If you recognize the title of this post, then you may recognize the lion statue and the steps I am standing on. That is a quote from the movie "Ghostbusters" one of my favorites. Which made yesterday's trip to New York City all the more fun when I was able to actually go to the New York Public Library, where the opening scenes of the movie were filmed. Our hunt for a "self-contained free-floating full-torso vaporous apparition" proved less than successful.
This is Sandy eating the first bite of our pizza at Lombardi's, officially recognized as America's first pizzeria. One bite and its easy to see why they have been around all this time. The pizza was simply amazing. Also in Little Italy I got a cupcake from a small shop. It was chocolate and frosted with the filling from a cannoli, and had little pieces of the cannoli cookie sprinkled on top. Best cupcake ever, it was big and the texture and flavor were just amazing.
30 Rockefeller Plaza is pretty famous. Its the main building for NBC, and I think all the shows are filmed there like Conan O'brien and Saturday Night Live, and probably at least some of 30 Rock.
This is Sandy inside Trump Tower. We went in just for fun. It was crazy how much famous stuff is all crammed together. All these photos are taken like minutes walk from each other. I'm not posting pictures, but Times Square, Port Authority, The Empire State Building, Grand Central Station, Central Park, Saks Fifth Avenue, St Patricks Cathedral, and the Diamond District are all right there too. Not to mention huge stores for like every designer in the world. Its mind blowing to go to New York and see all these famous things crammed together. Actually, St. Patricks Cathedral and Saks Fifth Avenue are next door to each other, and Rockefeller plaza is across the street. And boy was it all crowded.We then jumped on the Subway for a few minutes, and walked more. Our second walk took us to Little Italy, Chinatown, Broadway, Wall Street and Ground Zero. We didn't even walk very much yesterday but saw a TON. We actually came upon Ground Zero by accident. Sandy wanted to go to this big store, and we did, then walked out and looked to the left and realized the big empy space was where the World Trade Center was. It was a little weird to realize how many people were right nearby when the planes hit. Its also strange to me that there are a lot of other big buildings nearby, I can't imagine what it was like to stand in one of those other buildings and look over at the burning towers. It was weird to accidentally come upon the location of what is probably the most historical event of my lifetime.
So yeah, we covered a small section of one of the 5 bouroughs of New York City, and saw more than I can remember. 8 million people live there. Its a bit odd, because its amazingly small in the amount of ground it covers. At the same time, its amazingly huge considering that all that ground is covered in pure city, densely packed buildings, sky scrapers, subways underground. Man made stuff everywhere.
I felt like I was being crowded the whole time I was there. Yet as I was leaving I couldn't wait to go back and explore more, and see more famous stuff that I didn't see yet, and of course eat more awesome food. I think I could visit there a lot and never experience it. It seems to me that in order to really know the New York experience, you would have to live there. If I lived there, I think theres about a 50% chance I'd absolutely love it and a 50% chance I would completely hate it.
