arre... O! Sambar: All about the NYC Trip

To start with, the journey to NYC from Boston was something that deserves a special mention by itself. There were quite a few options to think about – hit the road, take a train or fly and after much deliberation I chose the first. Here in, I could have either driven a car or take a bus. Bus travel is usually expensive than driving a car most of the times if you have party of at least 3 or more. It is something that most Americans don't prefer to as they don't have the flexibility. Although we did have 3 people, 2 of my friends from Manchester, CT and I, not taking a car was the best thing considering New York Traffic, the skyrocketing fuel prices and the parking charges. So, I decided on bus travel.

A little bit of googling sprang up with results about “low cost carriers” - cheap buses which offered me to take me from Boston to NYC for just 15 bucks – Yep, no typo here – Just 15 bucks. Most of these are Chinese companies who started this to transport workers from one Chinatown to another in major cities. Slowly, as they broke even and started seeing profits it turned out to be good between high volume cities. I chose Lucky Star. I had to board at Boston South Station Terminal which was more like an airport in terms of infrastructure.Well, that was until I went to the gates where it turned out to be pure Koyambedu ishtyle. Once the gates opened, I had to run to get myself a comfortable seat. Most backpacks do not go in the overhead compartment and hence almost every one in the bus had to leave it onto the luggage compartment which wisely was large enough!! There was a customary food stop in a Burger King at Vernon CT, which reminded me very much of the Vikaravandi stop that buses going south of Chennai usually take!! Well, except for the fact that the restrooms here were usable:-o)

The bus...

Though it was raining cats and dogs all along the route, the driver was good enough to take us safely onto Chinatown, NYC right on the dot. After a lot of confusion about Subway trains going uptown and downtown (which we will discuss very shortly…) I finally met my friends at Penn Station, caught the A line going downtown to where my friend lives – Richmond Hill, Queens – around 1 AM in the night.

Coming out of the subway, I was perplexed to see neon signs of Lalchand Jewellers and Sardarji’s smoking cigars and chitchatting along the road. For a moment, I was almost convinced that I was back home and in some obscure city in Punjab. As we were all craving for food, my friend was kind enough to take us all to a 24x7 Punjabi Dhaba! :-o That is NYC for you! And that was the time to catch up with Mathan whom I met after almost 6 years…! In a way he was the one who made this trip possible being kind enough to offer us some space to hit the sack and get ready for the next day at his home or mansion, I must say…!

Okay. Now let’s take a short detour and look out for some hat tips…!

Hat Tip: 1

All subway trains are referred to as either going uptown or downtown. Anything south of where the speaker is currently standing is said to be downtown. Anything north of the speaker is uptown. The term uptown is used to refer to the cardinal direction north. This is very much confusing for anyone who is used to calling the “Center of the city” as Downtown. It is very handy to have a map in hand just verify if the place is north or south of where you are currently now.

Hat Tip: 2

I was told a lot of times on not to ask advice from strangers and to contact people who are in the business of helping others. My bad – I tried to contact 2 MTA guys at the helpdesk and both were rude and didn’t give me the right directions..!It is always best to plan your itineraries well in advance and get a list of routes that would take you to the common places.

Hat Tip 3:

Never think that you can call your friends after you get into the subway. You officially enter the pre-mobile era and get disconnected from the rest of the world after you step into a subway station. There are no public phones too. As it is in most cities, one pass that you purchase for 2 bucks is valid until you take an exit at any station in the next 2 hours. So, it is best to switch lines before and get to the destination all by yourself using your common sense rather than come out and ask for help.

Time to hop back onto the main line...

Day 2 dawned at around 10 AM and it was almost noon when we set our foot outside the house. What else can be expected when you have lazy bums like me! We headed straight to Madame Tussuad's where we collected our New York Passes. The New York Pass is one of the many businesses that offers you tour packages. We bought the 3 day - Hop on - Hop off package which proved to be a boon in many cases. The queue at the museum for the passes gave us the first feel of how this weekend was going to be - long and tiring. This was my second visit to a Wax Museum after the one at St. Augustine and it certainly felt better although many people say that the one in London is by far the best. Most of the attractions were from Hollywood, I did manage to click a few interesting pictures...! A must see here is the 4D Movie that they show. We saw the Planet Earth, an adaptation from the BBC TV series and it was the usual 4-D movie with Bubbles floating around, water sprinkling and seats vibrating. The thing that I enjoyed the most was when I felt a pinch at the back and shouted when a water snake hissed on screen. It was one nerve wracking moment!

A few famous men and women posing with me / us... The last one is my favorite..

Our next stop was at the Empire State Building which is at a stone's throw from here. After the twin towers fell, this building became the tallest structure in America. Again we were greeted with obscenely long queues here. But this time, we managed to take a few short cuts and enjoyed the NY Skyride. It is a motion simulator ride kind of a thing showing all the attractions for the New York City. If you are going to shell out money from your pocket only on this ride, I wouldn't recommend this to anyone. After a bit of queuing and climbing up 6 floors, we managed to reach the 86th floor observatory and the view was breathtakingly beautiful. We then headed out to see the fireworks which proved to be a once in a life time experience. After the fireworks we chilled out at the Hard Rock Cafe, Times Square and headed home around 3AM with the satisfaction of spending a good long day.. Just in case you missed it read about it here.

Here are a few pictures of the NYC Skyline looking down from the Empire State building and the Hard Rock Cafe...!