Canada Day morning, after sleeping off the lingering exhaustion from New York City, I woke up and made a pot of coffee. I spread out the NY Times I brought back from the trip, turned the
TV on low, and curled up in my pyjamas. I found it difficult to imagine just a day earlier, I was battling the crowd at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Even New York City Hotels are chaotic.
New York City was pretty well what I expected: chaos. People moving, cars speeding, flashing lights. I loved every second of it, but damn, I do appreciate a quiet morning.
Found in a bathroom stall somewhere. Sums it up.
I jotted down some impressions of NYC while on the plane.
A short walk in NYC is never a short walk – Now, whenever I’ll hear someone say, “Oh, it’s just a few blocks away” my pupils will dilate and I’ll shudder. “A few blocks” always turned into a 20 minute trek, which is difficult when you’re being stifled by the heat and you’ve slept for 3 hours the night before.
Don’t walk in the bike path – Oh man, people yell.
The man population is phenomenal – My ginger roots did a lot for me. While at Mason Dixon, I went to observe the mechanical bull and was approached by two men within five minutes, then swamped by a bachelor party. One dude even called me when I got back to Canada. His name was Tony, and he had an impressive Jersey accent. It could have been fate.
Where’s Alec Baldwin when I need him?
NYC is not as expensive as I predicted –
I didn’t do any shopping, and other than the hotel and flight expenses, I spent under $400. Food was a bit pricey after not having to pay for it at the conference all week, but pub-hopping was awesome and most places had sweet specials.
Yeah, I’ve come to gauge how expensive a city is by how much the beer costs.
People are NICE! – Other than the dude that yelled at me on the Brooklyn Bridge, everyone was amazing. Cailin and I were sitting on a bench at the Staten Island ferry terminal, when the guys next to us just struck up a big conversation and asked us a million questions about Drake, a Canadian hip-hop star. They also wanted to party with us, but we declined. We’re VIP, fool.
Being anonymous is awesome – Around here, everyone knows me. I usually duck my head while running through downtown St. John’s, rarely do I ever face traffic head on. NYC is entirely different: nobody gives a shit who you are. I find this soothing.
Everything is vertical – There’s a Newfie joke that goes something like How can you tell somebody is a Newfie in New York City? The roof of their mouth is sunburned. Fairly accurate, I think. I’ve never seen such perfect use of space.
Sleep is for chumps – Some fellow bloggers wanted me to see Times Square at night, so we headed there after the opening night party on Friday. The crowd density was pretty much exactly the same as during the afternoon; mothers even pushed their children in strollers.
Times Square by night
Also witnessed one woman pushing her kids down the road on a hotel luggage trolley. Not sure why that didn’t strike me as strange the first time around.
This was also my first time visiting the U.S.A. Conclusion? NYC might be the epicentre of the universe.
