Tuesday, October 13, 2009

New York City

Well, I don't have any pictures to show you, but I will try and describe the best city in the world. For those of you who have never been, it's bigger than you think. The buildings are so tall. We stayed on the 26th floor of a hotel in Midtown. We went on top of the Empire State building this trip. Everywhere you look it is city...skyscraper after skyscraper.

However, there is also another world going on underneath the city. When I would walk around in the morning, I would see people pull up these doors in the ground and bring their deliveries down the stairs under the sidewalk. We also went to Penn Station. This is where the trains and subways meet underground. It actually sits under Madison Square Garden. There is a whole city down there...tons of restaurants, and shops, a K-mart. People hustling and bustling through there. I am familiar with just about every kind of transportation there is, but NOT subways. It was rather intimidating. You could definitely tell that we were tourists by the total confusion on our faces. Everyone knew exactly where they were going except us.

The people are not rude. They are actually very nice when you talk to them. They usually don't initiate conversations, but they seem to enjoy it when you strike up a conversation (which, being from Tennessee and all, we did everywhere we went). We talked with a hairdresser while we were riding the subway until she got to her stop. One restaurant owner heard that we were performing in Jersey and gave us a free meal! We also sat next to a guy in a little deli and talked with him while we ate.

There is not much personal space in the city. Even many of the restaurants had a bunch of tables all next to each other. You sat where you could even if you had strangers sitting on either side. I think that is why people may be slightly standoffish. You know that feeling you have after being cooped up on a small plane with a lot of people? New York City is like that all the time. Millions of people living on an island that is 22.96 square miles.

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