Saturday, December 15, 2007

My First Trip to NewYork City


I would like to share the experience of my first visit to New York City. Since it was my first trip and I didn’t have much idea about the place, I asked my friend who had been working there to come to the New York Penn station to pick me up. The station was very large and a lot of trains were passing through it and I was watching them till my friend came and we both started to roam around the city. The day was very cold and even wearing two jackets was not sufficient for me to protect myself from the cold.

My friend first showed me the place where the world trade center stood and then we went to see the statue of liberty. There was a huge queue of people waiting to take a ride on the ferry to go near the statue. Due to time constraints and also having to visit more places we skipped taking this ride and instead took a ride to the Ferry Island. It was a nice experience to see the Statue of Liberty on the way to the island although it wasn’t very close. I was surprised to hear that the ride was free of cost! When I asked my friend, he told that this ship was being operated mainly for the passengers who wanted to travel to the ferry and due to some calamity that happened in the past, they had made it free of cost. We reached the Ferry Island and returned back immediately in the next ferry. Lot of people utilizes this in the same way like us, just for viewing the statue and the beautiful scenery. After the excellent ferry ride, we went to an Indian restaurant, had a nice lunch and then again continued our journey.

We then went to see one of the oldest suspension bridges (Brooklyn Bridge) in the United States which stretches 5,989 feet (1825 m) over the East River connecting the New York City boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn. We had seen a nice view of the city from the center of the bridge. We took some snaps and then started to visit the next place in our list. It was the Empire state building. We took a metro train to reach the 34th street and I was really confused with the metro train system which has been operating huge number of trains through out the city. Even my friend who has been living there for six months got confused couple of times.

By the time we reached the Empire State building, there was a long queue waiting outside to enter the building and the board outside displays that the waiting time will be two hours. My friend who had already visited the place twice didn’t have patience to spend that much time to visit the place again, but I forced him to visit it again. After standing in the queue for nearly one and half hours, we went through the security checking’s, got the tickets and finally reached the top of the building. It was a pleasant cold evening at the 86th floor of the building with a glittering view of the city. We were surprised to meet some of his friends who were come to the city for a two day trip from Hartford. We all enjoyed together the aerial view of the city with full of lights and took some snaps of the beautiful view of the city. We had spent an hour there and then started together to visit the next place Madame Tussauds museum near Times Square.

We all went together to the wax museum to enjoy seeing the wax figures of our favorite celebrities, politicians, record breaking athletes and legends. We were really amazed that it didn’t looks like a statue but like a real figure. Since all the wax models looks like a real humans, we weren’t able to differentiate the real persons from the wax models. One guy from our group while watching the wax models came across a woman, thinking she was a wax model, he stopped for a moment, turned back and stared at her. It was very funny to watch him so embarrassed. We took a lot of snaps with our favorite celebrities Julia Roberts, Nicolas Cage, Jennifer Aniston and lot more, and with a great leader Mahatma Gandhi and other political and world leaders. We felt like we were in a Hollywood. I was surprised to see my old project mate who came along with his team. The time was gone like anything and only after seeing our watch we realized that we had spent one and hours in the museum. After spending a nice time at the museum, I and my friend started to roam the streets around Times Square while his friends started returning back to their city. We saw the major buildings around the time square which looked very beautiful with full of lights. We then went to the Rockefeller center to see the ice rink.

We were delighted to see the lightning of a huge Christmas tree and lots of people who enjoyed skating in the ice rink. We were also liked to enjoy along with them, since we both don’t know skating and hadn’t done it before, we just watched them. It was very funny to watch some people who fell down many times and skated by holding the others. We enjoyed watching the ice skating for half an hour and then had our dinner at an Italian pizza restaurant. After a nice dinner, we started towards the train station. Since I didn’t have facility to stay there for a night, I started retuning to the Jersey City to stay at one of my friend’s house and my friend returned back to his home.

I wondered how the day went very quickly and we were unable to cover more places in a single day. I hope I will get one more opportunity to visit the city to cover the places I missed this time. I believe everyone would enjoy reading my experience of New York City trip.



2 comments:

RvK said...

Good Blog. The first site from empire state building makes u awe struck is it not??

Check out my first trip to US at : http://mrvivekr.blogspot.com/2005/06/begining-of-flight-fantasy.html and http://mrvivekr.blogspot.com/2005/06/flights-of-fantasy.html

Cheers!! Keep Blogging!!

Lakshmi Narasimhan said...

I was impressed but not frightened.