Expedition in The City

Saturday, September 21st.

Come Saturday we were ready to venture back into the city on our own. Bearing in mind our downtown driving adventure a couple of days earlier, though, we decided to make our way down there with the aid of public transportation. So we drove the van across the Hudson River and down to the Beacon train station. To our delight we found that Saturday brought free and ample parking at the train station and all day off-peak fares on the train. The ride down to the city took an hour and a half, but since the tracks wound their way right along the Hudson River all the way the ride was beautiful.

We arrived right in the heart of Grand Central Station, up around 42nd street. We wanted to head for SoHo and Greenwich Village, some 40 blocks downtown. We had different ideas of how to get there, so we split up and agreed to meet up at Houston St (for some odd reason pronounced "Howston St" in New York...) and 3rd Avenue and hour and a half later. Jens walked the entire 40 blocks to see what adventures he could find along the way. Dan walked a few blocks east to pay a visit to the United Nations building on the eastern coast of Manhattan. He then took the Subway south to Houston St and met up with Jens as planned.

Reunited we headed back uptown to the outdoor flea market on 10th street that Jens had spotted on the way down, stopping along the way to check out what was playing at CBGB's, the legendary punk-rock venue on Bowery St.

The vendors on 10th street gladly took our money, in exchange for used cd's, shoes, clothing -- and a body board! As one might imagine people carrying surfboards around downtown NY are a fairly rare sight... So there were a few people that took it upon themselves to inform us that we were in fact pretty far from the sea, in case we hadn't noticed :) But according to one store clerk there are actually people that surf out of Brooklyn Beach.

After a late afternoon lunch we split up again. Jens was weighed down considerably by his newly acquired possesions, and since New York is apparently completely void of luggage storage lockers (increased security precautions once again...) he decided to take the train back "home" to Beacon Station. Dan decided to stick around the city for a few more hours. He took the Subway back down to Houston St and from there headed in the general direction of the Brooklyn Bridge, intending to cross it by foot and catch an early evening view of the city skyline.

This walk took him through Little Italy, though, and all of a sudden he found himself in the midst of the bustling carnival atmosphere on Mulberry St where all the Italians were celebrating the yearly week-long Feast of San Genaro! The crawling crowd of people were lured and catered to by booths all along the street selling every kind of Italian delicacy imaginable.

A police line blocked off the end of Mulberry St, and right on the other side of it was Chinatown. Crossing the line was like entering a time warp. From the bustling Italian carnival in Little Italy all it took was a single footstep to be immersed in a world where all signs were printed in Chinese and where everyone on the streets were of Asian descent and spoke an entirely foreign language among each other.

New York really is a world of its own. It's a geographically small world, but it spans broadly.