West Meets East Part I - Big Apple Adventures

Living in LA its pretty easy to lose a grip on reality.  We are cocooned in a celebrity obsessed media driven society, bubble wrapped in a purpose built concrete metropolis surrounded by barren dessert.  This is a land where the sun shines continually on the unrighteous.  So how would we flaky Californians find the East Coast?

It’s a 5 hour flight from Los Angeles to Newark – I'm used to travelling long haul with free food and free entertainment so flying domestic with Continental Airlines left a lot to be desired.  $8 to watch TV (we didn’t); $8 for a miserable snack box (we didn’t) and at 6.00 am even I thought it was too early to splash out on an alcoholic beverage – so we didn’t. Makes for a pretty long boring flight though.

However, out of the gloom came a welcoming sight; as we descended over the the suburbs of New Jersey one thing became immediately apparent – the East Coast is green.

A half hour train ride from the airport and we emerged from Penn Street station to the hustle and bustle of New York City.  Sky scrapers; yellow cabs; lots of people; lots of noise.  This was more like it! So different from the deserted streets of downtown LA regularly devoid of human life.

New York is busy.  It’s vibrant; it’s hectic; it’s noisy, it’s smelly but I loved it.  Every hot sticky tacky touristy minute of it.  We did Times Square, the Empire State; Central Park; took the Statten Island Ferry for the view of the Statue of Liberty; walked up Wall Street.  You’ve seen at the movies; you’ve seen it on TV and yes NYC is exactly how you expect it to be – only more so. 

 

We did a Broadway Show – boosted our Parents of the Year status by taking the teenager to see Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) in How to Succeed in Business, which even without the added attraction of the Chosen One would have been an extremely entertaining show.

We rode the subway; admired the Rockefeller Center, marveled at the Chrysler Building, had lunch in a New York Deli; breakfast on the edge of Central Park.

NYC really does have it all - history, character, culture, from those elegant brownstones to the art deco interior of  the Empire State; the grand splendour of Grand Central Station and the Metropolitan Museum; to those modern highrises.  There is are amazing choices of food and places to eat; every whim and every nationality is catered for - street vendors, street cafes, upmarket restaurants. Shop til you drop then retreat to Central Park.  There really is something here for everyone. 

If only I could capture that atmosphere in a bottle and ship it out west.

Two years of living in LA. Two days of NYC.

No contest. The Big Apple wins hands down.