Ah, the last post, a bit belated. now onto college.

Tuesday
All of Tuesday was devoted to dithering around in NYC. The day marked two first: the first time that I ever rode a train other than the St. Louis zoo train, and the first time that I saw rain since early July. Both were welcomed with open arms. I love rainy days in the summer…they are so much moodier and deeper than the same old sunshine and cloudless skies.

We started off the day with Dunkin Donuts. (Didn’t I say that it was the Starbucks of New Haven?)

On the train I continued feeding my addiction to Sudoku and wrote a little bit in lieu of quiet time. The round-trip train-ride cost less than 30 bucks, which is pretty darn good considering that we were stuck on the Brooklyn bridge by car for nearly two hours when we drove from NYC to New Haven. Train transit is so much better and not stressful!

When we stepped out of Grand Central Station into the New York City madness we were on sensory overload. I had no idea where to go, what to look at, what smells to avoid, what sounds to pay attention to. Those first few minutes of New York City buzz knock the wind out of your senses in a way that is akin to an adrenaline rush while sky diving. It’s absolutely amazing, those first few minutes. (Interestingly enough, my photographs of the initial NYC-shock are poorly framed with no particular focal point. Funny how I couldn’t produce good, focused, work, eh? I was trying to capture everything at once which is impossible).

I don’t remember minute details from the trip, like which streets and avenues we were on at which times. (Colleen was the navigator, anyways). What I can recall isn’t a mosaic, but more like wisps of blurred paint, sort of like when you are driving on the road during a storm and the wet windshield blurs all of the streetlights and colors. I can recall the honking horns, the wind hitting the buildings, the chatter of people, the sound of feet hitting the ground, the Doppler effect in action, the vivid advertisements, that distinct NYC smell of sewers and people and infrastructures. It’s so intense. I love it.

We spent the first couple of hours shopping. Colleen bought some classy green shoes while I was preoccupied with feeling very much out of place in my green shirt and tennis shoes, wishing I had more style and wondering how on earth NYC girls look so good. We hit Joe’s favorite store (har har) H&M for nearly an hour. Colleen and I bought matching outfits (Mom would be happy that we are carrying on her tradition of dressing us the same) and chic accessories.

Lunch was at the world-famous Carnegie Deli, one of the best delis in the nation. The food was amazing…we dined on pickles, Jewish potato pancakes, and a mammoth BLT. I have no idea how much bacon I consumed. It might have been a whole baby pig.

Mid-afternoon brought us to about eight shoe stores. I dragged Colleen to every shoe store on Lexington Avenue in search of comfy Puma-ish shoelace-less tennis shoes. I finally found some AWESOME ones at Naturalizer, and my afternoon mission was fulfilled.

We took a break below this cool huge topless gazebo thing sipping iced coffee from Starbucks and talking to Joe and Beth on our cell phones. A very interesting Starbucks photoshoot occurred. See facebook.com for more information.



Early evening brought us through Central Park. I took some pictures of Swedish boys who didn’t speak much English and targeted unsuspecting tourists. I guess I’m pretty obvious with my camera glued to my face, shouting bonehead things like, “Isn’t it cool to see skyscrapers juxtaposed with green trees?” Joe targets pregnant women and mothers with kids when he wants someone to take his picture. Great.

The Zuul building was Colleen’s favorite part of the trip, I can just tell. She has like ten pictures on her camera,
and eight of them are of the Zuul building. It was pretty exciting, I admit, trekking through Central Park towards 65th street in order to behold Dana Barret’s apartment (aka the Zuul building) that was the site of the Ghostbusters movie. You can’t miss it, because it’s next to that beautiful church that the Pillsbury Doughboy squashed.

At twilight we took the subway down to 14th street at Greenwich Village and Washington Square. The area was completely different from the buzz of midtown…shorter apartment complexes replaced skyscrapers, normally-dressed people replaced fashion models, road signs replaced advertisements, and eclectic shops like “Tu Tu” and “Gatsby’s Restaurant” replaced Bloomingdales and the Hard Rock Café. Men were playing chess on the street, children were riding bikes through fountains, men were walking dogs. It was almost normal. Then you remember you are in NYC…

We dined at Little Italy for dinner and grabbed some gelato from a pastry store for dessert. We did some final shopping in Chinatown before taking the Subway back to Grand Central and the train back to New Haven. We arrived home at 12:30, exhausted and with sore feet from a long, fulfilling day.