August 19, 2005 6:32 PM
Our trip to New York
Here’s the long-awaited account of Tripp’s and my trip to New York. It’s long. You might want to get a cup of coffee. . . .
First let me say that New York is absolutely fantastic - a great place to take a vacation and so much warmer, richer and engaging than I ever could have imagined.
In fact, I would recommend that every homeschool family consider New York as an educational opportunity right up there with Washington D.C. (even though I am proud to consider myself a semi-native and love all D.C. has to offer).
But let me back up a minute to set the stage for the trip we took in July and which I’m only now finding time to write about.
What you need to know is that Tripp and I have never taken a vacation away from our kids, except for a weekend in 1987 when we were on the brink of divorce (though I hadn't told Tripp) and as a last ditch effort to save our marriage dragged him to a Weekend to Remember marriage conference in San Francisco. Those of you who've heard the rest of the story know it was a pretty life-changing event.
So when I started planning a surprise trip to New York for the two of us, I wasn't sure what we might be in for. First of all, there were all the nagging questions we're supposed to be troubled with - stuff like How will it feel and will we be able to relate without the kids around? As much as everyone acts like this is going to be a problem if you haven't had a weekly date night all your married life, I found it wasn't at all. It was just like we were way back when - a little fussing here and there (over important things like which stop to get off the bus :) - but mostly the incredibly comfortable feeling of being with someone who gets excited about the same things I do.
I'll tell you what (a little Virginia jargon): I have no intention of letting another 18 years go by without the two of us going away by ourselves. Of course, it made sense not to leave the kids when our family was growing. But now it's shrinking. And I'm thinking Tripp and I can make some beautiful memories of our own together, even if we don't look so great in our bathing suits anymore.
We drove to New York - it took about six hours - and it seemed amazing to zip through the Lincoln Tunnel and then just a couple miles through streets crowded with taxis and bicycle messengers and very few civilian cars like ours and pull right up in front of our teensy hotel, the Amsterdam Court Hotel, which is what they call a "boutique hotel" - one of hundreds converted from small office buildings with a small number of rooms and a very personal atmosphere.
The first thing that's so surprising about Manhattan (that’s the island without the surrounding boroughs – Brooklyn, the Bronx, etc) is how small it is - only 22 square miles. Our hotel was in the heart of the Theater District, but no matter where you are in New York you're close to everything. Just amazing how much is packed into such a tiny place.
But that's the second thing that's so surprising - how real estate isn't about lot size or acreage, but small spaces stacked on top of each other.
Our room was about 10x10 feet. 
No kidding. If Tripp was walking around the bed one way and I was walking the other, one of us would have to back up to let the other one by. And this wasn't a cheap hotel at all. That's just how precious space is in New York. But they tend to make up for it with cozy beds and top quality linens.
Besides, we'd be spending very little time in our room. Up at and out by 8AM, we started each morning on the top of a double-decker bus. What fun! Any skepticism I had about such tours being hokey was quickly laid to rest by the tour guides, who were brimming over with information - like which celebrities lived in which West Side condominiums and how much they paid, the spot where John Lennon was killed, the playground where West Side Story was shot, the hotel Kruschev and Castro were staying in when their first fateful meeting occurred – all delivered rapid fire and with deadpan humor.
Here are some comments I jotted down from our first tour guide, who was a third generation New Yorker - an East Side kid who brought home a West Side wife to raise the fourth generation on the same blocks, in the same schools he'd gone to himself. (Another surprise: how many native New Yorkers never stray.)
Manhattan was the Indian name and means “island of many hills.”.Our first tour went uptown – along the western side of Central Park, where people like Dustin Hoffman, Carly Simon, and Mia Farrow live. Then up into Harlem, which is now exceedingly multicultural and boasts more churches per square inch than any place I’ve ever seen. At Mount Olivet Church I spotted this sign: “It’s more than a symbol. It’s a solution.”Off-Broadway isn’t a location, but a size – indicating a theater with less than 500 seats.
New York produces 17,000 tons of garbage a day – picked up by 2100 garbage trucks.
Eight million people live in Manhattan, but during the day the population shoots up to 29 million, which is 227,000/square mile.
Uptown residential real estate runs $6-7,000 per square foot.
The 21 gun salute originated as the sum of the digits in 1776.
Engraved on Grant’s tomb: Let Us Have Peace
“On the left is the Starbucks for this block,” our guide noted wryly now and then. And it was true – in the busiest parts of town there was a Starbucks on every corner.
“How many in all?” I asked.
“One hundred seventeen. And 109 McDonalds,” he said. And that was just the 22 square miles of Manhattan.
By then we were driving back along the East Side of Central Park where all the museums are, ending up back in Times Square.
Times Square is a complete assault on your senses:
The next morning’s tour took us downtown. We got off at the Empire State Building, and since it was early in the morning, it only took us half an hour or so to clear all the checkpoints and take what felt like the fastest elevator in the world to the 83rd floor – made famous to people who’ve never been to New York in Sleepless in Seattle.
At first Tripp didn’t want to get the audio tour, but by then I’d learned it was best not to shrug something off as being too “touristy” and he listened to me. Good thing – it was a fantastic learning experience with a gravelly-voiced native New Yorker named “Tony” with a lot of insights not only into the building, but into the heart of New York itself, which I’ll pick up on at the end of this little travel journal.
Did you know that in building skyscrapers, the powers-that-be figure their potential human loss at one man per floor? At 92 floors, the Empire State Building surprised everyone: during its construction, only five lives were lost.
It’s an amazing building. So solid – built, like all of Manhattan on bedrock – that at the top it sways less than a quarter inch even in the most intense winds. For someone who lived in San Francisco or thereabouts for 30 years – where everything is built on landfill and fashioned to sway to withstand earthquakes – you could just feel the solidity of it down to your bones.
Around the stone wall were pictograms of what you were looking at. This one was so poignant:
Here are shots of the view. So different from D.C. where nothing can be built higher than the Washington Monument – about 12 stories (bet you didn’t know that!) I especially wanted to show the rooftop gardens, little oases of rest and relaxation people had created far above the hurly-burly below.
Back in the lobby, when I saw a couple taking pictures of each other and offered to take one of them both, they took one of Tripp and me in return. It didn’t matter that they were gay and we were straight – for the moment we were just four awestruck tourists with real lives and agendas on hold.
It was nice being somewhere where no one knew us. That week it was so hot all we could do was surrender to the heat, resign ourselves to sweating all day except for brief forays into Starbucks, and – for me – accept the frazzled state of my hair which is growing out very ungracefully.
We caught the next double decker headed for Greenwich Village, Soho, and Battery Park. Along the way, we had to duck traffic signals and tree branches. Actually, I was amazed by the lush greenery in NYC. It may have been because we were perched up high above the sidewalks, but I wasn’t expecting to see so many trees. And they were so robust in spite of the urban setting – the kind of thing which always reminds me how powerful a force life is – itself a reminder of God’s mighty love for his creation.
Then there was the ferry to the Statue of Liberty, which reminded me of the Larkspur Ferry in Marin County – but only because of the size and the feeling. Other than that, it’s way different: you look back over your shoulder at the most magnificent cityscape ever – with a lump in your throat remembering the World Trade Center’s Two Towers
– and forward at the incredibly majestic Statue of Liberty:
Sailing ’round her, I felt tears springing up as I thought how it must have felt to be in one of the boatloads of “huddled masses” after weeks of horrid sights and smells and sickness and death to suddenly catch sight of the symbol of all they had come here for.
What a privilege to walk around the grounds and see her up close and personal – plus another very absorbing audio tour. Unfortunately, I didn’t know that if you apply the day before you can go inside the Statue herself – remember that if you go.
Again we traded shots with anyone we could get our hands on, including a Park Ranger:
But you won’t see too many of them here because of – well, remember the sweat and frazzled hair issue? I have my pride. . . .
At night we went to see Broadway shows, which I thought would be the highlight of the trip. But they weren’t at all. Sad to say, there’s nothing meaty or meaningful like Les Miserables or Evita on Broadway now. The shows we saw were like cotton candy that melts in your mouth leaving you wondering if there was really ever anything there at all. I never liked cotton candy. I don’t like stupid laughs or coarseness. And I hate that each show had to inject some anti-Bush laugh line as though – wink, wink - anyone with an inclination to see a Broadway show must be refined and cultured enough to agree that our Commander-in-Chief is an idiot.
To me the idiots were the people who shelled out big bucks for tickets, then showed up in these indescribably beautiful theaters in shorts, tank tops and flip-flops. I dunno. There’s something to be said for dressing up once in a while – it does add to the experience.
Though the Broadway shows were simply not enough to ever lure me there again - I’d wait to see them on tour or in local theaters where I live – I’d go back to New York in a heartbeat, and I know Tripp would too. There are the art museums and Ellis Island and the other places we didn’t have time to see. There are the neighborhoods I’d like to get out of the double decker bus and poke around in. And there’s an unexpected depth to New York, something that grabs you and doesn’t let go.
New York is unique.
As the ESB guide “Tony” pointed out, other U. S. Settlements were founded by religious groups seeking freedom. Not so New York, which was founded by the Dutch Mercantile Company as a profit-making venture (actually so was Jamestown, Virginia – but unlike New York which grew and prospered, Jamestown disappeared.)
Anyway that got me thinking that explained a lot about how New York is – so sensational and unrestrained and hedonistic. But it is also rich in culture and education (so many museums and colleges!) and in natural beauty – Central Park is so beyond what I imagined.
That made New Yorker’s pride in their city more understandable to me. As “Tony” pointed out, DC has the history of our country in terms of larger-than-life events and documents, but New York – for the longest time the first place experienced by immigrant groups – holds the history of the people: their assimilation into and their impact on their chosen land.
The term “melting pot” - which I learned as a little girl in grade school – became irresistibly real in New York – as though the history of all those groups throbbed through the city’s veins creating a rhythm you’d find nowhere lese on earth. Coming from Irish and Italian stock myself, I was reminded of the price my ancestors paid – facing prejudice and poverty to make a new start. I just couldn’t help but feel the excitement of all those who had come there to provide a better life for their families and who were given all they needed to succeed – individual economic freedom.
And I’m just one of millions whose families streamed through that small portal into this great country. After spending even a little time there, I’m thinking that while New York can not claim to be the heart of America, it certainly may be its soul.
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Comments
Sounds like a wonderful time. My husband was stationed in NY when he was in the Army, and he says he would love to go back. We are planning on taking a trip sometime in the future, when our kids are a little older, and I can't wait! (For the trip, not the kids getting older.) Glad you had such a nice experience.
Posted by: Rachel | August 19, 2005 10:05 PM
I look forward to going to NYC again some day. Last time, I was in college and it was February or March, cold and dreary.
Posted by: Mel | August 21, 2005 1:16 AM
Barbara,
Thank you so much for sharing the highlights of your trip. I felt like I got a little vacation myself, there.
I have only been through/around NYC on a freeway, as a child. I have never had a desire to go back. I like space, nature. However, you make it a little tempting.
Posted by: Julana | August 21, 2005 9:39 PM
What a wonderful experience!
I told my husband about the 21 gun salute info from your tour guide and he went a-Googlin'. He found this at snopes (http://www.snopes.com/military/21gun.htm) and
this from the Army's website (http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/faq/salute.htm).
Barbara's reply: OOOOPS! I should know better than to repeat something without checking it out - guess I forgot to take off my tourist hat and put on my thinking cap. Thanks, Mr. and Mrs. S
Posted by: mrs.s. | August 23, 2005 9:52 PM
I would have taken the tour guide's word for it, too. Just reading your post taught me a lot I didn't know but will retain about NYC. Thanks again for sharing.
Posted by: mrs.s. | August 24, 2005 1:35 PM
