My vacation in the US Part III: New York

The train ride to New York pretty much sucked. To be honest, the train ride itself was pretty good. The chairs are pretty comfy, and the first train (Denver - Chicago) had a nice lounge where you could just hang out and have a snack. As such, I prefer it compared to a plane, since it’s much easier to just get up and walk around (though the plane would only take a couple of hours instead of 2 days).

The bad part is that the schedule apparently never works. My first train was more than 2 hours late in arriving, and it was more than 4 hours late when we arrived in Chicago. I was planning to have dinner in Chicago (since I originally had 5.5 hours till my next train), but now I just had time to grab a quick burger at McDonald’s before going to the gate.

I was willing to give Amtrak another chance though. If the ride from Chicago to NYC went well, I’d be willing to forgive that first delay. But this time, the train would arrive 2.5 hours late in NYC. It’s not so much the delay itself that annoyed me than the fact that the staff doesn’t give you proper information. In the first train, they told us at one point that we would arrive in Chicago around 7 pm, and it turned out to be 8:15 pm. And in the second train, when someone asked how much longer it would take, the staff said one more hour. It turned out to be 2.5 hours, and in both cases, we didn’t experience any extra delay as far as I could tell (since we didn’t make any extra stops). Even so, nobody bothered to inform the passengers of the correct time afterwards. I’m just hugely disappointed at the level of service. Next time, I'll probably just take the plane.

Thanks to the delay, I had trouble meeting up with HyeWon as well. Her phone died when I messaged her about the delay, and she went to the wrong station at first. But we finally managed to meet up at 10pm (the original planning was 7pm). We had Japanese for dinner, and afterwards, she brought me to my hotel. Next time, I’m definitely getting a more expensive hotel. The hotel smelled like piss when I first entered, and I had to share the bathroom with the entire floor. And I saw a mouse (or rat?) scurrying around when I was just getting ready to leave. Good thing I didn't see it during my first day, or I’d have felt more uncomfortable sleeping there.

Still, the location was good. It was a 2 minute walk to the bus stop, and the Port Authority bus station in Manhattan was just a ten minute bus ride away. From there, it’s just another 2 minute walk to Broadway/Times Square, and a lot of different subway lines also run from Port Authority, so travelling around is easy.

Anyway, HyeWon was busy with a bunch of other stuff (she also just bought a new house), so we only met up for a couple of hours. She showed me around Times Square, and afterward we walked on the Brooklyn Bridge and visited Chinatown and Little Italy.

I was pretty disappointed in Chinatown. I expected to see a lot of typical Chinese stores (i.e. grocery stores, cake shops, herb shops and restaurants), but instead most shops there sold stuff like jewellery, perfume, handbags as well a bunch of “I love NY” t-shirts. Every few minutes or so, someone would ask you if you’re interested in buying anything, and I couldn’t even understand what they were saying, or even in which language (I assume English, since they were mainly directed at HyeWon). And of course, there were lots of people selling bootleg DVD’s. If anything, I think it just reinforces the stereotypes Americans may have for Chinese people. It’s such a shame that there weren’t more typical Chinese stuff there. Still, I haven’t walked through whole Chinatown; it might be that only the main street was like this, and that the outskirts are better.

After that I spent a couple of hours at Central Park, which was huge. It would probably take a whole day if you want to walk around the whole park. After that, I went to Battery Park, where you could take the ferry to Ellis Island and Liberty Island. Only problem was, I got there at 5pm, and the last ferry departs around 4:30pm, so I couldn’t get to Liberty Island, which was the reason for going there. I spent some time walking around the park, and at night I walked around Manhattan a little bit more, and had dinner in Little Italy.

The next day, I went to Battery Park again, and this time I was able to take the ferry. I didn’t get off the ferry at Liberty Island, since I was on a tight schedule, so I didn’t see the Statue up close. I wasn’t able to go into the Statue anyway. You have to make reservations beforehand via phone or internet, which was a safety measure since 9-11 according to the lady at the ticket counter.

After that, I walked to Wall Street and the World Trade Centre site, both of which were pretty close to Battery Park. There wasn’t really much to see at the WTC site. They are starting to rebuild again, and the building site was naturally closed to the public. There were people there selling photo albums, where you can see the planes fly into the Twin Towers picture by picture, which seem a bit ghoulish to me. Anyway, there was a sign there urging tourists not to buy anything.

After that, I did some souvenir shopping, and visited the Toy ‘R’ Us and Virgin stores before I headed back to the hotel again.

That concludes my 2 day stay in New York, and I would fly to Chicago the next day.


High Point:Central Park
Low Point: The hotel…