The Great Thanksgiving Adventure
Last week, I took Thursday and Friday off from work and headed to New York City for a Thanksgiving weekend with Uncle Peter, Aunt Dede, Cornelia (younger cousin), and some extended family. Some highlights:
Wednesday: I don’t fit very well in Greyhound buses, even when they’re only half-full. I also apparently can’t nap on buses. I did, however, enjoy an awesome cab ride from Port Authority across the Brooklyn Bridge to the apartment in Park Slope. It was a perfect autumn/winter evening and the cityscape was beautiful.
Thursday: Happy Thanksgiving! The Silsbees were hosting this year, so we spent the morning getting ready for the great feast. And great it was: tons of delicious food and the three Kavanagh sisters to hang out with. We had a lot of fun catching up, sharing stories, and playing Apples to Apples. Very relaxed day of friends and family.
Friday: Some ex-neighbors of the Silsbees came over in the morning, and we went on a really nice walk through Prospect Park. (I somehow found myself on Brooke piggyback duty, although I didn’t mind too much… she was like a scarf and a space heater rolled into one.) After a couple of days of family without much urban exploration, I was getting antsy, so my aunt and I headed over to Century 21 to enjoy any lingering Black Friday opportunities. I found an awesome wool pea coat and a nice scarf to go with it, so I finally have a real winter coat! It only took four years.
Saturday: The day of the big city adventure. Uncle Peter and I started the day by walking a few blocks to the Superhero Supply Store. I watched the accompanying TED talk (highly recommended viewing!) last year and was eager to get fitted for a cape or pick up some anti-gravity boots. Unfortunately, we arrived at 11:30AM and the store doesn’t open until noon on Saturdays (thwarted by my arch-nemesis, Time, again!), so we decided to save it for next time and head into the city.
This involved a trip on the NYC subway, which was surprisingly clean and efficient. I was also impressed by the length of the trains. In Boston, the T is typically 3-5 cars, but the Metro trains just went on and on forever. The Metro tracks also go on and on forever. I’d never rode the subway for 45 minutes straight before… I’m not even sure if you could do that in Boston without changing cars. (I liked this sign… can you figure out why?)
We emerged in lower Manhattan and walked up through the financial district, stopping briefly at Ground Zero Then we rode the Metro up to Times Square. I’d been to NYC a couple of times before this trip, but I don’t remember ever walking through Times Square. It was awesome in the truest sense of the word, just a larger-than-life experience. After rocking out at Rudy’s Music (video), we met up with Dede and Cornelia at Sam Ash and rocked out some more. Then we headed over to Rockefeller Center to grab some lunch and watch people wipe out on the ice (quite entertaining) before walking to Central Park, visiting a few stores along the way.
I don’t think I had ever been to Central Park either, and I’m glad I had a chance to see at least the lower corner of it. Cornelia and I had fun scampering up the rocks, and we all enjoyed walking around and checking out the ice skaters. It was getting cold and everyone was hungry, though, so we headed back to Brooklyn for some pizza. They tried to take me to some place down by the pier, but after waiting in line for 30 minutes and going nowhere, we decided to try elsewhere. I’m so glad we tried, though, because it gave me a chance to take one of my favorite pictures of the trip.
Sunday: Slept late, headed back to Port Authority to get onto another Greyhound bus. This one was full of Boston kids, but I sat up in the front and enjoyed the extra 4 inches of legroom that came with it. There was some nasty traffic coming back into Boston, but I made it home in one piece and even had a little bit of time to get ready for the week. Mission accomplished!
Before this past weekend, I imagined New York City as a monstrous, intimidating, expensive urban sprawl. Having spent a few days there, especially having lived in Boston for 4+ years, my views of NYC have changed a little bit: it’s still a monstrous, intimidating, expensive urban sprawl, but I understand the appeal of it. Literally everything you could ever want (except the Great Barrier Reef) is a subway/cab ride away, and it’s not like you have to deal with the entire city every day. You just find a neighborhood that you like, settle in, and get into the routine of life, just like you would anywhere else. The people were even really friendly, which was a pleasant surprise. I didn’t decide to apply to Columbia based on my trip, but I’d be happy to go back again 