New York City has more people than New Delhi and Madras put together. Imagine that. Now, that is a lot of people. New Yorkers call their city the Capital of the World and for good reason. It has attracted people from all around the world for many many years and in diverse fields - advertising, fashion, finance and entertainment to name just a few.
New York City is way too large. It is not a good idea to plan to see each and every sight - even if you do have a week on your hands. We took a good shot at Manhattan - one of the city's five boroughs. Most of what one would associate with New York is in Manhattan - the museums, the park, the bridges, the skyscrapers, you name it. One excellent place to start is right at the tip of Manhattan - the World Trade Center.
We came in from sleepy Jersey City via the train that deposited us at the base of the WTC. A cup of coffee and doughnuts at the Krispy Kreme store at the bottom is highly recommended. Not five minutes from there is Wall Street. Being one of those truly astute investors who had lost money on both the exchanges, I was interested in seeing the NYSE and the NASDAQ . The NYSE is a nice old-world building located on Wall Street. The street was named for an earthen wall built by Dutch settlers in 1653 to repel an expected English invasion. I expected Wall Street to be at least a mile long and have three lanes in each direction. In reality, the interesting part of Wall St - where the NYSE is located - is less than a few hundreds yards long, has no traffic allowed on it and is as wide as your car is long - ok, maybe slightly wider. And, ironically, the rest of the world has to meet Wall Street's expectations! Still, it is definitely worth a visit. If you want to visit the trading floor, get there early for the tickets. The NYSE got started off in 1792 by a small group of brokers who did their stuff under a tree and by 1971 was incorporated as a company. In 1999, ICICI became the first Indian company to list on the NYSE. The NASDAQ started off in 1971 as the world's first electronic exchange. They don't need a physical building inside which brokers need to shout out bids but they have a physical presence in Times Square - a tall colorful building, the outside of which seems to be made up entirely of the video screen.
Wall St leads on to Battery Park from where the shuttle departs to the Statue of Liberty - a gift from the people of France in 1886 and the symbol of America. The Statue was the first many arriving immigrants saw of the United States and served as confirmation that they had reached the promised land. The aura and mystique of the statue last to this day. Early immigrants were first sent to Ellis Island where their paperwork was processed and then deposited on to the main land. It is about a 15 minute boat trip to Liberty Island on the ferry from Battery Park. The outer sheet is made of copper which chemically reacts with the air to deposit a rich green patina. We got there on a Thursday and were up and down the statue in no time. There are horror stories of people waiting for over 6 hours for exactly the same activity on weekends or holidays. So aim to see the Lady during the week if possible. Also, to get to the crown itself, you must walk ALL the way up. You can take an elevator to the 10th floor pedestal but you are stopped there. You can't take the elevator half-way up and hope to take the stairs the rest of the way up. Dumb policy but there it is. It is satisfying to be in the crown, but this is mostly 'for the record' : the view, such as it is through the grimy glass panes - is fairly ordinary from there. Another place to see on the way back to Battery Park is Ellis Island. There isn't much here in terms of architecture but plenty in terms of history. Graphs and models trace the history of immigration to the US and you realize that the philosophy hasn't really changed that much over the last 200 years - "first get in and then aim to keep the rest out". The views of the Manhattan skyline from Battery Park all the way to Liberty Island are spectacular.
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door."
-- Inscription on the Statue of Liberty
New York City is a great place to walk around. As in any big city, parking is outrageously expensive - when you can find it. Remember that cabbies rule : the utmost regard for pedestrians that is common in, say, suburban California, is conspicuously absent. The subway is another economical way of getting around. Though it was once an extremely high-crime area, it is now fairly cleaned up. The subway system is about a hundred years old and New Yorkers take great pride in it. Like John Rocker said, NYC is a truly multi-ethnic city and it is common to see people of most cultures in a few hours.
New York throbs with life in a way that other big American cities like Chicago or San Francisco do not. It is a high just to be around so many bustling people and the whole city seems alive. Keep an eye out for the buildings all around. Many of them have very interesting carvings/sculptures on them. The elevators to ride up the biggest boys ( Empire State and WTC ) are great fun. After a point they just show the decades. 40th floor, 50th floor, 60th floor... it takes a little getting used to that you are that high up.
There are tours to the top of the Empire State and the WTC and these offer dazzling views of the city. The thing to remember is that the WTC tours are from 9am to 9pm. We got there at 9:30 PM only to leave disappointed and come back another day. Are you the sort of person who likes to get on top of tall buildings and get a big bang out of watching miniature cabs, buildings and people? I am! The pictures show the Chrysler building, Macy's - the NYC store occupies a whole block - and UN building in the background on this side of the river.
NYC is also home to some of the most famous roads in the world, Wall St, 5th Avenue, Madison Avenue and Park Avenue. On 42nd Street is the Grand Central Terminal. This is one of the two train huge stations in NYC - the other being Penn Station. We were lucky to be there at 5pm on a Friday and - there really is no better term than this - a sea of humanity poured in. Grand Central is beautiful. It was completed in 1913 and has lovely architecture, carvings and chandeliers. The roof is painted with stars and the constellations of the zodiac. The more you look around, the more you see here. The clock in the picture sits above the information counter and is a famous one and the my sad effort shows the risks of taking longer exposures without a tripod. Equally bad is the picture of the outside facade of the terminus. I will go back to NYC if only to get a better picture of this lovely sculpture.
The city has so many museums that a portion of 5th Avenue is called Museum Mile. The Metropolitan Museum of Art - or MoMA - is a massive building with so many sections that it would easily take a week to even see all the rooms. We did what we could in 6 hours. Actual - and I mean ACTUAL - original paintings hang in here. There is no wall or glass screen between the painting and the visitor. This is enough to impress even the casual visitor but for someone with even the slightest interest in paintings, it is absolute must-see. The hair on the back of my neck stood when I realized I was standing millimeters from the same canvas that an Gogh once painted on. Entire structures from ancient Egypt have been reassembled here. There is even a small portion of a re-constructed Pyramid and you can enter the narrow chambers to look around. Thick glass protects the stones from human touch. I reached the nadir of my clumsiness when I banged into this glass and the sound seemed to echo throughout the entire museum and I had visions of being arrested as a 'mad' art-hater. Luckily the glass held and I got out without anyone noticing. (This was easy as I was only 2 inches tall when I came out.) The massive steps outside and the hundreds of people milling around there form some of my most fond memories of the visit. The other museum we attempted to visit, but could not as they were renovating the place, was the Guggenheim Museum - an unusual building that practically forces you to take pictures of it. It looks like a peeled orange and there are no real separations between floors. You ascend and descend along the spiral staircase that hugs the perimeter. If you think the NYC Guggenheim building is unusual, check out the Guggenheim in Bilbao. That museum moved Bilbao from being a dreary port in the strife-torn Basque region Spain to the country's top tourist destination in a matter of a few years.
The most surprising feature of Manhattan, for me, was Central Park. It seems so incongruous in the general setting of skyscrapers. In the middle of all the towering skyscrapers is this oasis - an 843 acre swath of green called Central Park. Within it are skating rinks, bridges, fountains, tree-lined avenues, a castle and so much more. Bethesda terrace and the fountain are in the very middle. There is an obelisk along the very edge of the park and is called Cleopatra's Needle which dates back to 1500 B.C.
New York by night is another experience altogether. Many buildings are lit from the sides better show their beauty. Times Square at night is a must-see. The big news organizations are all there - ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox. The earthquake at Bhuj, Gujarat struck the very night we were walking around and we saw it on the marquees.
