New York, New York

Took the overnight Greyhound from Montreal to New York City last night. This was another first for me and I was looking forward to the people who I'll be making the journey with. There weren't too many, but they were all from different walks of life. There was a French couple who seemed to be going to NYC for holidays, there were a few black guys going back to NYC, and there was some young Canadian lady making the trip down for business. I did not talk to them much, just idle conversations now and then. It was interesting though. Anyway, same questions for me once the bus reached the US border. Where I live, where I work, what am I doing here, etc. I thought it was just me, seeing I was foreign, but it seems everyone on the bus had to answer the same(mostly) set of questions. I asked the bus driver and he remarked that this was unusual, normally, going across the border is quite a speedy affair. I guess it might be because we were the only bus around at that time(~2am) so I guess Homeland Security decided to make an example out of us.~shrugs~

In any case, the journey was rather uneventful, after about 7 hours or so, we finally sighted New York City. I must admit, upon disembarking, I was immediately engulfed in a whirlwind of activity. Our bus journey ends at the Port Authority Station, but for many New Yorkers, this is the start of theirs, and at around 730am in the morning, it was soon to be the start of rush hour. The fact that it was a massive complex did not help me much at all. Even with a map, it took a while to get out of the building and get my bearings right. Once I did, I realized that New York was a city that's laid out very methodically. Every street, every avenue; its all numbered very orderly and intuitively, which is more than what I can say for many cities,even my own.

For me, it was not too difficult to navigate once I got the hang of it. "Vertically" was the avenues while  "horizontally" was the streets. In other words, they function like a grid pattern to identify any location, For instance, Times Square is at 7th Avenue off 42nd Street. So all I had to do was go "down" the map to "42" once I found "7th". I walked to a few places, the Empire State building, Rockefeller Center, Grand Central,etc. It was quite awe-inspiring to me, with all the humongous buildings and all,  only problem I had was with the wind. For some reason, although the temperature was(only) about -1degrees celsius,  it felt a lot colder than Montreal due to the stronger winds, which was ironic because being in a city, I would have thought the tall buildings would have served as an effective barrier.

In any case, I got quite tired walking around the midtown area, no thanks in part to the sleepless night I had to endure on the Greyhound, so by around 4pm, I found a hostel to rest my feet. Thats where I am typing these now. I guess I won't be going out in the night, but I should be going out bright and early tomorrow. Got to check out the financial district as well as what everyone should see when they come to New York City; the Statue of Liberty. After that, I should just be in time to catch the Greyhound back to Berri-Uqam station in Montreal. For now, my feet are sore and I'm exhausted. I'll probably be turning in soon.

Here's to the last night in New York!