Concrete Jungle

I went to New York almost a month ago now, but I uploaded all the pictures on the day my hard drive crashed, so it's taken me a while to get a chance to post about it. It was my first trip to New York, and even though we were only there for a weekend, I feel like I did SO much. I'm excited to go back again now, and spend more time in some of the places I loved, and check out the ones I wish I had managed to squeeze in.

We stayed in a beautiful apartment in Brooklyn, that Doug’s parents found online. It was the top floor of a three-storey Brownstone, and managed to fit Doug & I, his parents, and his brother all in one apartment. Not bad Brooklyn, not bad.

The owner of the building was a model who traveled a lot, and decorated the apartment with pieces she found all over the world. There were tons of interesting things to look at all over, and I really appreciated the personal touches.

Once we dropped off our bags at the apartment, we hopped on the subway over to Manhattan, and were non-stop busy. We left the apartment early each morning and came back around midnight each night, completely exhausted. We took the sweltering Staten Island Ferry past the Statue of Liberty, ate amazing food, rode those double-decker bus tours all over the city, saw Harry Potter and John Larouquette sing & dance in How To Succeed in Business Without Ever Really Trying, and more.

The highlight of the trip for me was our bike ride around Central Park. Next time I go back to New York, I plan to spend a lot more time there, taking it all in. I always knew the park was big, but I think gargantuan might be a better word. Later, when we stood on top of 30 Rock and looked down, the sheer enormity of it kind of took my breath away. We biked that?

Also, while we were riding I got to see a sky-typing marriage proposal. Interesting fact: this sky-typing required 6 planes to do it, but is still a hell of a lot cheaper than sky-writing. This was actually the first of two proposals I saw while in New York, the second one happened in Times Square later that afternoon. I’ve never seen any marriage proposals in my life, and in one day I saw two? New York: The City of Love?

With a lot of area to cover in a very short period of time, the bus tours were actually a great way to see the city. The enjoyableness of the experience was pretty much directly related to how good the tour guide was, and in this department we hit the jackpot, and rock bottom. We saw an entire spectrum of tour guides in our three days there, and some of our bus tours became more of a character study than a city tour. Even so, it was worth it. Now that I’ve seen a quick overview of almost the entire city by bus, I know which areas I want to go back and see more of.

New York, I think you made a fan out of me.