From Indian Street to Wall Street

I always wondered why only the bulls were given some representation on the Walll street, to me it seems to be a simple case of self induced hallucination, an unwilling desire to look at the other side of the coin. Nevertheless, the bronze structure does make for some nice photos, and that's where i was headed for the weekend.

Thank god that the snow had stopped the day before, but the white blanket was still very much covering parts of the streets on the eve of my trip. it wan't that cold to venture out just yet, i guess that was saved for the latter half of Decemeber.

So I walked out in the fluffy snow at 6 in the evening, picked up a sub sandwich for dinner and headed to Chinatown to board my bus. As Murphy has predicted so many times, the bus was more than 30 minutes late, thankfully there was an office that you could squeeze into to escape the chilly wind. Now a word of advice, if you do pick up a ticket on these 20 odd dollar DC to NY buses, make sure that you’re not at the end of the line when the bus arrives.

I was thinking of which all places to visit in the Big Apple, and the new WTC wasn't really on my list but it was right there, the glass structure about 52 storey high now, simply staring at you when you do get to Wall street. but that was later the next day, so the nice thing about these buses are that they have relatively comfy seats, and also a loo at the back, but if you are indeed bringing up the rear of the line, then you’d have the not so pleasurable experience of sitting at the back…’nuff said.

The bus made decent time, and I was in NY at around midnight, so boarded the path train to Jersey and hit the sack immediately. The morning next day was beautiful, not too cloudy, and perfect for the long walkaround that I had planned out.

You could even see the Goldman Sachs building from the apartment, which is one of the tallest ones in new jersey ,and is right on the river shore.
TIMES SQUARE! Okay, so I had seen it a number of times before as well, but the vibrancy at this place never does cease to amaze me, the sheer number of people huddling around in the tall lit up buildings, scurrying to some place or the other, and the other plethora of human creatures with flashing cameras in their hands, trying to capture it all.

So I picked up my 1 day New York pass at the Planet Hollywood on the 45th there, turned out to be a good deal in the end, you pay up 75 bucks and get free entry to quite a few places. Maybe the 3 day pass could also work, but then again I had only the weekend this time around here, so 1 day it was. First stop – Rockefeller center on the 50th.

 I walked around trying to get back into the groove of the streets and avenues criss crossing to get to my destination. Getting used to the quick pace of the people here brought back so many memories, it's always as if there's something up their pants that makes them race Usain Bolt on the streets itself, but you stil have to love it.

Housing the NBC studios, you could also see a small video on the history of the building, which came up after the Great depression and took 1931-39 to build. The ride up in the elevator is also a different experience as the ceiling has a short video taking you through the years. Up on the 67th floor, the view is really something.

It was chilly, and windy as well, but you have to forget all that and look all around, one side Central Park, the other side New Jersey, the third side you can see Queens I believe, and the fourth has Uptown Manhattan, with all the other skyscraping structures.

Then you have to walk up to the 70th floor, where the outdoor deck is open air and makes for some really nice photo ops. There’s also an ice skating rink next to the rock (they promote the top of the building as ‘Top of the Rock), but gave that a miss as time was of essence.

When you’re in New York, do as the New Yorkers do, so street food it is, but since I’m a herbivore, so falafel it was. Turned out, that the middle-eastern dish was quite good, have to remember to try more of this when I get back. A few blocks away on the 44th street at the Discovery Times Square Exposition I got to the King Tut Exhibition.

It has apparently come back to NY after 1970, doing a tour of other places, and in 2011 will again go back to Egypt. They don’t have the mummy though (just a replica of the same), that was a letdown, but they do have a lot of other interesting artifacts, tablets, jewellery, the royal staffs, and a whole lot of stuff that went with the pharaoh to his tomb, literally! It was amazing to see how they placed the mummies in 3 different layers of caskets, one inside the other.

No photographs allowed inside, so could only take a snap of the entrance, and moved on with my guide book in hand.

I decided to take in a cruise as well which my pass allowed. A few phone calls, and I gathered that the next one that I could take was at 4 in the evening, which left me with 3 hours to kill. With no more destinations in mind, I made my way uptown to the museum of sex on the 27th street. Okay, I was curious, but the museum wasn’t in my list of things to see that day at all. Either I went in through the wrong entrance or the marketing strategists of the museum were trying to sell a lot of ‘gifts’ through their gift shop which was the first thing I got to see when I entered. The museum itself turned out to be not too great after all. One floor had the progression of porn, ahem, sexual explicit scene depiction, blah, blah, blah through the medium of motion picture. There was a small crowd near the screen that was playing contemporary porn, ahem, scenes of sexual explicit nature, oh what the hell, it wasn’t PG13, let’s leave it at that.

One floor had sex depiction in comics, even poor mickey wasn’t spared here. Then the next level had sex tools, and another had animals, At this point let me issue a belated cautionary notice, this post may contain language not suitable for children, so if there are any children reading this, please do not tell your parents. Well, enough of ogling, I started back in the metro for 42nd street, and then walked 6 blocks to get to pier 83 on the 12th street.

Turns out that it was really just a ferry, not a cruise, they just call it that. Well, whatever, I just wanted to go on the water, so it was good enough. I showed my New York pass, and they gave me my free ticket. I boarded the ferry, and like all brain-dead tourists who come from a place where the climate is cold enough only for shorts, I headed to the uncovered area on the upper level of the ferry.

Well, it was quite bearable till the time that the boat was stationary, but once it pulled out into the river, the biting wind started to bite at the cheeks, and the hot chocolate only helped for a few minutes of the 2 hour ride. But it was a beautiful ride nevertheless, the captain of the ferry had a running commentary on the entire time, pointing out for the travelers the various buildings that the ferry was passing, and he did talk a lot.

One side you could see the 10-12 storey structures of New Jersey and the other side the 40-50 storey structures of Manhattan. The ferry crossed past the Statue of Liberty and onto the other side of Manhattan, where one can also see the nice bridges.

It was the perfect time to take a boat ride as well, as the sky was just turning the shades with the advent of
dusk.

Let me tell you, even though I was completely covered, the wind did finally dampen my enthusiasm and forced me to take shelter in the covered decks of the boat to escape the chill. Still, i did not repent my decision to take the cruise, the ability to see this whole view is quite worthwhile.

The last time I was at Madame tussad’s here, I wasn’t really impressed with their workmanship, but seems that they had added quite a few more statues, and they were not that bad too. They had added the Clintons as well, and it was really crowded. The good thing about the New York pass is that you can bypass all the queues for tickets and head straight to the front of the lanes and thus avoid wasting all that time.

This time around they had also added the Obamas, and my snap with them seemed really weird, like they had adopted a brown kid, the new Brangelinas if you would!

There was also the Beatles, and a host of other music personalities I hadn’t seen the previous time, things do change I guess. And they had a really big wax of the hulk as well, and you’d be a complete non-tourist not to take a snap in the big outstretched hand of the green monster and pretend to be squished, what some people would do for a snap. Obviously I took a snap like that and moved on to pose next to the giant black gorilla as well.

The IMAX Theater in the building was showing a 10 minute 4-D film of the polar express, so decided, what the hell, it was just 8 in the night, so sat down there as well. All they do is throw water on your face, some fake snow, a wire that moves under your seat, and the seat moves as well, and the sound effects, and they charge you for that, the nerve!

Well, so much fun, and the stomach was making growling sounds that would make the Hulk envious, so as an excuse to escape the cold, I entered a small joint, and true to my non-nutritious resolution, ordered a couple of slices of cheese pizza. With my energy again up to some level I boarded the metro to 34th or some other street and headed to my last destination for the day – The Empire state building.

Perfect end to the day, started by taking in the city from the top of Rockefeller in bright sunlight, and ending it at the Empire state building’s 86th floor, with the city lights below stretching in the distance, soothing my aching muscles and cold cold cheeks!

Oh, and I did end up visiting Wall street and Central Park the next day, cold or no cold, I braved it all for the Big Apple, hope it appreciated the effort!!!