The Roofs Scrape the Sky

I had mixed expectations last week before heading to New York City for the first time. The city has a certain reputation, that of a good place to visit for a short time knowing that you'll soon return to a quieter, greener, less pungent reality. But I was traveling with two people who had been before and had fallen hard for its' bright lights. I was ready for anything!

The best surprises:

• The Subway - Cleaner than imagined. A couple of the stations we visited were gross and I certainly would never use a public restroom in any subway station but overall the subways were decent.
• The People – All of the people we interacted with were polite and cordial. Either they are naturally great people or their hospitality training was top notch (if I’m honest we almost exclusively interacted with individuals in the service industry).
• The Smell – The smell was better than expected. Jokes are often bandied about that seem to indicate that the city smells exclusively of garbage (it is everywhere) and urine (in reality we only witnessed one instance of public urination) and that did not seem to be the case.

No surprise:

• The People – People are everywhere. We spent most of our time in heavy tourist traffic areas and literally the sea of people never subsides. Crossing the street is like going into battle: a wave of people on opposite sides of the street colliding in the middle. Be nimble, be quick or risk being swept back to your side. 
• The Noise – It is always noisy. The honking, sirens and other traffic sounds that you hear carefully edited in film and TV is an understatement. Why honk at someone ahead of you who is stopped to allow pedestrians to cross the street? No answer? Yeah, me neither.
• The Advertising – Every space is a space for an advertisement. It may be a large LED or a small sign in the subway, don’t waste space. Manahattan cannot grow out, only up, so use the space you have to get the people (there are just a few million of them hanging around) to buy your wares.

To paraphrase Daddy Warbucks: it’s big, it’s loud, it’s tough, but no other town in the whole forty eight can compare. The High Line was great, Kellogg’s NYC was a great place for this proclaimed cereal lover to relax and get away from the crowd (did I mention the sea of people?) and when I go back I will devote more than a couple of hours to The Metroplitan Museum of Art. It crowds, it cramps but it's still the champ. Why not, it's NYC.