An Eclectic Mind

Well, one reason, anyway.

In the winter of 1994 (I believe), I was living in suburban New Jersey. I’d been in my house nearly ten years and had lived my entire 30+ year life in the New York City metro area. Although, like most people, I think snow is pretty, I never did like cold weather. And on one particular morning, I woke to 20 inches of the white stuff on my doorstep.

I couldn’t get the front “storm door” open.

If you live in Buffalo or Minnesota or Alaska or some other place where snow is a major part of your winter life, you might be thinking, “Twenty inches? Big deal.”

Well, it was a big deal to us. New York City rarely gets that kind of snowfall. And I decided that I’d had enough of it.

The following winter, I lived in Arizona for three months. The winter after that, I stayed in New Jersey, on the urging of my now husband. We had another tough winter. I vowed to move. The following winter, we had half our furniture put on a moving truck and shipped it out to Arizona. On January 1, I clearly remember shopping in the Peoria area wearing a t-shirt and jeans. No coat.

Today is a Prime Example

Not every winter in New York is brutally cold or snowy. But here’s today’s forecast for New York, courtesy of the National Weather Service:

Today…Snow. Areas of blowing snow. Total snow accumulation of 6 to 10 inches. Windy. Near steady temperature in the mid 20s. North winds 15 to 25 mph with gusts up to 40 mph. Chance of snow near 100 percent.

Tonight…Mostly cloudy. A slight chance of snow showers in the evening. Windy with lows around 14. Northwest winds 15 to 25 mph. Chance of snow 20 percent. Wind chill values as low as 2 below.

2°F below 0? That’s nothing. I remember mornings in New Jersey when the thermometer registered -7°F without a wind chill factor.

Is that not enough for you? Well, there’s more. There’s also a Hazardous Weather Outlook, Short Term Forecast, Special Weather Statement, and Winter Storm Warning. They all warn about snow, cold temperatures, and wind.

Contrast that with what I’m expecting in Wickenburg, northwest of Phoenix today:

Today…Partly sunny. Highs 86 to 91. East wind 5 to 10 mph in the morning…becoming south in the afternoon.

Tonight…Partly cloudy and warmer. Lows 54 to 64. Southwest wind 5 to 10 mph in the evening…becoming northwest around 5 mph after midnight.

We’ve got a Special Weather Statement, too. It warns us that due to a high pressure system, we’re likely to break record high temperatures of 90°F in Phoenix today.

All I know is that at 7:00 AM local time, we’ve got clear blue skies and a temperature climbing steadily through 48°F. Will we break a record here in Wickenburg? Probably not, but I’m thinking about wearing shorts while I do my errands.

Weather Changes Travel Plans

Of course, we do have some house guests staying with us. Mike’s mom and her friend. They’re in their 80s and not exactly what I’d call flexible travelers. They were supposed to go back to New York this morning. But yesterday, when we heard the forecast, we started working the phones. I could envision two possible outcomes if they didn’t change their travel plans:

• Waiting hours at Sky Harbor Airport for their delayed flight to depart, only to be told that it was cancelled. Mass confusion as they deal with getting new tickets for another flight, claiming their luggage, and arranging for a ride back to our house.
• Departing Sky Harbor Airport (probably late) and being forced to divert to Atlanta or Pittsburgh or some other inconvenient place, followed by mass confusion as they deal with making arrangements for the flight’s continuation, finding their luggage, getting transportation to a hotel, getting transportation back in the morning, re-checking their luggage, etc. This would be enough of a nightmare for me, a middle-aged, relatively fit person who never travels with more luggage than she can handle on her own. But for these two women, both of whom travel airports via wheelchair and have enough luggage to set up a home wherever they arrive, it would be impossible.

So we worked the phones. It took only two calls to USAirways to change their flight to the same flight on Tuesday. The sympathetic person who answered the second call made the change without an additional fee. When my mother-in-law wanted us to make sure she’d be sitting with her friend, my husband rolled his eyes and I said, “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” They have middle seats in Row 20.

Current Weather at JFK.
Can you say whiteout?

But at least they won’t be stuck at an airport somewhere, waiting for the storm in New York to subside.

We can only assume this was a good decision — at least for them. Their flight was scheduled to leave Phoenix at 10 AM and it’s too early to get flight status information. But there is a travel advisory to New York right now and I’m willing to bet that their flight, which was due to arrive in NYC at 4:47 PM, will be cancelled.

Back to Arizona

Going back to the main topic of conversation here: weather in New York vs. weather in Arizona. You might be thinking, “Well, if it might get up to 90°F today — in the winter — how hot does it get in the summer. The answer is brutally hot. Think 110°F +. Think frying eggs on pavement.

So I’ve apparently changed one near-extreme (I can’t consider New York’s winter weather a real extreme) for another extreme (Arizona’s summer weather is definitely extreme). What’s the benefit of that?

The main benefit is that with the money I saved from moving out of a really expensive place to live (the other reason I moved) and coming here, I’m able to get out of town for the summer. And that’s what I’ve been doing for the past few years.

Is there are perfect place to live? I’m starting to think there isn’t. But I will keep looking and report back if I find it.

Days in My Life Arizona, New Jersey, New York, travel, weather

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Not nearly as rare — or as dangerous — as you think.

Yesterday’s dramatic landing of an Airbus plane in the Hudson River between New York and New Jersey has put the topic of bird strikes on everyone’s mind. As usual, the media is spinning stories about it, apparently to generate the fear that sells newspapers, gets listeners, and keeps viewers glued to the television set.

Pilots — the people who know aviation a lot better than the average news reporter — also know a bit about bird strikes.

Bird Strikes are Not That Rare

The truth of the matter is that bird strikes aren’t nearly as rare as many people think. I can think of five bird strike incidents that touched my life:

• Years ago, on a Southwest Airlines flight taking off from Burbank, our plane flew through a flock of white birds. It was nighttime and I don’t know what the birds were — seagulls? — but I clearly saw them in the glow of the plane’s lights, flying past the wings as we climbed out. When we landed in Phoenix and I left the plane, I glanced through the open cockpit door and saw the blood on the outside of the windscreen. Bird strike.
• On my first day of work as a pilot at the Grand Canyon, one of the other pilots had a bird strike during a tour. The bird had passed through the lower cockpit bubble and landed in a bloody heap on the pilot’s lap. He flew back with the bird there and a very distraught front seat passenger beside him. The cockpit bubble needed replacement, of course.
• While waiting at the Grand Canyon for my charter passengers to complete an air tour with one of the helicopter operators there, the helicopter my passengers was on suffered a bird strike. The pilot calmly reported it as she flew in. When she landed, there was bird guts and blood at the top center of the helicopter’s bubble. She’d been lucky. The helicopter, an EC130, has a central intake for the turbine engine and the bird hadn’t been sucked in.
• On my very first rides gig with my R44 helicopter, I was taking a group of three passengers for an 8-minute tour around a mountain near Aguila, AZ when I heard a loud clang. Instruments okay, controls felt fine, passengers weren’t reacting. I didn’t know what it was until I landed. That’s when one of my ground crew pointed out the dent in my landing gear’s fairing. My first (and hopefully, only) bird strike had been a non-event for me, but likely a lot more serious for the bird. (Of course, I wasn’t very happy to get a dent on an aircraft only 11 hours old.
• When a friend of mine took me up in her Decathalon airplane for a little aerobatic demonstration, we hit a bird on takeoff. It went right into the engine at the base of the prop and we instantly smelled cooking bird. My friend climbed enough to circle back and land safefly at the airport. She shut down the engine and climbed out. I watched from the passenger seat as she pulled the remains of a relatively small bird out of the cooling fin area of the engine. After discarding the bird bits, she climbed back in, started up, and we took off again.

That’s five examples of bird strikes I had firsthand knowledge of. In three of those instances, I was on board an aircraft that struck one or more birds. So when people seem amazed that an airliner hit a bird or two, I’m not amazed at all.

According to Wikipedia’s Bird Strike entry:

The first reported bird strike was by Orville Wright in 1905, and according to their diaries Orville “…flew 4,751 meters in 4 minutes 45 seconds, four complete circles. Twice passed over fence into Beard’s cornfield. Chased flock of birds for two rounds and killed one which fell on top of the upper surface and after a time fell off when swinging a sharp curve.”

I’d venture to guess that it happens to at least one airliner every single day.

Bird Strikes Rarely Cause Crashes

The media would like you to think that bird strikes cause crashes. They can, of course — yesterday’s Airbus ditching proved that. They can even cause fiery crashes with deaths. The media wants you to be afraid — very afraid.

But as my above-listed examples also prove, bird strikes can be non-events, often without causing any damage at all to the aircraft.

So what’s an air traveler to do? Worry that his next flight might end with a swim in an icy river or a fireball death? Or stop worrying about it?

What do you think?

On a more personal note: I’m glad the pilot of US Airways Flight 1549 didn’t attempt a landing at Teterboro. My sister lives in an apartment building on the approach end of one of the runways there. A crash there wouldn’t have had a happy ending.

Flying airplanes, aviation, birds, FAA, helicopters, media, New Jersey, New York, news media

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Some photos of my Thanksgiving trip to New York and New Jersey.

Last week, I went to New York with my husband, Mike. We spent a few days in Manhattan, visiting our old stomping grounds, then headed to New Jersey to spend a few days at my brother’s house in Colonia (near Rahway). Along the way, we made a quick stop in Queens for an unremarkable Thanksgiving dinner at an Italian restaurant.

I brought two cameras with me: my Canon Powershot 500 and my relatively new Nikon D80. It was a good thing I brought 2 cameras. My recently repaired Canon crapped out on me again. So most of the photos were taken with the Nikon.

I just put the photos on my iMac and looked at them. I thought I’d share a few with readers. They may not be the best photos of New York and the vicinity, but I’d like to think they’re at least a little bit interesting.

The Flight

When you have 4+ hours to kill in coach on a Phoenix to Newark flight, you do run out of things to do. I killed some time playing with my new 10.5mm lens. Here’s a look out the window. I think we were over Kansas or maybe eastern Colorado at the time. See the checkerboards of the terrain?

If you’ve never flown across the country during the day, do it and make sure you get a window seat. If the weather is clear, you’ll get an education about the geography of the United States that no textbook can offer. I always sit by the window when I fly and I spend much of the flight time with my face right up against the Plexiglas.

Into Manhattan

After landing at the airport and getting a much-needed shoeshine in the terminal, we made our way to the rental car area and picked up our Avis rental car. Mike then drove us right into the city, by way of the Lincoln Tunnel. This photo was taken as we made our way across town toward Times Square. Okay, so it’s not the best image. But what do you expect? The camera was sitting on the dashboard and we were stopped at a light. You can see the shadowy figure of a pedestrian crossing the street — this was a long exposure.

The View from Our Room

Our tiny but comfortable room at the Sheraton Hotel and Towers on 52nd and 7th was on the 37th floor. From the big windows, we got a glimpse down into Times Square. I set up my tripod on the desk along the windowsill and captured this image as we settled down for our first night.

Did you know that the Sheraton we stayed at is the flagship Sheraton hotel? That’s what it said in the hotel services guide in the room. I do know that it was the nicest Sheraton I’d ever stayed at. Sheratons, in general, aren’t so good. I prefer Marriotts. I used to like Hiltons, until my multiple-week stay at the Mount Laurel Hilton in New Jersey. But that’s another story.

Wondering what that view looked like in daylight? Wonder no more. Here it is. Not quite as colorful or glamorous on a gray New York day. The buildings in the foreground are all office buildings. There was a very large conference room right across the street from our room; they had a big meeting in there the day we left.

Rockefeller Center

On Tuesday we did a lot of walking. That’s the best way to get around in New York. My only wish was that I’d brought thinner socks — my heavy cotton socks aggravated my 25-year-old corns. But that’s probably more information than you need, so I’ll stop there.

We went to Rockefeller Center first. This photo was taken inside the GE building (formerly the RCA Building), an Art Deco masterpiece on 6th Avenue. This particular photo was taken right after security told me I couldn’t set up my tripod. I was very disappointed. (I’m being polite here.) The color of the light is the actual color inside the building — very yellow.

We didn’t stick around for any more indoor shots. Instead, we went outside. I got a photo of the Promenade, but rather than show it here, I’ll show you the one I took that night. Keep reading.

Grand Central

It’s Grand Central Terminal, not Grand Central Station. Many people get that wrong. It doesn’t matter. It’s Grand Central and it’s a magnificent piece of architecture on 42nd Street at Park Avenue.

This photo shows the Concourse, taken with my 10.5mm lens from the steps up to one of the restaurants. No tripods here either, I’m afraid. Not without a permit. (Can you believe this crap?) So I set the camera down on the railing and used the self-timer to snap the picture. What I like about it — other than the outrageous curves — is the motion of the people down below.

The ceiling of Grand Central’s main concourse shows the constellations — cream colored stars with drawings of the constellation figures. Incredible. And the windows you can see at the far end are actually huge — about 8 stories tall. The horizontal lines across them are walkways where people in the office spaces above walk from one side of the building to the other.

Back in the mid 1980s, when I worked for the City of New York, I had a job on Madison at about 45th Street. Each day, I’d take the subway up to Grand Central and walk across this concourse from the lower-left of this photo to the middle right. There were underground corridors you could follow for blocks, keeping you out of the elements. One of the corridors was carpeted with multi-colored carpets at the time. They were doing a test. In those days, they used to judge how durable carpets were by putting them down in Grand Central and letting commuters walk all over them all day long.

The New York City Public Library

The New York City Public Library is a monument on Fifth Avenue at about 40th Street. People know it for the matched statues of reclining lions out front. But few tourists ever step inside to see how incredibly beautiful it is.

This photo is of the main entrance hall, taken from the north stairway. This is mid-day on a Tuesday. Not terribly busy. We’d walked through a Jack Kerouak exhibit downstairs before climbing up and wandering around the exhibits. Highly recommended. You can’t get more culture for less money anywhere in New York — it’s free.

And yes, I did get a few lion photos outside. But you don’t need to see them.

Out back, in Bryant Park, they’d set up a skating rink. This shot, taken with that funky 10.5mm lens again, shows the rink, the back of the library, and a few of New York’s skyscrapers, including the Empire State Building. There were craft vendors set up all around the rink for the holidays.

Back when I worked for the City, I had a job on 41st between 7th and 8th. Yep — right by Times Square. Once in a while, we used to walk up to Bryant Park with our lunch. It was summer and it was hot. The park was filled with druggies back in those days, but they didn’t bother us. The Stand Bookstore had a row of kiosks along 6th Avenue, filled with used books, and I’d occasionally pick up something to read. They tell me Bryant Park has been cleaned up. It certainly looked friendly that day.

Times Square

I’m convinced that the best way to take photos in a place as busy as Times Square is with a wide angle lens. Can’t get much wider than this. I know it looks funky, but it really does show a lot. And if your mind can take out weird curves — since Photoshop can’t seem to do it — you can get a real feel for what’s there.

Times Square used to be a real sleaze pit. Now it’s just a very dirty, very brightly lighted place where a lot of tourists come for reasons I can’t quite understand. They must be like moths attracted to the lights. The place is full of tourist junk shops, electronics places selling gray market goods, and big name retail establishments like the Virgin Megastore and the Hard Rock Cafe. They tell me Disney even has a place there, although I didn’t see it. The place is full — and I do mean full — of advertisements. Not the kind of place to come if you suffer from seizures brought on by flashing lights.

The above photo looks downtown. This one looks uptown. I’m standing at the divider between 7th Avenue and Broadway, between 44th and 45th Streets. I snapped quite a few shots while I was standing here. I like this one the best. The exposure isn’t very good, but that’s mostly because the light sucked on such a cloudy afternoon.

And yes, this is the wide angle lens again.

More to Come

That’s all for now. I’ll share the rest of the interesting shots another day. I’ve got a few night shots to show off and a bit of New Jersey wildlife. So do check in again.

And if you want to read more words about my trip, do check out “Impressions of New York: An Assault on the Senses.”

About the Photos, Travels with Maria New York, photography, travel

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A message from the right coast.

I’m in the New York area, celebrating Thanksgiving with family, so I won’t be blogging today. But I do want to take a moment to remind everyone why we’re eating turkey today: to give thanks.

Take a moment today and consider what you have to give thanks for. Whether it’s family or a good meal or a roof over your head or even something as simple as your health, be thankful for what you’ve got. And take a moment to consider those who aren’t quite as fortunate.

And, as always, my very best wishes to our men and women overseas. More than ever, I’m hoping for their speedy and safe return to their homes and loved ones.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Days in My Life, Deep Thoughts New York, Thanksgiving

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A former New Yorker sees the City through a tourist’s eyes.

I spent the first 36 years of my life in the New York City metro area, living in New Jersey, Long Island, and Queens, NY itself. I even worked in downtown Manhattan, near the financial district, for five years. I grew to know New York, to understand it and to make myself part of its rhythm. It made me strong and helped turn me into the zero-tolerance for bullshit person that I am today.

I left the New York area in the late 1990s in search of a more laid-back lifestyle, one where I could keep more of the money I earned, instead of spending it on property taxes and car insurance. I wanted warm winters and friendly people. I wanted space between my home and the next, privacy, quiet. I wound up in a small town in Arizona where, until recently, I’ve been very happy.

But Arizona is completely different from New York — like black is different from white or day is different from night. I didn’t realize just how different the two were until this week, when I returned as a tourist, and spent two days in midtown Manhattan. For the first time ever, I was able to see New York through the eyes of someone who didn’t know it quite so well — through the eyes of a tourist.

The Sound of New York

The first thing I noticed as we settled down for the night in our hotel room was the sound of the city. New York, you see, has a background noise, like a soundtrack. At its very base is a low rumble, like a low frequency hum. It’s the conglomeration of the movement of cars on city streets and the hum of climate control systems on rooftops and restaurant exhaust fans at street level. It includes subways rumbling under the streets and bus and truck engines and planes and the odd helicopter. Sometimes it includes the sound of the wind whistling down streets and around buildings. During the day, it includes voices: people in conversation as they walk the streets, whether it’s with a physical companion or the virtual companion on a cell phone.

The sound is punctuated, day and night, by other, louder sounds. Listen and you’ll hear them and often be able to identify them. There is, of course, the orchestra of car and truck horns. (It’s impossible for a New Yorker to drive for more than 15 minutes without using his car horn at least once and taxi drivers must use their horns at least three times per fare.) A bus engine revs, a heavy sheet of metal drops, a jackhammer breaks up a sidewalk. A truck backs up with a stead beep, beep, beep. A police car, ambulance, or fire truck — or sometimes all three together — speed to their destination, sirens wailing. A policeman blows his whistle, someone shouts. This time of year, Christmas music blares from speakers outside the windows of Saks, Lord & Taylor, and Macy’s.

To be fair, the sound does seem to calm a little at night, but the underlying rumble of noise is always there. The sound is the pulse of the City. If it were to stop, surely the City would be dead.

The sound is clearly audible to anyone who cares to listen — as long as that person has the experience of true silence to compare it to. I know true silence — the utter soundlessness of a still night atop a high desert mesa, a silence so complete you can hear your heart beat. That’s why the sound of the city is the first thing I noticed when we settled down for our first night here. Even 37 stories above the streets, closed in behind the thick glass of the hotel’s windows, we could still hear that sound. Open the window a crack and it fills the room.

The Lights & Sights of New York

The next thing I noticed was the brightness. True, our hotel is less than ten blocks from Times Square, but the brightness still surprised me. SImply stated: it doesn’t get dark here.

The light comes from the lights in building windows — office lights that are apparently never extinguished. It comes from the hundreds of television screens, many of which are larger than my two-story house, that display a never ending barrage of advertisements at anyone who glances at them. It comes from neon signs at street level or high atop skyscrapers: Ernst & Young, Kodak, Reuters, UBS, GE — these are just the few I see with a quick look out my window. The light comes from search lights that dance off buildings and pierce the sky, drawing attention to some new nightclub or the Christmas decorations on a posh shop. It comes from the Christmas decorations themselves: snowflakes twenty or thirty feet across, strings of lights wound around windows and trees and buildings, flashing lights forming wreaths and reindeer and Christmas trees. The scene pulsates with colored lights.

There may be streetlights — I don’t know; I didn’t notice them. They’re not needed here.

Dawn is so gradual here that it’s a non-event. The gray sky of night gets brighter and brighter until it becomes the gray sky of day. Only the clock can confirm that it’s daytime. But that’s just because it’s been cloudy since we arrived. I remember blue skies in New York and the shafts of sunlight between the buildings. Sadly, I think we’ll miss that sight on this visit.

And what does all this light reveal? Hundreds of buildings fifty or more stories tall with narrow, canyon-like streets in a grid pattern between them. Brick buildings a hundred years old standing proud beside steel and glass towers. Bright yellow taxicabs speeding down the avenues (with car horns blaring, of course), followed by lumbering, ad-wrapped buses. Thousands of pedestrians walking down sidewalks, gathering at street corners, ignoring traffic signals to cross when the time is right. People from every race and walk of life: white, black, asian, rich, poor.

At street level are shops showing off their inventories in bright, creative displays. In the tourist-trafficked areas, the merchandise spills out into the street with brightly colored signs and shop employees calling out bargains to lure the tourists in.

Around every corner is another surprise: a landmark building, a skating rink, a park, a farmer’s market, a holiday crafts market. The Public Library offers an exhibit of Jack Kerouac’s notebooks and his famous scroll, along with permanent displays of artworks and a real Guttenburg Bible (one of fewer than 200 made). There’s a fresh food market between corridors deep inside Grand Central Terminal. On Vanderbilt, there’s a public display of proposed designs for land development over the west side’s train yard — at least these developers understand the importance of open space park land. Step inside the lobby or study the facades of buildings on Sixth Avenue to see a WPA mural or art deco entrance or mosaic history. It’s impossible to be bored in a city like this.

At night the horse-drawn carriages come out to pick up tourists at Rockefeller Center and whisk them away to Central Park or Times Square or some other destination. The horses blend into traffic, stopping behind taxis at traffic lights, clomping along at their own pace while the cars and buses and trucks whirl around them. Stopped at a traffic light in front of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, a horse urinates on the city street. The carriage driver looks at the police officer standing nearby and says, “He’s overheating.” Everyone laughs.

The Smell of New York

New York can keep any sensitive nose awake and alive. From the sickly smell of steam rising from the street to the sweet smell of carmel roasted nuts in a vendor’s cart, it’s all there, good and bad. You can smell a Chinese restaurant or pizza parlor long before you reach it — if the breeze is blowing just right.

Walk down an avenue and the smells parade past your nose: flowers in a park, perfume from a shop front, food from a restaurant or vendor car. Things can be less pleasant on side streets, depending on whether it’s garbage day, but with cold weather, pedestrians are usually spared the worst of the smells. But come summer time, pray the sanitation workers don’t strike.

The Feel of New York

The feel of New York depends mostly on the season and weather. This visit is overcast and damp, with some light rain. It’s not windy or cold enough to be really cold — which is good, because I no longer own a winter coat. Instead, it’s what I’d consider typical late autumn.

But come in August during a heat wave and be prepared for the “Three H’s”: hazy, hot, and humid. I’ll take 100°F in Phoenix in June over an 80°/80% humidity day in New York. Or try January, when the temperatures dip below freezing and the wind is howling down the streets or avenues. As you walk leaned into the wind, you feel as if your nose is going to freeze off before you reach your destination.

The air, of course, is filled with a fine dirt that coats you, your clothes, your skin, your car, and anything else exposed to it. Wash your face after a day walking on the streets and you’ll see the grime on your washcloth. Its especially bad when you ride the subway. It isn’t a gritty dust like you’ll find in the desert. It’s real dirt: a mixture of exhaust residue and pollution and plain, old-fashioned filth.

The Taste of New York

I’ve saved the best for last. I told friends I planned to eat my way through New York. So far, we are.

Every kind of food is available here, probably within walking distance of our hotel. On Monday night, we had Spanish food at a tapas bar on 53rd Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues. Yesterday at lunch, we had Italian food at a restaurant overlooking the main concourse at Grand Central Terminal. Last night, we had Cuban food at a place on 52nd Street between Broadway and 8th Avenue. Today, for lunch, its dim sum in Chinatown followed up with Italian pastries from Little Italy. (I couldn’t resist buying a real New York black and white cookie at Grand Central yesterday; it was heaven.) Tonight, probably Rodizio at a place near my brother’s home in New Jersey.

We haven’t been picky about where we eat. The restaurants are all over the place. You can’t walk two blocks without finding some kind of interesting ethnic food. One glance in the window, to see how many people are inside, is enough to tell us whether it’s good. Last night’s Cuban restaurant, Victor’s Cafe, has been in business in the Theater District since 1963. A bad restaurant wouldn’t last that long in New York.

Or, as I pointed out to my husband, even if it’s bad, it has to be better than what we can get at home.

And sure, there’s the usual collection of chain restaurants: Applebees, Olive Garden, Hard Rock Cafe, McDonalds. But they’re all in the tourist areas — Times Square is full of them — and crowded with the same midwesterners who fill the same places in Arizona. Go figure.

What I’ve Learned

I’ve learned that I still have a love-hate relationship with New York. That it’s a nice place to visit, but I know I could never live there again.

I’ve learned that I could easily make myself go broke just by eating in New York. I’d also gain 10 pounds a week until I exploded. So it’s a good thing I don’t live here.

I’ve also learned that I’d like to come visit New York as a tourist more often. I may eat a lot here, but I also walk a lot. There’s just so much to see and do.

And that has to be good for something.

Travels with Maria food, New York, tourism, travel

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