Some of you probably know all this, but just to put it down...space is at a premium, so everything is smaller, and I do mean everything. The bathroom stalls, the hotel rooms, each shop is very narrow, but may go back a ways, up, down, or both, but it's not wide. The tables in restaurants are smaller, as in they put four of us at a table where two would be crowded, and you had to arrange your plates and glassware very carefully and exactly to get it all on. The tables are also all close together, so you're sitting back to back with someone all the time. They are cramming in as many people into as small of a space as they can. Even the theater, on Broadway, for the Lion King, had seats really tight together in there.
Wherever we went there was someone in 'charge' of the line who was constantly yelling directions to the crowd. Loudly and repetitively. They all projected very well. But whether it was Top of the Rock or the 9/11 Memorial Museum or the theater, there was someone there to yell at the people in line. I don't know if I've ever mentioned it, but I don't like being yelled at. It makes me feel like being belligerent. ;) But I was a good sheep like everybody else. ;)
The driving...it's a dance, you can see that. It's extremely crowded and I would Hate having to do it, but like everything there's a rhythm to it. They use the series of honks and maneuvers to get where they need to go, and as long as they're all old hats at it, it goes just fine. You can tell when someone is new or goofs up because the horns go from a quick toot for "come on over" or a couple honks to "watch out, I'm coming over" and go into a big long angry HOOOONNNNNNNNNKKKK and you know somebody blew it.
Uber is fantastic. We'd never done it before, but it is THE way to go. We were able to get rides around town for about $7-20 for the four of us, tip included (although Steve gave them a little more anyway), in nice vehicles privately maintained, and they were there at our door in 3 minutes or less Every Single Time. You put an app on your phone, tell them where you are and where you want to go, choose what type of service you're looking for (how many people, how nice of a vehicle), and can see all the eligible cars on a little map on your phone. Then someone close by gets the notification, and says they are on their way. You get a photo of the driver, his name and license plate number, and you can watch on your phone as he gets closer. All the other little cars disappear off your screen, and you see your car as it comes to you. It shows up, you get in and give them your name, and they drive you to your destination. Far cheaper than cabs and you can do it on your phone without standing in a street and flagging one down and hoping for the best. Sweet. Taxi companies may be in trouble as it's kind of hard to compete with that.
The city was kept pretty clean. Last time I wandered around the boroughs I remember thinking how dirty it all was, and smelled like pee. Now maybe in January there is no pee smell, so bonus there, and we didn't hit all the other boroughs, but where we were was clean, people were friendly, we felt completely safe even at 11 pm walking outside, it was a definite melting pot of nationalities, and nobody cared whatsoever. Shop owners were helpful, folks in the hotel elevator were friendly, it was just a lot less hostile than I remembered it being. I did get offered free tickets to a strip club on Times Square, which Kaylee heard, but that was more funny than anything.
Sunday night we asked about legit New York style pizza, and ended up walking to a little hole in the wall place right down the street. They closed in ten minutes, so we were like "aw, man", and the guy insisted we could get some by the slice and he'd toast it up for us, so that's what we did, then took it back to our room to eat. The pizza was fired up in this old style pizza oven, and we all declared it the winner in the Chicago vs New York pizza war. I love dough, don't get me wrong, and Chicago knows how to do dough, but the sauce and the cheese on the NY pizza won hands down. Good stuff.
Most of where we ate was fantastic. The only one that was a little lacking was actually an extremely expensive restaurant at Rockefeller Center by the skating rink. It cost like $220 to feed four of us, and the guy left us sitting there for 30 minutes without bringing the check or doing refills. The food was fine, I had striped bass and calamari and it was fine, but it wasn't THAT good. The cool thing about that place though was that you could sit inside in the warm and watch the skaters go by right outside the window. In the dark, but all lit up with flood lights, and with a light snow falling. That was lovely. We ate breakfast at another hole in the wall place by World Trade Center, and you could tell it was a local favorite. The second day we ate breakfast at a fancy pants place downtown. The food was A.Mazing. In quality, quantity, and price, all three through the roof. ;) One thing we learned, though, if you don't get out to breakfast by about 9-9:20 a.m., you will need reservations wherever you're going, or you might as well wait for lunch. Each day when we were leaving the restaurant around 10-10:30 a.m., every place was packed out and backed up. Our last morning there we tried to go to Sarabeth's for breakfast but everyone was running late that day so we didn't get there until 10. It would have been a 45-60 minute wait standing in a tiny room with a large crowd. We found some place else, and even IT was just our hotel restaurant and was still super busy. Be prepared if you're going to NYC to get reservations for meals!
Steve was a bit of a trouble maker though. We are in line at the World Trade Center 9/11 Memorial Museum. To get into this place you have to go through basically airport security, except you can leave your shoes on. So, belts off, coats off, electronic devices in the bin along with anything metal, you walk through a metal detector, and they scan all your bags. I didn't think about or understand it at first, but then it did make sense. If you're a terrorist/bad guy, what better coup than to blow up or take out the memorial museum with all the artifacts of those killed in the original terrorist act and take out a whole other large crowd of people while you're at it? :o So anyway. Steve. We all get through and the guy behind the scanner says "Pocket knife" pointing at Steve. Steve says "I don't have a pocket knife." The guy with not great English insists he has a pocket knife. Steve slaps his pockets and says "I do not have a knife!" The guy says "In the coat." Steve's getting mad now, points at the pens on the pocket, and the guy says "No.Pocket knife." Steve says "I do NOT have a knife!" Guy says it's in the pocket of the coat by the pens. Steve goes digging in the pocket, and comes up with a pocket knife that he'd thrown in there a long time ago to use to be able to cut off a seatbelt like in the T-6 when traveling should an emergency arrive. Except he'd forgotten it existed. He apologized to the guy. They took the knife, gave him a ticket, and after we left he was able to reclaim the knife. He put it back in the pocket and determined to put it in the hotel room. Which he promptly forgot to do. So when we went to "Top of the Rock", again there was security. This time there was nothing in place for them to do with it. He either had to leave, leave and hide it somewhere and come back, or throw it away. He just threw it away. We were there to see the sunset, and if he'd left we'd have missed it. They made a production out of it, with calling in "contraband", and pulling us all aside. It was a tad awkward, yes, but oh well. So after that, the knife was no longer a security problem in New York. He is now out a knife he is not happy to throw away, even if he'd forgotten he even had it in the first place. So out of two teenage girls and me, Steve was the one who caused us problems. ;)
My body aches a little. My hips, legs, calves, feet. We walked A Lot. One day was like 18,000 steps for almost 7 miles, and the next day was almost 5 miles, and all of us felt it except mostly Steve, for some reason. I'm the one that usually does the most walking, but I haven't been for a long time now, and apparently I am out of shape. It was great exercise, but I was kind of glad to sit the next day.
That's probably good enough for now. I'll post some photos with a few stories of what we did/saw later tonight or tomorrow. Today in Kokomo there will be nothing exciting happening. It's dreary, flights canceled, house being cleaned, Kaylee's school was canceled because over 200 kids were out sick last Friday and they couldn't get any nurses in today, so they have to make it up President's Day. She had a Barbershop Quartet practice right when we got home last night, from 6-8:30 pm, and was going to have another practice this morning at 7 am, except school was canceled so they canceled it. But she's up and running already, has a lot of ISSMA stuff to prepare for with singing and the saxophone both.
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