun. It was well produced and had good effects. We had good seats and I am happy that Children saw a Broadway musical. 


You will end up meeting a lot of people here just as we bumped into family members.

 

Understanding Manhattan


 It is easy to Navigate Manhattan. For those who have been there know that the city is built in grids and addresses are mentioned like ‘34th on the 7th’, which means 34th street on 7th Avenue. In between they have some names of avenues instead of numbers like 'Broadway' or 'Park Avenue.' Each of the avenues from the 5th to the 10th is a shopper’s paradise. All the big stores and designer names are in this area. You could get lost in a store like Macy's as it is pretty huge. At 'Forever 21', it seemed that merchandise was being given free the way crowds were shopping. Upmarket stores like Tiffany's have a huge presence here. A glass structure indicating 'Apple' store stands not very far from Central Park on 5th Avenue. They have a pretty large store but you have to take glass steps to underground. My son loved being there. People seem to be in a hurry in New York as they walk at a brisk pace.  The legs get tired walking as this is what you do most of the time. The neck gets tired if you keep raising your head to watch top of buildings.As you walk you pass restaurants, music shops, theatres, pubs and lot of colourful shops. They all are lit up at night and the music plays and hot dog vendors do brisk sale. There are a lot of places to visit and we would stop by at Rockfeller foundation or some other landmark like Trump Tower. Some great flower decoration was going on near Rockfellar foundation for the coming 4th of July Celebrations. We were not there long enough to be around 4th July or else we would have got great discounts on shopping. 
For the Art lovers, Museums are there and in nutshell one can say that you could do loads of things if you want to while in New York . The last time we were there we had taken the hop on and hop off bus which shows you most of the things. But otherwise the transportation is simple if you don't want to walk too much. You might be on 5th Avenue but the walk to Apple store from 20th street may take more than 40 minutes. Either you can take a Taxi or underground metro. We did both.
Taxis have a fixed fare from JFK Airport to Manhattan but we did get cheated when we arrived at New York. A fellow Indian whom I thought represented the Airport staff got us in a limousine instead of a normal cab and we ended up paying more than double the fare. Best would be to go to the cab queue and there would be no problem at all as most taxi guys were very decent.

The Story of Nightclubs


While at New York, it is imperative that you go to Nightclubs. My brother in law took us to a Pan Asian place called the Tao. It was full of action with a busy bar and a busier restaurant. It had a great décor and great crowd. Enjoyed the place very much.
A couple of days later we decided to celebrate our friend Sunil's birthday at the famous pub '230 on the 5th.' Sunil and Renu were also travelling at the same time and we had met up in New York at the fag end of our holiday. We were in for quite a shock when we were stopped at the gate and not allowed to go up. They refused to let us go to their lounge area as well. When we insisted, we were told that we would have to book a table by paying $ 200 which would include a wine bottle. What troubled us was that each and every person was allowed to go up other than us. It certainly seemed to be a case of racial profiling.
We finally managed to break this barrier and went up just to see what it was all about. We shouldn't have gone after the treatment that had been meted out to us but curiousity got better of us. It is just as well that we went up as our doubts got confirmed that this $200 deal was a big fib. There was one area which was for the reserved tables with wine but otherwise people could just buy their drinks and have fun.

Fun with Friends. The Empire State Building as a backdrop.
As we went up by a lift , the lift stopped at a high floor which had an indoor louge but it was the main terrace a flight of stairs up that was full of action with a couple of bars and loads of people. People were all over the huge terrace and the place was rocking. You could get a night view of the entire lower Manhatten. On the other side the brightly lit Empire state building towered magistically above you. We did have a couple of drinks there, observed the people and left soon after. This racial profiling business had left a bad taste in mouth.

Times Square does not sleep at nights and shops also are open till late at night. We ended up having dinner each night at quite a few places around the Square. Our friends Sunil and Renu enjoyed the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company experience very much as they had never eaten at this restaurant before. One day we had dinner at chinese Restaurant  'Nanking' which served us some nice Indian-Chinese the likes of which the Delhi based Nanking is famous for. One of the nights we went to Ruby Tuesday very late at night and were surprised to see full bar operational and the restaurant filled with guests. It had a nice atmosphere.The kids were highly recommended Max Brenner as their cousins described it as the best dessert place in the world. This was not at Times Square but it was a little away at Manhattan itself at Union Square. So, while we were pubbing the kids went to Max Brenner and had their food and desserts there. There are a couple of very famous dessert places in Manhattan. The kids were decent enough to get for me a plastic syringe full of chocolate from Max Brenner. The chocolate was injected into my mouth giving me a taste of what the kids must have eaten. They told me that the place was over crowded and very popular. They suggested that I see the menu on the net. I did see the menu on the Net after coming back to India and thanked god that I hadn't gone there. It had the most mouth-watering desserts and the pictures of what they had to offer was awesome. A sweet toothed guy like me would have eaten a load of the exotic desserts and then gone there on all the days we were there. This certainly would not have been good for the waist line.

Statue of Liberty


Hope the kids learnt something !

You cannot go to New York and not visit The Statue of Liberty. One of the hurricanes had caused some damage to the area last year so the trips to the island housing this mammoth structure had been shut for most part of last year. We hadn't pre-booked on internet so did not get the pedestial tickets which would have allowed us to go up to the pedestial of the statue but we didn't actually have any inclination of making any climb. The ticket windows were crowded but pretty organised so it didn't take too long to get the tickets. The security was pretty extensive and then one boarded a ferry for a trip to the island. On arrival we were given audio appliances with headphones and soon we were all fully versed with the entire history of Statue of Liberty.
They describe very well how it was made, what materials were used, how architects and sculptors worked on it, what thoughts went into making such a high pedestial, what issues cropped up while it was being transported from France to USA etc etc. Having read several books and watched many films about immigrants landing in USA in the past one could identify when the audio describes the happiness and hope that these immigrants felt when they saw the towering Statue of Liberty from their ships. For them it symbolised freedom !

Nice way to relax on a Ferry ride



Long Queue to get back to New York

When our ferry was docking at the island a few hours earlier, we saw the long queue of people waiting for us to get off so they could alight the ferry to get back to New York or New Jersy. We knew that soon we would also be in that queue.


The 9/11 Memorial

It is around a 20 minute walk from we disembarked from Ferry to the memorial. The twin towers stood tall when we last visited New York. So much has changed and so much has happened since then. They say America and American way of life has changed since that fateful day. The homage to hundreds of fire fighters who died on that day is poignantly done. It is a good tribute.

A tribute to fire fighters who perished when the twin towers collapsed

The water body paying tribute to all those killed on 9/11 is a very fine and very mature way of paying tribute.
It all looks very nice and peaceful. Well done New York City !

The homage to all those who perished on those attacks is beautifully done. 
When we had reached New York, we had wondered what we would do for 4 days. The 4 days had slipped by and we hadn't even done justice to the great lung of New York called the 'Central Park.' We had barely spent 30 minutes there and most of the evenings they have some concert or some show. We didn't see any. We didn't see any because we ran out of time ! People had suggested some place near Manhattan which had amusement park and fun things to do. I think we were having enough fun here walking the streets, window shopping and sitting at Times Square doing nothing !

Some images of Times Square


Times Square is all color, all action and is full of energy. As mentioned earlier you can spend a great deal of time just sitting around and doing nothing. Observing people is a good entertainment here. Some images : 


Rickshaws in Times Square, New York. Wow.


Good paint job. 



Comments

Anonymous said…
Once again, I travelled vicariously with Rohin :-)

Popular posts from this blog

Da Nang and Hoi An - Vietnam

The Golden Bridge stands 1400 m above sea level at Baa Na hills   Important things to do before you go to Vietnam Find rules about vaccination, RT PCR and make sure that these are complied with. In any case one should always carry vaccination certificate and no harm in getting RT PCR test done.  Ask your travel agent to fill up the Air Suvidha declaration and ‘check you    in’    a day before you are coming back. Or one can do that oneself on phone/laptop. Just keep pdf copies of vaccination certificate on your device.  Carry a spare phone and buy a sim card on arrival ait airport with a few phone calls and 3-5 GB data. I bought a 3 GB Sim and it cost around Rs 650.  Best app for taxi is GRAB in Vietnam. Download it with new Sim card and ideally link it to a credit card. I had a forex card so I linked it to that. Grab was a boon - very nice cars and would arrive in no time at all. Made life very easy. But you can pay by cash as well.  Other radio taxis like Mailinh or Vinasun are also

Goa is becoming a foodie's delight.

  Yazu at Candolim Beach. Calamari and Palms & Sands are next door.  A lot of people from outside Goa bought property in Goa for residential purposes during and after Covid 19 set in. Apartments mushroomed all over the state and so did luxury Villas. Assagaon, Porvorim, Siolim and Reis Magos had some super duper Villas. Some of them were super luxurious with a view of Arabian sea and all amenities like gym and swimming pool within the premises. This resulted in many more restaurants coming up in Goa and many of them had Delhi or Mumbai background like  Soul Fry,  Jamun, Mustard and Olive.  During this trip of Feb 2023 we were there for just 4 days so one can't really go to too many places. Basically we stuck to North Goa and each meal was at a different place. It all started with Yazu which happened to be part of Marquis hotel at Candolim . Marquis is a nice hotel with beach access. Next to it is 'O' hotel which has a casino so gamblers love to stay there. We were stay

River Rafting in Ganges

  Rishikesh at Night It became sort of an addiction. This was around 25 years ago when I was introduced to 'Snow Leopards Camp' at Rishikesh. Rishikesh is a religious town at the foothills of the Himalayas on the banks of river Ganga. The river comes down from the mountains, crosses Rishikesh, flows under the legendary Laxman jhoola and then reaches the holy city of  Haridwar. The climb of a few hundred km from Rishikesh can take you the famous Badrinath.  Just above Rishikesh at a village called Shivpuri, the government had given a few companies to set up seasonal camps on the beach. These were adventure sports companies and specialised in river rafting, rock climbing and Kayaking. Snow Leopard was run by Ajeet Bajaj (popularly known as Baggage) though there were several other camps, I heard mostly about Snow Leopard and another one nearby run by a gentleman called Yusuf.  The Snow Leopard Camp Ideal weekend rafting trip consisted of leaving Delhi at 6 AM on a Friday and reac