Day 5 - New York City

First of all, many apologies for the late posting - it's been quite a rush of late and it's been very difficult to find the time to post any blogs (and I was without internet access for the laptop during our stay immediately following New York). I've decided that rather than posting "all over the place", I should still post chronologically, so here's the next in line... again, sorry for the delays :(

In hindsight, this past week has been the most fitting way to end 2009 and to start 2010 – when we count the days we’ve spent in New York City since Sunday, we’ve had it all! Fittingly, quite a lot of it happened on 31 December 2009.

I woke up around about 8:30am after a much needed and much desired snooze in our new hotel, The Tudor. Actually, that’s not entirely true – I didn’t wake up so much as I was woken up (seems to be a pattern on this trip). I perhaps need to provide a bit of context before I continue: Kat and I had agreed to keep the window open during the night because we didn’t want to run the thermostat / air-con while we slept. Instead, we opted for the icy cold (but relatively “fresh”) Manhattan air over the recycled and dry air from the ventilation system. We were in room 1105 so we were high up enough to not have all the street noise.

So now that I’ve provided you with the context, let me continue. A nice comfortable snooze in a King-sized bed was abruptly interrupted by my wife exclaiming through an abrupt inhalation of air “huh! Bryan! Look!” … naturally, a husband’s (in fact, ANY man’s) first reaction to an abrupt inhalation of air followed by an exclamation is to enter fight mode, and as I was scrambling to commence my ninja defence maneuvers I muttered “What? What?” and she gleefully chimed “it’s snowing!” … and when I comprehended that it was all a false alarm, I rolled over, murmured “that’s cool”, checked out the window and admired the beautiful scene. Manhattan coated in a blanket of snow, and frosty flakes gently drifting over the landscape.

Our last full day here, and despite the beautiful snowfall, I was feeling very sad that it was almost all over so soon. We took a little time getting ready and waking up, enjoyed some instant oats (my cheap solution I brought across from Queens) and got on our way. Originally, this was to be our "free day" to fill in anything we want to lazily do, but owing to our unfortunate and unexpected illness in the party, Monday was lost, and Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday became the NEW YORK PASS days!

To condense the details of the day (and on such a momentous day, there are plenty), here's a brief account of what we got up to on Thursday, with a more detailed account following afterwards...

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  We took a bus to USS Intrepid and enjoyed a brief stroll through the New York snow. Kat threw a snowball at me, but I laughed it off because it was such a unique experience being in the snow, let alone in the snow in NEW YORK CITY.
  
  
  
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  We saw what must have been HUNDREDS of police officers (NYPD - the city's finest) all over the place - in a few spots we saw almost a hundred altogether, and on average there were at least two police officers on EVERY corner throughout the evening!
  
  
  
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  We explored Manhattan and admired the Christmas decorations at Macy*s, Lord & Taylor, Sak's on Fifth Avenue.
  
  
  
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  We admired St. Patrick's Cathedral from the inside and the outside.
  
  
  
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  We visited SONY store, APPLE store, and returned to Lindt for some free chocolates.
  
  
  
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  I took Kat to see F.A.O. Schwartz and the BIG Piano.
  
  
  
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  We took a ride in a horse-carriage through Central Park
  
  
  
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  We went up the Empire State Building at 8pm
  
  
  
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  I met a US Eagles rugby fan who recognised my Springbok beanie
  
  
  
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  We saw a city-wide lockdown for New Years
  
  
  
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  We spent New Years in Central Park admiring the fifteen minutes of fireworks
  
  
  
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  We went to James' New Years party at the YMCA, and saw a NYFD 911 call to the party.
  
  
  
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  Visited Times Square to see the aftermath and I ate a junior whopper from BK
  
  
  
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  We finally got to bed around 3am.
  
  
  

And now for the (fairly lengthy) detailed account of the day (PLEASE BE WARNED THAT THIS IS A LONG POST):

Following their snow-in-Manhattan wake-up, the now super street-savvy South Africans snatched the sleek metro bus to Pier 86 (as close as we could get, at any rate) and took a brief but pleasant stroll to the pier. The snow was light and airy, and the walk was exciting and had a mystical fairy-tale element to it with snowflakes falling all around as we strolled past mammoth skyscrapers (for those wondering - no, the Chelsea district [gay hub of New York] has not affected my brain, I’m just trying to be poetic).

I suffered a cowardly attack from behind when Kat threw a snowball at me, but I forgave her for the momentary lapse into joyful antics. It's not often we get to experience snow in New York City, let alone snow anywhere! We finally joined the queue for the USS Intrepid. Note that this is now the THIRD time I’ve been within touching distance of the Aircraft carrier in as many days!

Murphy’s Law intervened (as usual), with the flight deck being closed because of the snowfall, as well as access to the Concorde being closed because of the treacherous pier conditions. Fortunately the internal deck and the USS Growler were still available, but the tours for the day were now at a discounted rate (which did not apply to us because we had NEW YORK passes). This meant we had essentially paid full price for the exhibits but only saw half of them. In the end this wasn’t all bad, because we were right in front of a guy with his son, and the guy was a retired US Navy guy, so when we boarded the USS Growler, he was right behind us telling his son all about the submarine (he happened to be a submarine officer). We kind of just followed him around and learnt the inside track on everything we saw. There were quite a few porthole hatch doors in the boat that I decided to experiment with to see if they closed, and to my pleasant surprise, they did! Apparently I freaked out some American tourists behind us who didn't seem to think they could open the doors or something, but I wasn't in their section to hear their screams. The Intrepid was also really exciting and there were plenty of exhibits on the lower decks to keep us entertained, and really the only thing we missed out on was a walk along the flight deck and scouting out a few military aircraft, but we certainly still had our money’s worth. I give the USS Intrepid two thumbs up, but the only think I’d recommend is giving yourself four hours at the very least to really enjoy the exhibits. It’s definitely more suited to the guys than the girls, and if you’re a guy and you’re not prone to shopping for fabulous window treatments, you have to check it out if you’re in New York City (or the last man on earth).

One thing to add is the G-Force experience. It’s $20 (which is very pricey) for a three-minute ride, but at least you have about five minutes to prepare for the ride on their outside simulators, so you are better prepared to maximize your experience. All it is really is a capsule attached to a PC flight simulator, where you simulate combat against Pacific fighters in WW2. Of course, the instructor says you swap over controls and then the other person gets to fly, so we expected that to happen from the start (I was the first pilot), but I never died, and shot down two Zeroes, so the ride was over before Kat had the controls (the woman obviously never expected me to survive or to shoot anyone down, so it was a tad annoying – at least the other instructor gave his capsule guys the suggestion that one acts as the gunner while one is the pilot). The capsule has complete 3-Dimensional control, and it was exhilarating to end up flying upside down to take out the Zero. Really great fun, but cost-wise it's an intense ride.

(*UPDATE* There’s a similar ride in Washington DC’s National Air and Space Museum which is $8 and free admission to the museum; versus the admission to the Intrepid and another $20 for the ride. Of course, if you’re not going to DC this advice is pointless, but if you are, save your cash for DC – New York certainly is more expensive)

We also took a bus back to Manhattan, where we scouted out the Christmas displays for Macy*s, Lord & Taylor, Sak’s on Fifth Avenue (all very impressive and some of the windows were akin to little Broadway shows of their own). This is apparently one of the things you need to do when you're in NYC at this time of the year, and in my opinion, it was a really fun thing to experience - it was just such a pity that our time was precious, otherwise a more leisurely stroll around the blocks would have been even more enjoyable.

On our journeys into town, we saw what must have been HUNDREDS of police officers (NYPD - the city's finest) ALL over the place. On the bus it appeared to be a police convention at one corner, with what must have been easily a hundred police officers together. A little distance later, we were stuck in a jam and spent about five minutes watching the metro bus squeeze in between police cars (literally squeezing - there was not even enough space to open the bus doors to let us out; we are talking CENTIMETRES of space).

At this point there was another huge grouping of police officers, obviously getting geared up for the evening. From that moment on, there were at least two police officers on EVERY corner throughout the evening! It was insane! I've never before seen that many police officers anywhere ever - not even at the South African national police conventions from the past ten years combined. Honestly, the police presence in New York City on New Year's Eve was so intense the population in New York City must have temporarily doubled overnight! At every metro stop in the subway there must have been at LEAST fifteen police officers. I'm not exaggerating! It is absolutely something else. New York certainly takes security seriously! I don't even think Halloween in New York City has as many people dressed up in police gear as there were today! I snapped a few photo's from our bus to illustrate what I'm saying... not the best photo's, but if you squint you can get the idea.

New York City's finest!!

(and also some NYPD officer)

Going back to our shop tours; across the road from one of the stores was St. Patrick’s Cathedral ("St. Paddy's"), which is a truly awesome sight. The cathedral is incredibly large and has such impressive attention to detail on almost every aspect of the building. Its external appearance is truly glorious (I think the style is called gothic) and it really is a sight to behold - the old and carefully crafted building towers over its commercial neighbours and shames the clinical modern architecture. Inside, there were so many nooks and crannies for prayer candles and there must have been seating for thousands of people. The one thing that Kat didn’t like, and I have to agree with her, is how the whole cathedral has turned into a tourist attraction and there were plenty of tourists coming in to snap up photographs while a handful of people were genuinely trying to have some prayer time in the pews. I was guilty of a few photographs too, but I wasn’t doing it simply for the thrill of a fancy looking building, I truly was awestruck by the time and effort attributed to constructing a building of this magnitude dedicated to God, and I wanted to share these pictures with other God-fearing friends (besides, I showed some consideration when taking my snaps). There were even two Franciscan nuns and a monk there to explain the nativity scene which had been set up and that was quite a "novelty". Overall, however, as Kat mentioned, if Jesus were around today, he’d probably whip everyone out of the cathedral, because there was even a souvenir shop in the sanctuary!

We also checked out the SONY store (missed the museum, but it sounded like it was geared towards kids anyway; at least we got to see a massive SPIDERMAN scaling the SONY building on the inside), the APPLE store (just APPLE products… let’s be honest, who cares about all of the different APPLE products for sale anyway? The only really interesting thing was the layout – there was a big glass cube standing in the centre of the block, with an apple symbol, and it actually served as an atrium that you had to descend down and into the APPLE store underneath).

We also paid another visit to Lindt, where my smooth talking scored me five free Lindt balls (TIP: when a salesman tries to sell you a product like chocolate, all you have to do is say “yeah that’s great, but how do I know if they taste good?”).

A trip to the legendary toy shop F.A.O. Schwarz (I was desperate to show Kat the BIG PIANO from the movie BIG), where I got to indulge my inner-child a little with the Star Wars and LEGO sections. Kat had cold feet and didn’t want to dance on the BIG piano (but then again, she didn’t really know what the piano was about since she had only seen half of the movie) so we didn’t stick around. If we had decided to do a duet chopsticks I am convinced we’d have scored some applause, because the only people on the piano were kids plonking around and it was painful to watch (and worse to listen to).

This store clerk in the LEGO section was really unhelpful.

If you're going to employ someone, at least ensure he can speak basic English!!

After the store browsing, we strolled along to Central Park to catch a subway ride to the hotel to phone James and confirm the plans for the evening, but on the way to the subway I asked a horse-and-carriage guy how much a ride would be through the park and he said it was $40 for twenty minutes. Sounding like an awesome opportunity to experience something we had hoped to do for months, we agreed! It was around 5pm when we hopped on, which means all of our South African friends and family were celebrating the onset of 2010! Happy New Year guys!!

We were ushered into a carriage which Kat pointed out was closed in from the elements, so I asked if we could pick one without a roof, but the driver said they were all enclosed, and summarily started the horse off on the journey (we were part of a convoy of other carriages so they had a schedule to keep). Moments later I noticed another group of carriages next to us with open-top carriages, so we immediately felt like we had been conned. Not only were we closed in so we couldn’t see the sky, but the driver never spoke to us once (although the open-top group of carriages had very chirpy drivers which kind of adds to the experience). A mere ten minutes later, we were back at our starting point. The driver hopped off and asked for $40, so I complained and said we had expected a twenty minute ride. He then said (in his Ukrainian accent) sorry, but that’s the prescribed route, sometimes it’s faster than other times, because it depends on traffic. I asked if we could have a discount, and he said it was $40 plus tip. I sneered at the prospect of a tip, considered calling a cop to intervene, but in the end just coughed up the $40 and walked off.

NEW YORK TIP OF THE DAY: Almost everything in New York City is some sort of con – some things are quoted without VAT, and others are with VAT, but everything also seems to require an obligatory 20% tip, so you have to factor that into your plans. AND you don’t get what appears to be for sale on the surface, so BE VERY WARY. There’s almost always a catch! Seriously!

After the horse ride we went back to the hotel, checked our voice mail from James (who had confirmed New Years plans), phoned him to confirm we’d be there (and he insisted that we must be there before midnight, which at the time I thought just meant for the countdown… this proved to be a mistake as I shall divulge shortly).

On our way over to the party, we wanted to fill in the remaining tourist-things-to-do, which included Empire State Building (this building has a really awesome 1930’s style feel to it, and when you walk into the foyer, you immediately feel like you’re in a different era). It’s probably fitting at this point to mention the contrasts between the Top of the Rock and the Empire State Building (ESB). Firstly, ESB feels far more stylish and professional. ESB is taller (86 stories vs. 69). Granted, we did go on New Year’s Eve, which may mean the results vary, but we found very short ticket queues at ESB, and our wait times to the 80th floor were very short.

The Top of the Rock (TOR) had prescribed time slots to access the elevator sections, which was a smart way to organize the rides up and also helped to make the waiting times more "productive". ESB has much more intense security than TOR – metal scanners, bag checks, etc. (thanks to that psycho that shot people up in 1997). At the security points at the start, I asked the guard if there would be fireworks for New Years, but the guy said they’re banned in New York City, so we decided it wasn’t worth coming back for the countdown to watch fireworks over Times Square and Central Park from the top of New York City, so we headed up immediately.

We still ended up waiting about twenty minutes in ESB when we got to the 80th floor before we could take the elevator up to the 86th, but there were some nicely dressed “bell hops” (and one in particular – Gregory - was rather friendly to Kat [the picture was taken moments after he gave Kat a big smacker on the cheek]). TOR had a funky ride up from ground floor to the 69th (which took about one minute) and you came out to the observation deck which included a kitchy (albeit technologically impressive) body-sensing light-room, but with ESB you had a couple of mini-trips along the way to the top. In conclusion, ESB felt like a much classier activity and the views from ESB were simply stunning. The winds weren’t as intense up at the top, and there weren’t any “silly” glass sheets in the way, but instead there was fencing, which could sometimes obstruct the view, but it also allowed for a more "clear" view of the city.

It was just a pity that our night at the top was limited to 5 miles of vision because of the inclement weather. If I had to choose one of the two to do, I’d take the Empire over the Rock, even though there are security checks and the waiting is longer. If you can do both, do TOR first so you can improve on it with ESB. Doing ESB first will probably lead you to be disappointed with TOR.

TRAVEL TIP OF THE DAY: At most attractions you get a photograph taken and when you finish your "tour" you walk past the photograph booth and get to look at your holiday snap before deciding if you want to spend $20 to keep it or not. Of course, the smart way to get around this expense is to walk away a bit, snap a shot of it with your camera, and return it. It's a picture of you after all, so it's your property :) Check out our results with this tactic (Kat was looking the wrong way - ah well)!

Also, while we rode in the subway, someone said to me “so you’re a box fan?”. Being a bit confused, I asked the guy what he meant, and he pointed to my beanie, and then I realized he was meaning “so you’re a boks fan?”. I enquired how he knew, and he pointed out that he was a US Eagles rugby fan. We had a good, but brief, chat, and I snapped a photo with him (his name is Mike). That was a good moment of rugby unifying the world, and it was even more awesome that for once my sport team was better than his, and he had maximum respect for us! Cool :) A good lesson to be learned there ... nail your colours to the mast when you're traveling; I've met several people that identified me because of my beanie, and I've had some good chats. Don't pass up on the opportunity for a bit of patriotism!

We decided to check out Times Square for New Years just so we could at least know for ourselves we weren’t doing something silly missing the grand event after coming all the way to New York City at this time of the year. Taking the subway to Times Square metro ended up being fruitless, because the subway was crawling with NYPD and there was absolutely no way to get into Times Square; NYPD were blocking off all exits / entrances into Times Square, and we discovered that from 10pm onwards Times Square had been locked down. We took the hint, and headed over to James’ party just outside Central Park.

We got a bit lost on the way because of the detours in the subway, and ended up taking the wrong route to James’ friend’s apartment. When we realized we were ten minutes away from the countdown, and that we’d probably arrive at the party just in time for the countdown, we felt it best to rather delay until afterwards before showing up. We saw a crowd of people going into Central Park, so we followed, being hopeful that something cool and trendy was about to happen. We started to worry when someone next to us asked us if something special was happening in Central Park, and that’s when we realized that this group was probably majority tourists that didn’t make it into Times Square. We decided to just watch the clock overlooking Central Park, expecting a countdown and a brief celebration. With about two minutes to go, there was a firework blast from next to the tower, so we kind of suspected we were in the right place at the right time, so we waited with bated breath.

Two minutes went by, and I was waiting for the countdown clock to start. It didn’t. Instead, I saw the clock reach 12:00 and nothing had happened. Somewhat confused, I turned to Kat, wished her a happy new year, and with that we wondered what was going on. A few more seconds went by, and everything seemed awkwardly quiet. Still stunned at the apparent anti-climax of a New Years in New York City, we looked around and assumed perhaps we had missed the big action, when suddenly people around us started counting down "ten, nine, eight..." and we hit "one... HAPPY NEW YEAR!" and all of a sudden we heard fireworks going off from behind us (we were still looking at the clock tower).

Turning around, we saw a spectacle of lights and bangs that just blew us away. There are moments in my life when I regret not having the gift of the garb, and this is one of those moments, because I can't do the experience justice in this post. The fireworks were out of this world. There were fireworks going off constantly for what must have easily been fifteen minutes. The flashes and bangs were so intense, and so enthralling that we couldn't take our eyes off of them. Every time there was a bang, there was a loud echoing BOOM about half a second later from the buildings surrounding Central Park. We took some time to become accustomed to the booming from the skyscrapers, because each time it boomed above us, it seemed like a building was about to collapse; "bang" ... "BOOOOOM" ... "bang" ... "BOOOOOM" ... insane!
(Note: the picture above was taken by me - I am particularly fond of the outcome because I feel it captures the essence of the moment, and it was quite a complicated shot to make)

After quite some time, there was so much smoke in Central Park from the fireworks that they had to up the ante and show even more impressive explosives to keep them visible. It was simply phenomenal and it was the most magical experience we could ever have hoped for. As Kat pointed out at the beginning; the fact that so many people were bringing their kids to the park obviously meant it was good clean fun. Once the fireworks show finally ended, there was a huge roar from the hundreds of fans in Central Park and a round of applause, before we all departed for our homes / next parties. This picture shows how everything was lit up by the flashes and bangs!

Kat and I walked across the park and headed to the YMCA to meet up with James. As we were walking in, the NY Fire Department arrived, and raced in just ahead of us. When we checked in with the bellman, we were told we couldn't go up because there was a medical emergency, and also they don't receive any guests after midnight (THAT is what James meant when he said come before midnight). We told them the room number we wanted to visit, and they said that was the room with the emergency. A bit stunned, but wanting to ensure everything was okay, we sat down and waited. After about ten minutes, paramedics arrived and went upstairs, and a further ten minutes later, the NYFD came down and left. We waited a total of about fifty minutes and there was no news or sign of the paramedics, so we decided to go home and leave a message for James.

Following the advice of everyone I spoke to, we decided against going to Dyker Heights this late at night, so we sadly had to skip the world famous Christmas light district (google for it).

On the way home we saw a few people dressed in business suits etc. and with their marathon numbers from the annual Emerald Nuts Midnight Run event and wearing running shoes. Quite funny.

Most notably, we came across perhaps only a handful of inebriated revellers in our travels through the subway and the streets - it was really quiet and clean! We headed over to Times Square to see the revelry, but the entire area was cleared out by 1:30am, and the clean-up process had already begun. In fact, it was so quiet that apart from the litter, you would have been forgiven for thinking nothing had ever happened! There were lots of people milling around, but no more in Times Square than anywhere else. When we arrived the cleaning up process had already started!

To celebrate the new year, I ordered a junior whopper burger for $1 from Burger King in Times Square and we headed home and to bed... what a long day, but it was really magical and worth it. New Years in New York City is certainly an experience worth doing at least once - the fireworks show was simply spectacular, and the police presence made the entire city feel like the safest place on earth. When New Yorkers want to do something memorable, they spare no expense :)

Despite the length of my post, there was still so much more that has gone unmentioned about the day and the simply magical spectacle of being in New York for the Christmas / New Years period. I highly recommend it to anyone that can afford to be here; be warned, the price of hotels is worst this period of the year!

(PS: Thanks to Clint Slogrove for his black jacket... it's keeping me very warm as you can see)