The Big Apple

New York City, New York

Dec 2008

The term 'The Big Apple' was coined by touring jazz musicians of the 1930's who used theslang expression 'apple' for any town or city. Therefore, to play New York City is to play the big time - The Big Apple.

There are more Irish in New York City than in Dublin, Ireland; more Italians in New York City than in Rome, Italy; and more Jews in New York City than in Tel Aviv, Israel. Its hard to believe this, but will take it with a pinch of salt. Thank god this does not list Indians. We would beat them hands down.

I decided to go to New York to visit my good friend, Bishu. He was my batchmate from IISc, Bangalore. He visited Madison during summer and I thought here is my chance to see the Big Apple and also have some fun with friends.

I was in NY for 4 days and 5 nights. We left on the 25th of Dec, 2008 on a direct flight from Madison to La Gaurdia (LGA), NY. Bishu was there to receive us, and soon it was dark by the time we settled in his home. Bishu had cooked dinner for us along with 2 desserts! It was a good meal.

My 'plan' per se for NY was to visit all the prominent places and also sneak in a trip to New Jersey, where I was to meet my school friend, Gowri. Well, I managed to make it and I had a good long chat with her and got to see her toddler son, Hariharan.

The public transport is very efficient and very similar to the one I saw in Paris and Chicago. There are trains every few minutes, express and local and as long as you have a 'subway'( thats what they call their metro system) map, you can pretty much reach any corner of NY you want. NY is divided into different suburbs, Manhattan being the world famous one..with all its building giants and portrayed as the 'American dream'..and then there is Queens, where Bishu lives and is mostly residential..others are Bronx, Brooklyn..these are smaller I think. Manhattan is flanked by two rivers- East river on the east(obviously) and Hudson river on the west. East river separates Manhattan from Queens. The Downtown Manhattan along with the Central Park is pretty much where all the attractions are. The numbering of the streets have an interesting 'structure' to them. There are avenues to start wiith, and they are intersected perpendicularly by streets. So its like imagining avenues running from geographical north to south and the streets are just in an increasing order from south to North. I imagine that the numbering starts from the south as it should in the decreasing order of importance, from 'downtown'. It is very straightforward to go around by walking/bus/train with this structure in mind and so we set on exploring this concrete jungleon our short holiday.

We rested for the night of 25th and decided to start touring the next day. As Bishu puts it, we started the traditional way, to visit the symbol of freedom, Statue of Lady Liberty on Liberty island. The queue to the ferry that will take us to the island is the longest I have seen and I had no idea where it ended till about 1.5hours of waiting in the queue passed by. This is assuming that about 300 people are taken in a single trip every 15min or so. Anyhow, we finally got to the island at around 1.30pm after starting from home at about 9.30am! After the usual picture taking sessions, we got back to mainland at about 4.00pm..boy..its taken almost a day to just see one attraction! The story is that it was given as a gift to America from the French. The French sculptor,Frederic Auguste Bartholdi designed it as a giant 3-D jigsaw puzzle. The statue is made of copper sheets, about two coins thick and it seems about 300 sheets were shipped in to be assembled here. Interestingly, the pieces were assembled and supported by an ingenious iron framework of bars and girders designed by none other than Alexandre Gustav Eiffel! Ah..now I have seen of two of his marvels! Its about 300feet in height...reminded me of the sequoia trees that I saw in Redwood state park at Santa Clara, CA.

Our next stop was Downtown Manhattan. There are some prominent landmarks and represent the well-connected streets. The 42nd street, has a lot of places to visit. Times Square(this is the brightest places I saw after the lights at Las Vegas), Grand Central station, the Chrysler building. The 34th street has the Queen of buildings, the Empire State Building and Madison Square garden close to it. In terms of Avenue, Lexington avenue is our lookout, since it has a lot of Indian restaurants! Our next stop was the Rockefeller centre, where there is an observation deck to watch the night lights of the city. Indeed, from the 69th floor it was a good view of the city scapes. The majestic Empire State building with its colours changing for every day of the year, the Chrysler building, the Met life building and could we miss the Times square? It was this distinctly lit area in the sea of darkness (relatively) around it. Prominent things to notice were the Hudson river in the North, Seagram building on the East, Chrysler building on the southeast , the Empire State building on the south, and Paramount building, which is in the heart of Times square was on the southwest. The Top of the Rock was worth it, to get a feel for how New York would shining as one of the brightest dots on the globe. The largest world famous Christmas tree ( I wanted to see this ever since I saw Home Alone movie) and the ice rink is also at Rockefeller centre. The most disturbing thing was the crowd. It was packed everywhere, and this being the tourist season, we could not expected anything better. With not much time to stand around and watch, I had to be satisfied with catching quick glimpses, taking pictures and moving on. We were walking in the Downtown area, and we decided to go to Saravana Bhavan for dinner. Ah, the best dosa I have had after coming from home. I tasted kaima idly for the first time...and we hogged ourselves. That night, we walked to the Times square and boy, was it dazzling!! Heart of the concrete jungle..not an inch of space is wasted and the bill boards and hoardings are abound. I was very much reminded of Las Vegas and wished to be done with it soon. But I could get some good panoramic pictures. Thats all I have to say about that. (Like Forrest Gump!).

I was planning to visit my friend at Jersey City on the 27th. That morning, we visited the American Museum of Natural history. Crowded as it was, I lost much interest in the exhibits and only managed to watch a space show called 'Cosmic collisions'..it was at the planetorium at the museum and it was good. We had lunch at a Bangladeshi restaurant called 'Angon' and did we eat! Bishu was already friends with the waiter there and they got a special serving of fish that day. I took the local minibus to Jersey city from 42nd street Port Authority station. The bus boards at gate 51. Its about half hour journey and I reached around 7.00pm. I spent the night at my friend's place and returned to NY on sunday afternoon, the 28th. I had lunch again at Saravana Bhavan, and this time I decided to cash in on my favourite..Idly vada and filter coffee. Heaven on earth it was. I was keen on visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art as well, and had about 2 hours to kill that late afternoon. I rushed to the Met. But as it happens, the museum is always too big to finish in a day and I pretty much could see only selected galleries. I went to the photographic galleries first. After seeing the Vatican Museum at Rome, I have pretty much concluded that no museum can possibly get bigger than that one. I could cover other galleries on second floor as well, and I found some European paintings rather appealing. The Met closes early on sundays, and I had to get out of there by 5.30pm.

I was headed next to the Brooklyn Bridge, where my friends were to meet me. The bridge is old and grand, and it is just like in the movies. I enjoyed the view of Manhattan from there and the city on other sides. The Bridge is on East river. Dinner was at 'Dosa Palace' or 'Dosa Place' ..I can't recollect the exact name now..this was at Jackson Heights. Jackson heights looks more like an Indian town although many of the good restaurants are concentrated on Lexington avenue.

By this time, we had used the metro a lot and Bishu decided to leave us to sightsee on our own for a change on the 29th. I wanted to go Madame Tussaud's museum. It's located in Times square. Off we went, again to Times square. Every single place is so crowded and there is really no time to stop and think. Anyhow, I liked the collection of the wax models, and fancied myself standing next to celebrities like Leonardo di Caprio, Hugh Grant, George Clooney, Robin Williams..scientists like Einstein, father of our nation, Mahatma Gandhi, tennis player Martina Navratilova....but...I still did not get to see my favourite..Tom Hanks. I feel like I missed a whole section of it..thanks to the crowd. But the visit nevertheless was interesting. I believe it takes them around 8 months to make a single model! The descriptions of how they were made were present, but again, the herd of people made it difficult to stand and look at them closely. We watched a 4-D show called 'Polar express'. 4-D coz 3-D effects + time. As usual we were wearing the special goggles..I felt that there is not much in Polar express to get the 3-D feeling. I enjoyed the shows at Singapore better.

The rest of the day was pretty much open to us. We visited New York University at 8th street. We toured the Chemistry Dept, to Bishu's lab. It was rather unusual for me to imagine a university in the middle of downtown Manhattan. Academics doesn't seem to 'fit' in with the 'Manhattan' look. Anyhow, after that we were pretty much walking around, Bishu showing us his old apartment complex at the heart of Manhattan. Quite a location I must say, with the restaurants just a few steps away. We then walked down to Madison square garden, onto the East River side of Manhattan and then to Grand Central station. There was a laser light show going on there, where colourful patterns were being projected onto the ceiling and the walls of a central hall at the station. It was a pretty sight and I got to take some pictures. Our last stop would be for dinner, at 'Hot pot' in Chinatown. Here they keep a cooking pot with boiling water and a stove on the table, so that you can cook and eat your meat fresh! It is popular and the food is believed to taste far better. We didnt do it, but the eggplant garlic dish that I ordered was one of the best I have had. I have never been able to finish a chinese dish completely because of it's volume, but this time I was able to do it! The dish was indeed tasty. It was then time to go home and pack for next day's flight in the morning. A memorable trip indeed it was and if not for the crowd, I would have enjoyed NY much better. Thanks for hosting us, Bishu!