Coloradoan in New York

I spent the week straddling Christmas in New Jersey visiting my extended family; I saw 'em all. Even with all that visiting, this trip was a little different; I took some time for myself and went into New York City (for all of the years I've been going to New Jersey, I've been to NYC four times, and three of those times had nothing to do with family!)

Despite the odds stacked against us, and with the help of mobile phone technology, my cousin Mark and I met outside the Borders 'round the corner from Penn Station. As I started discuss the day's itinerary, he whipped out a small map book and I thought, I'm all set, he knows what he's doing (foreshadowing, dear reader, foreshadowing). First stop: Rockefeller Center.

We decide to walk from Penn Station (near abouts 7th St.) to Rockefeller Center at 50-something street -- about 2.5 miles. What would normally take 'not so much time' took 'lots of time' thanks to the myriad people between us and our destination. If I was to reframe this experience (as Foster and Hicks suggest in their book, How we choose to be happy: the 9 choices of extremely happy people), the walk provided opportunity for extensive agility training with complementary personal defense instruction.

As is fitting when one is near it, we gawked at the Rockefeller Center tree; whispered our amazement inside St. Patrick's Cathedral; and attempted to peruse Macy's store windows, but gave up (masses of people + hungry Jen = no Macy's windows). For lunch, I decided we'd go to Greenwich Village since I'd never been. Easy, right? Just hop on the subway and head...

Uptown. Turns out my confidence in Mark's navigational ability was a bit overblown; he had correctly navigated us to the subway, but to the uptown instead of downtown platform. We managed the subway direction mix-up, and the subsequent walking direction mix-up, reasonably despite our hunger and got to Corner Bistro for great beer and l'inner (lunch + dinner).

From there, we wandered for an hour in search of a subway station. In our travels we found Central Park, squirrels, and a tourist taking pictures of squirrels. Of all the interesting things the city provides for photographic exercise! Squirrels! Ridiculous.

Arrived at the Mahayana Buddhist Temple in Chinatown just as the temple was closing, although the staff graciously allowed us to wander about the gift shop. Turns out this temple abuts the fly-by-night operation (it's actually a well-established company, but after one of the buses caught on fire on the interstate it lost esteem in my mind, which is reflected in my careful wording) of the Fung Wah bus company, which I had had the pleasure of riding from Boston to New York and back for one of the aforementioned non-familial excursions. Good memories.

From takeoff to landing and back again, the entire trip east was a personal public transportation navigation feat. I flew into JFK, which meant I had to take four trains operated by three different transportation authorities to get to my grandparent's abode (handicapped by leaving my detailed transportation information in Denver). Add to the list figuring out the Metropolitan Transit Authority subway system, and I'm darn impressive. Then again, navigating an underground train system run by one agency that publishes maps and schedules is considerably easier than navigating a piecemeal ground transportation system in a country where one neither speaks nor reads the language and there are no signs marking the bus stops. No wonder the MTA seemed easy this time where it was confounding prior to Nepal.