New York 2001
Day 3: July 1, 2001
2001, Christian Sauvé
Canada Day didn't start all that well for us. I was woken up by Karine saying "It's eight-thirty!", which gave us thirty minutes to wash up, get dressed, clean up and make it to the bus. We did it with a few minutes to spare, but no formal breakfast for us.
The plan for the day was to explore south of 42nd street. Naturally, any self-respecting visit to New York has to include walking across the Brooklyn bridge, so our first order of the day was to navigate the subway to get to Brooklyn, and then walk across the bridge to get back to Manhattan.
Overall, the subway proved to be a singularly featureless experience. We knew where we were going, there weren't all that many people around and the platforms were mostly clean. But keep in mind that we traveled Sunday morning; your experience may vary.
Walking across the Brooklyn Bridge is probably the only decent way to make a grand pedestrian entrance in Manhattan. Few of the jaded joggers, cyclists or power walkers running around us seemed excited about the prospect, however. Still, the bridge proves to be an exceptional place to take good pictures of the Financial district on a limited budget, and provides a curiously satisfying experience. If you try it, please make sure to do it early in the day like we did, so that the sun is behind you and reflects on the Manhattan skyscrapers.
Brooklyn Bridge, 9:56:
That's when we realized we were on the wrong side of the pathway.
Brooklyn Bridge, 10:10:
There is a local by-law that requires every yahoo with a photo camera to take exactly this particular shot while on the Bridge.
Brooklyn Bridge, 10:13: The financial sector
The bridge lands a few dozen meters away from City Hall, which proved to be our first purely land-based sight of the day. The building having been erected a while ago, don't be surprised if it's remarkably small compared to the size of the city it's running. Most of the real city offices, of course, are dispersed in the enormous high-rise buildings spread around this area.
Then we headed toward Fulton street, where our travel guides had indicated the presence of another Strand used bookstore. By then, we were curious to measure ourselves once more against the might of a gigantic biblio-nirvana. We waited until it opened its doors... and once again departed empty-handed after a few solid minutes of browsing. The good-but-not-stunning prices, selection and overall lack of air-conditioning helps to explain our victory. Book per book, you'd get a better deal in Ottawa bookstores than in New York. Unless you find something unavailable up here!
(If you'll just allow me to gratuitously break from this narrative for a purely hormone-driven moment, I'll simply point out that the density of cute chicks on the streets of New York City seemed abnormally high. I could probably do a fair statistical model of how New York sucks in half the Beautiful People in the United States by hopes of modeling and acting careers, but just take my word for it, guys; NYC babe-o-thèque. Back to our unisex essay.)
South Street, 11:47: The Fulton Fish Market. They've promised to pave the area since the mid-1700s, but alas, municipal funds are always too tight.
We dawdled along the Fulton Market for a while, looking at a few tall ships, walking under the shade of the expressway to finally enter the city again on that most famous landmark: Wall Street. It is, like few things in New York, less impressive than you might think. A narrow, twisty passage like many others in the Financial district (itself an unimaginably claustrophobic collection of concrete canyons that instil deep unease after the square simplicity of the streets-and-avenues system), Wall Street is, well, quite unlike the bustling commerce Mecca you could imagine. The New York Stock Exchange itself faces another street! During our next trip to New York, we'll try to check out the area during a weekday, and see the difference.
South Street, 12:01: This... is Wall Street.
Wall Street, 12:03:
Yep, the New York Stock Exchange. Graphically not on Wall Street.
We eventually made our way across the various construction sites and reached Broadway (again; that avenue can't be ignored). Ironically enough, there seemed to be more construction areas in the Financial District than anywhere else in the City. Heavy steel plaques seemingly took the place of half the pavement and orange fences required trickier navigation to get around. Even in retrospect, it's not clear whether we were surprised to find out that even at the financial epicentre of the world, the road system still pretty much sucked.
(Everything south of 15th street, however, is like that. Haphazardly built during the early days of the original colonies, the old town didn't have to contend with Hummers, SUVs and stretched limos. Bless the memory of the city planners who decided to be unimaginative and impose the streets-and-avenues system.)
Broadway/Wall Street, 12:08: The intersection of Art, Commerce and Spirituality. Science was held up in traffic somewhere around Nikola Tesla corner.
Going south, we saw more Duane Reade pharmacies, the Post office, a Bronze Bull being fondled by tourists and eventually found ourselves in Battery Park. Obviously the most densely touristy area of New York, the Park bustled with buskers, including "Millennium Man", a guy dressed in tinfoil with silver makeup who imitate the jerky movements of a robot. No pictures; I don't want to encourage those looking for daily trips in ambulances for heat exhaustion.
Broadway, 12:12:
Grr! Da bull! Can you see the fear in the tourists' eyes??
We finally reached the southernmost edge of our walking tour with a foggy distant view of the Statue of Liberty. Unwilling to waste at least an hour, we marched on back north through a slightly different route, headed toward the World Trade Center. Fortunately, we had already agreed to forgo any type of travel toward the statue of Liberty, and the hideous lines did nothing to change our mind. (Though they attracted hucksters like flies, seeing as they love captive audiences.)
Battery Park, 12:25:
Our best view of the Statue of Liberty.
Hey, at least we were there and you were not.
The World Trade Center was an exercise in bland brushed steel. We went through/under one tower, snapped a picture and left. Once again, they're most impressive as part of the skyline, not straight up from the ground.
World Trade Center, 12:55:
Tall enough.
From there we zig-zagged through the Financial district, with the intention to lunch in Little Italy, passing through Chinatown for kicks. We giggled a bit at the pictures of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney pre-eminently displayed inside federal buildings, wondered about the piece of modern art in front of the Federal Courthouse, were astonished by Duane Reades standing, of all places, on Duane and Reade streets, and eventually reached Chinatown.
Thomas Paine Park, 13:21: Federal Courthouse.
The sculpture/fountain at the right is entitled "Triumph of the Human Spirit", though we called it "Squished American Eagle"
English is optional in Chinatown, and sometime even absent. All the travel guides mention the divergent fates of this area and Little Italy (Italians gladly integrating themselves in American society while Chinese keep their distances; the results being a shrinking Little Italy and an expanding Chinatown. The same thing is happening in Ottawa.), but it's another thing entirely to see the process from up close. The transition between the financial district and Chinatown is especially abrupt, going almost instantly from high-rise to colourful banderols.
Call us bigoted, but we had our stomachs set on Italian fare rather than Chinese food, and so we quite literally picked an Italian restaurant at random ("Hey, this looks nice") and settled down for a classical oven-baked pizza at Florio's (www.florios.com, we found out later). Given that modern pizza was brought to America near this area, it seemed an appropriate choice. Though thin on the toppings and quite expensive (Ottawa pizzas are double the stuff for half the price), our choice certainly satisfied our hunger and gave us some spare energy to burn.
Little Italy, 13:34: Not a good place to mention the "M" word.
Leaving Little Italy was tough, but we *had* to see a bit of Soho and the Village, so we headed toward Washington Square. We didn't have time to play chess, but we still ooh-ed a bit at the Arch and started north on Fifth Avenue.
Washington Square, 14:43: At the heart of the Village.
Washington Square, 14:50: Christian telepathically playing chess with an opponent in Moscow, and getting royally creamed.
Walking north the Fifth Avenue. That gave us the chance to photograph the Empire State and the Flatiron building again (incidentally finding out that this is where famous SF&F publishing house Tor Books "lives") and stop by two Barnes and Nobles, where I picked up a book (Mark Leyner's The Tetherballs of Bougainville) I knew wasn't easily available in Canada.
Flatiron/Empire State Buildings, 15:20~15:30:
You've seen those elsewhere...
We were coming across Rockefeller Center when rain started pouring down, drenching the city with a healthy cool layer of water. For the rest of the day, it would rain intermittently, effectively putting an end to any elaborate plan we might have had. Don't cry for us; by that time, we were bone-tired and had seen practically everything we wanted to.
St Patrick's Cathedral, 16:12. It's a shame that the pouring rain doesn't come across any clearer in the second photo.
We still made an extra dash to Carnegie Hall (finding it only after we'd given up, thanks to a bad map or a bad reading of same), passed one last time through Times Square, visited the nearby Virgin Megastore (Karine bought a copy of the second Harry Potter book), tried to use the Internet access at the Time Square Visitor's Center (only to be bumped off by a lady who had "temporarily" gone to help a guy two computers away and was now claiming her place; I wasn't meant to check my email that weekend.), visited the Warners Store (not much there) and made it to Port Authority with roughly two and a half hours to spare.
We took a few photos, ate our requisite hotdog from some street vendor, watched New York cope with the rain and passed the time semi-successfully until we boarded the charter back to the Hotel.
Port Authority/Eight and 40th street, 18:31: Wet New York
Port Authority, 19:38: Karine waiting patiently for the floor to dry.
Total mileage for the day: 17 KM on foot (estimated)
Once back in our room, I downloaded the day's full load of photos, we finished the remaining Doritos, watched the local news -learning about the Central Park Canada Day concert and confirming that the temperature in NYC had hit near 40C with the pre-rain humidity- and crashed down to sleep. Weird, loud knocking noises were heard on the ceiling at around midnight, but by that time, even Poltergeists couldn't keep me from slumber.
Day 2, June 30, 2001
Day 4, July 2, 2001