| Ok, so I lied. I won't be giving many
pictures tonight either. Likely we will post more about our arrival in New York
later. If we have time. We slept WAY in this morning (early afternoon) - We dragged our butts out of bed at 12:30. We then went to AAA in Garden City (a stones throw from Hampstead) and got a tour book and some maps. Then we took the train into New York -> Penn Station.
We stopped in Penn Station to eat - The Pizza you see to the right it about 18" long. Those are normal size paper plates underneath. Very cool. And good too. Dodi wants to sample an Authentic "New York Hot Dog" tomorrow. I wish her luck. |
|
| Later, since we didn't get into the city 'till
5:00 and most stuff was closed/closing we went to Lincoln Center intending to see an I-MAX
film - There were no more shows for that day, so we say Inspector Gadget - It is worth the
price of admission - If you've seen the cartoon, you will appreciate the translation, and
for others there are come cool spy parodies (Minions Anonymous.) Between waiting in line (Forever it seemed) at the ESB and trying to figure out the Subway, then the film, it was already 11pm so we caught the train back to Hampstead. |
| New York was a lot nicer that I expected. It's kinda like a flat San Francisco if you crossed it with L.A. Most people were nice to us and we never felt threatened or anything. In some ways I wish that we had allotted more time to see the city, but I think the bits that we do get to see will be worth it. Anyway, I'm sure that D.C. is just as complex only with more stuff to see. |
I must
admit that for a while we were completely clueless. We had to master the subway and
the train. The train was fairly easy, once we had time to read all the signs and
stuff. It's very BART like. The subway, however, was far more complicated.
According to the AAA Tour book, one $1.50 token gives you access to 237 miles of
subway. This is true. The problem lies in choosing the correct portion of that
237 miles. The problem was that we looked at a map before we got our token. We
go "Ok, this line, #7, goes where we want to go. All we have to do is get on Train
#7." . We went in through the turnstile and discovered that there was no
Train #7. There were also no maps. Apparently no one thought to post a map
INSIDE the terminal, so once you've paid, you better know where the heck you are going.
The problem was the trains are not numbered, they are lettered (ok, some are
numbered, even a number 7, but that was not the one we needed.) Moreover, there are
several different lines which don't always connect at different stations. You also
need to know which way Uptown and Downtown is. We finally asked a janitor who was
nice enough to go out of the turnstile and get us a map (Bless him.) After that, I
am happy to say, Dodi and I never got lost or missed a station. The system, once you
know it, is really quite ingenious, and I figure that our next day will be dandy.
