Spending a few days in New York City
I hadn’t been to New York City in something like ten years; not since my family took a short trip there. My parents, for whatever reasons, have always had a very different idea of vacation than I have. Their vacations involve waking up early every single day in order to take advantage of the (usually) free hotel breakfast, and then tearing off to parts unknown in order to cross off as many things on a To Do list as possible. Sometimes I feel as though I’m Neil Armstrong on the surface of the moon, carefully examining a lovely geological specimen, while Buzz Aldrin is waving frantically behind me and calling “hurry up, it’s just another damn rock! If we don’t get a move on we’ll never see everything! Look, there’s Central Park! Look at all those trees! No time for lollygagging, let’s move!”
That’s not entirely fair, but it is fair to say that compared to family vacations past, my few days in NYC were spent in pursuit of the anti-vacation. I slept in, I usually skipped breakfast, I had a list of things I might want to do but no set schedule or itinerary or anything like that. It was bliss. My trip to New York had several purposes: to explore a city, to catch up with old friends, and to meet some new ones. On all fronts, mission accomplished.
I don’t have a lot of stories to tell or a lot of pictures to share, but there’s not a lot about NYC that I could say or photograph that hasn’t been said or photographed before, better, by someone else. Case in point:
As someone with essentially no schedule, I found myself amazingly unhurried. I like Seattle because it’s a fairly laid-back city. My sister likes D.C. because it is a frenetic city, and New York feels like D.C. on fast forward. I felt at times like I was walking through the crowds in slow motion, rivers of people pouring around me while I ambled from one place to the next.
One morning, I sat in the sun in Central Park and ate a giant chocolate chip cookie, watching the horse-drawn carriages, the joggers, the inline skaters, the kids in strollers, the walkers, the hawkers of food and trinkets, as all manner of people swarmed by one their way from point A to point B. And I sat, at some point I didn’t even feel like giving a label, and just watched. People are fascinating.
I made it to the Magnolia Bakery and had a delicious cupcake, and visited several different and interesting bars and restaurants. I visited the MoMA, and whistfully longed to also visit the MET, the Guggenheim, and the American Museum of Natural History. Spending time with friends took precedence, though, and those museums must wait for my return. But I was never bored; I figure in a city of 12 million or so people, if you’re bored your doing something very wrong. I spent afternoons in two different, beautiful parks, and I spent a lot of time just walking around, taking it all in. It was almost a perfect vacation.
Comments
Posted by: rog | March 29, 2006 11:28 PM
Posted by: Joe Bork![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.headblender.com/joe/blog/nav-commenters.gif)
|
March 30, 2006 05:59 AM