New York City Day 1: Settling In
As a fervent believer in the "work hard, play hard" philosophy, I decided rather spur of the moment last month that it was time to take another trip as January was shaping up to be quite a busy month. Well, after making it through January, here I am in New York City! I awoke this morning at the lovely hour of 4 a.m. to catch my flight and in an unheard of occurrence actually arrived early. As Dad's plane didn't land for another couple hours, I was able to catch up on some work before we hit the town.
We took the train from Newark into Manhattan which was cool in theory (I'm all for public transit) but slowly rattled and shook through the pitch darkness under the river; an incredibly claustrophobic experience. Because we had arrived so early, we couldn't check in to our hotel yet, so of course we killed time eating lunch. Nothing spectacular, just a deli attached to our hotel, but in our hunger it got the job done. Afterwards, we decided to walk around for a while just to explore heretofore unexplored streets and walked straight towards the Empire State Building. As we walked, we chatted about traveling, food and fashion, noting that in a city such as NYC it would be hard to stick out because no matter what you do or wear, people are too busy to look at you. But, ever the problem solver, Dad found a way: "Finally, a way to stick out in a sea of 7 million people, birkenstocks!"
