New York City!

From Lima, on my way back to Holland, I decided to visit New York. I already wanted to visit New York in October 2001, but after 9-11 this didn´t seem a good idea.

Finally now, at the beginning of 2008, I got a new change to visit this city that´s shown in so many of the movies I like to watch.

With my sleepy head I was sitting in a window seat when the plane landed on Newark Airport. It was Wednesday the 16^th of January, 7:30am in the morning and from the airport I could see the dark silhouettes of several tall buildings rising high in the yellow sky from the rising sun. It was the unique sky-line of New York City with a special welcome.

After an unexpected smooth and quick passport control at the immigration service, I had planned to leave my big backpack in a locker at the airport. But this was more complicated, expensive and less accessible than on usual airports. I guess this is because of some American fear… All right, then I take everything with me.

At the tourist info centre they weren´t very helpful in explaining how I could use the subway for getting to Central Park. They only gave me a street map and explained about a direct, private, bus service to the centre. With about 38 kg in 2 backpacks I didn´t feel like exploring the subway system on my own, so I took the bus.

Unfortunately the bus couldn´t drop me closer than at the corner of Av.8 and 42-Street, I decided to walk, it couldn´t be that far. But I was slightly wrong. Like when I first booked my Hostel and read that it was located on Av. Broadway, 101 Street and 2 blocks from Central Park, only Av. Broadway is about 250 blocks and 20km long…

After I checked-in in my hotel, where I only paid 18 US$ for a buck bed in a clean mixed dorm for 6 people, I left to explore the streets of New York City.

The temperature was just above freezing and there were almost no clouds in the sky, a perfect day to take beautiful pictures of a special city!

Walking along the street close to Central Park I didn´t really feel like being in N.Y.C., at least not in modern times. A saw wide streets and small blocks with tall old fashion looking buildings. Build with sand or red colored bricks, it almost looked like the houses along the canals in Amsterdam, only here the buildings were higher. Also there was no smog, there wasn´t much traffic, there weren´t a lot of people and everything looked peaceful. In the park were people running, walking with their children, cell-phone, dogs and/or all together. Most of the dogs were dressed, but when they dropped something brown, all their owners, even the fancy dressed ones, cleaned it up.

After Central Park I passed the Donald Trump Tower and entered down town Manhattan. Walking between the high buildings/towers in this part of the city, I felt a bit like entering a movie scene. The yellow caps, expensive cars in the streets, cheap hotdog stands and well dressed New Yorkers with cell-phones made the picture complete. Yes, this felt like I was hoping for J, but was my whole N.Y.C. experience like expected?

Walking through down town and the finance district of N.Y.C. it was interesting to see how dark the streets are during most of the day. Most streets only get a few hours of sunlight, or even no sun at all, because the tall buildings project their long shadows through and over the streets. Except from this negative point, I do admire the architect of Manhattan Island. There´s diversity in the streets, there are two huge parks, Central and Riverside to stretch your legs and however the island is about 20 km long and a little over 3 km wide, it is still not very hard to find your way. Even the subway, which looks like a labyrinth of streets under the ground, a city under a city, is easy to use.

Yes, during the day it was easy to explore the city on feet and for the first evening I had planned to take a night tour with an open tourist bus, just for safety reasons.

However, even walking through the streets again I had misjudged the size of Manhattan and it was sooner dark than expected, I decided to keep on walking. The bus tours were expensive to do anyway and only worth the money if you would buy the complete package, but I like walking around and felt save. I didn´t have the feeling that anyone was paying special attention to me, one of the benefits of being in a multi cultural city. Although I do have to come back on this…

During my time in N.Y.C. (or mostly Manhattan) I´ve done and seen most tourist attractions:

I´ve climbed the Empire State Building, with a beautiful view over the city, but expensive! By the way, did you know that they started building the E.S.B. in February 1930 and already finished the 381m tower after building for 1 year and 45 days, with a total expenses of 41 million US$! Of course I´ve also seen The Statue of Liberty. The statue that France gave to the USA as sign for their friendship. Now it is almost more difficult to visit this statue then entering the airport; I´ve also been a few minutes on Ellis Island, which used to be the entrance port for foreigners who came by ship to the USA.

I´ve seen the building of the United Nations, I run through Central Park, visited the Musical Chicago and I´ve walked a lot. I walked to Brooklyn on the beautiful Brooklyn suspension Bridge,

then back over the Manhattan Bridge, through China Town, the finance district, past Ground Zero (not much left to see, except a new building site), Central Park, Riverside Park, until I felt that they paid more attention to me in East Harlem. All right, time to skip Harlem and the Bronx and to do some shopping.

Yes, I had a great time in New York and because of the low exchange rate of the dollar against the Euro, life was not too expensive either. I do have to admit that I was surprised about the high prices I had to pay in a supermarket for one liter of the American Coca Cola (1.80 US$), normally in Latin America the second cheapest thing to drink, after water. Except from that you could get hotdogs on the street for about 1.25 US$ or eat a more decent meal of rice, chicken, salad and a soda for les that 7 US$ in a Chinese owned fast-food restaurant. Even in a more luxury restaurant you could still eat and drink something for around 20 US$. Let well, all of my prices are including taxes! Maybe this is something typical American and probably I have to get used to it, but I found it annoying that even in supermarkets the prices did not include taxes?! I guess some Ecuadorian restaurants took this annoying habit over together with the dollar. Anyway, it wasn´t expensive, so I shouldn´t complain.

Among the other things I noticed when I walked through the streets of N.Y.C. was the diversity of languages I heard around me. Mostly English, Spanish and Chinese, but also French, Italian, Portuguese and more. Of course I could expect this, even in Amsterdam you hear a lot of different languages, but I didn´t expect that even in N.Y.C. the speakers of these languages often don´t mix with each other. The only part where people from different races really seem to mix is central Manhattan, but even they have ´servants´ from Latin America who speak better Spanish than English. In the south part of Manhattan Island you have little China Town, where they´re not even bothered to put English signs on the busses. Further south you get into Brooklyn, with a population of mostly black people and the same counts for the northern part of Manhattan and The Bronx. In this part I´m a bit disappointed about this multi cultural city, where people still live separate…

Positive surprised I was about the cleanness, safety and polite traffic in Manhattan. New Yorkers are for sure big producers of garbage with all those fast-food restaurants and countless Starbucks coffee shops (different than the shops we have in Amsterdam ;-) with big carton mocks. I´ve seen some big garbage piles, but they get quickly cleaned up, like the dog shit.

That most drivers were so polite is probably because for most of them driving is their job, they know the rules and how much it cost for breaking them (like 300 US$) when you honk without a good reason!

With parking prices of more than 12 US$ an hour (exclusive taxes!), it´s also no surprise why there drive so many expensive cars and cars with drivers through the streets of N.Y.C. You really need money to drive/have a car in New York. But with a good subway system and the sky high parking prices, I guess that most New Yorkers in Manhattan have no car. Probably most of them even use the subway as extension of their office, according to the many electronic agenda´s I´ve seen in here.

Yes, to me New York City (Manhattan) felt like a lively, busy city, but not crowded. I can recommend everyone, especially who lives in the Euro countries, to visit this great city!

P.S.1, More nice photo´s of better quality you can now see in my Photo Album!  

P.S.2 , a week after it was very special to see the movie Cloverfielt in cinema, recognize some parts of Manhattan and knowing almost for sure that first scene must have been shot from the Donald Trump Tower.