uld catch her connecting flight to Istanbul. It was hard seeing her go, I will miss her, and I couldn't really tell her most of what I wanted to tell her as we parted ways, about how much she has meant to me and to all of us these past few months, and how much she has helped us and made our lives better in so many ways. I couldn't tell her that, so I told her goodbye, and as the TSA official yelled at me to get out of the line and go away, I told her to have a nice trip. They wouldn't allow me to go through security, so I had to leave her alone to navigate through security without any knowledge of english, and also to find her terminal. Luckily, there were turkish people around, if not for that, then she might still be trying to communicate with the TSA guys, or looking for her terminal, but that's not the gubment's problem, now is it?
So, after I watched her go, I navigated through the lobby of the airport for a while, I got something to eat, I bought some pills for my pounding headache, and sat down for a while to let them do their thing. The second "lord of the rings" movie was playing, I watched it a bit, and oddly it struck me as very stilted, everything was over dramatized, it seemed that it was glorifying war to a ridiculous extent (any extent is ridiculous, I guess). I had flown into New York with no baggage or spare clothes, not even a toothbrush. I had my wallet, my iphone (which I took a few pictures with), a pair of sunglasses, and two pairs of earphones for my iphone (accidentally). That's it! This was a new experiment in traveling light for me, and mostly it turned out great. The only thing I missed was a charger for my iphone, which, it turns out, is much more important than most other things. I wandered back and forth for a while, looking for an ATM I could use to withdraw cash from my discover card with. This would prove to be a fruitless effort for the duration of my trip. About half the shops in New York don't take discover, and there is no way to withdraw cash from a discover card with the ATMs there. They all immediately ask for a pin number, but I don't have one because it's a credit card, not a debit card, so that was that.
After a while, I went outside and got a taxi, they said it would cost about fifty bucks to go to the Empire State Building, I was reluctant for a second, but I figured I would have to bite the bullet because obviously I was a long way from Manhattan so it was either pony up or sit at the airport all day, so I jumped in, armed with my trusty discover card. The taxi ride lasted quite a while, but eventually we made it to the building and I got out and went inside. The lobby was very impressive, although there was renovation going on and much of it was covered up. I went and waited in a long line, which turned out to be only the first of many, many long lines I would stand in on my way to the 86th floor observatory. Finally, this guy said we could stop waiting in lines if we wanted to just walk up 6 flights of stairs, so I jumped out of line and went for it. I got to the observatory at last and boy, was it worth it! We were so high up that the statue of liberty looked like a little, tiny speck. I looked around, and looked down at the other buildings, and it almost made me dizzy. I could see, huge, towering, monstrous buildings, and they looked like they were so far below us, it was amazing! I found myself wondering that men could build something this tall and massive. It was very beautiful, and very windy. As I looked up at the tower that capped the building above me, I could not tell if the clouds were moving by very quickly, or if the building itself was swaying through the sky. Either way, it almost made my head swim again.
I went up to the 101st floor, but I was a bit disappointed. It didn't look any higher than the 86th, and you couldn't go outside, it was all glassed in! Very anticlimactic. So I went back to the 86th, and then exited the building armed with a little folding map of manhattan that I bought at the gift shop. I unfolded it as I walked down the street, and quickly decided that my next stop was china town, which is on the south side of the island. I walked for hours, mostly on broadway. I kept wondering where all the broadway musicals were, I thought any time I would stumble upon them, but I never saw any. Just ordinary city buildings for block after block. Eventually Broadway ended and I had to go on a different street. There was a park and people were playing chess at little stone chess tables in a small courtyard. It was pretty neat to see people playing chess and to see people standing around watching each move with keen interest. across from the park there was a big lighted numerical sign.
There were about 14 digits and the numbers were changing rapidly, I wondered if it was displaying the national debt or some other huge number, I didn't see an explanation of what it was anywhere. I went into a few stores, I saw a barnes and nobles that had about 7 stories, I walked around each story. At the back of one floor, there were big windows facing the street with wide window sills. People were lounging on the window sills with books. They had a huge selection. I also went into a circuit city, it was pretty much the same as in mississippi, I thought about getting a small digital camera, but I didn't. I also went into a store called "forbidden planet". It had comics and magazines and zines and manga of all sorts, and also action, sci-fi, and fantasy figurines and toys of every variety. There was a huge replica of the starship enterprise from star trek. It was lit up just like on television, with whirring lights in the engines and blinking beacons at the helm. It looked amazing. People kept walking by it and remarking about how cool it was. One couple walked by it and the girl said "that is HOT!".
It started to get dark and I still hadn't found china town, so I stopped at a little bar to get a drink and down some more pills for my head, which was still hurting a bit. I ended up sitting at the bar, I got a crown and coke, which cost me $10! They wouldn't take my discover, so I had to pull out my debit card, which was already overdrawn. I recently bought two sets of new tires, one for my wife and one for me, and I also had to pay the hospital bill from when my daughter, Jasmine was born, because neither my insurance, nor my wife's insurance would cover it, and that wiped me out pretty good. So anyway, I probably ended up paying about $50 for that drink. Another lucky factor was the fact that it had been almost 3 weeks since I had been paid, due to a fluke in the calendar (we are paid on the first and the fifteenth, which usually ends up being two weeks apart, but this time for some reason it was a few days longer so we were paid today, on tuesday, instead of on friday like we usually are).
So there I was with a useless debit card and a discover card that nobody wanted! As I finished my drink, I started talking to a guy named Michael who was sitting next to me. He had long blonde hair, he looked about 35 or 40, and he was a guy from Connecticut who liked to play guitar and bass in his spare time. He bought me a heineken and I got a pretty good buzz going about half way through it, I guess I haven't had any alcohol in a while. We talked and joked around for a while and he had to go, he said I was wise to go to china town, and that I should eat chicken feet when I got there, and also that it would taste terrible. I got directions from a couple that was sitting at a table, and off I went to discover china town, which wasn't too far away by this time. I happened upon a closed market with big red paper lanterns hanging above the awning, and I knew I had found what I was looking for. I walked into a little chinese restaurant and ordered some Pad Thai. It was a little bit different from what I'm used to, the noodles were very thin and delicate and tasted really good. It wasn't as spicy as I expected, or maybe not at all, but it was still good. I was the only non chinese person there, and I really enjoyed watching the people talk and interact with each other. It seemed they all knew each other pretty well. After this I walked around a little bit more, but it was really dark and almost everything was closed, so I decided to check on a hotel room. If I walked around all night, I'd be really tired the next day, and I probably wouldn't see as much as I would during the day. I only saw two hotels, a holiday in and a hotel that was all lit up in blue, it was called blue hotel or maybe azure hotel, something like that.
I bounded up the escalator toward the front desk of the holiday in, and realized that my buzz was pretty much gone. The girl at the desk said that the rooms were $250, so I decided to check the other hotel, which was on the same block, but they wouldn't let me in, so I went right back and got a room. She said I had gotten the last room! That was pretty lucky, because I don't know where I would have found another hotel. The clerk was asking me about my stay in New York, and I said that one block of New York was about like my home town, or at least it seemed that way. I also remarked that the chicken pad thai that I had in china town was better than usual, and she said she never had pad thai, which I found hard to believe, especially coming from someone who works a block away from china town, but I was too tired to ask any questions, so I got a tooth brush and went to my room. It was actually a pretty decent room, and it wasn't long before I had brushed my teeth and turned out the light. I opened the window and looked out at the city one last time. There was a little McDonald's across the street, and big dark buildings all around. One building had a water tower on top of it, and it all seemed so fascinating to me, I loved looking at those buildings for some reason, but I closed the curtains and set the alarm clock. My iphone was almost out of battery life, so I turned it off and set the little clock by the bed so I wouldn't oversleep the next morning.
I woke up about 7:30 and took a very thorough shower, before putting my dirty clothes back on. As I left the hotel I picked up a little map of New York which I liked better than the little fold out one, and I called Fatma and printed out my ticket information at a little internet computer in the lobby. Then I turned my cell phone back off because it was almost dead and set out for more sight seeing. I ate breakfast at McDonald's against my better judgement, simply because that was the only place I could think of in china town to eat breakfast. Then I went off to explore china town some more. I saw a park where old women were doing tai chi and men were doing tai chi with swords. I talked to a young guy who was sitting on a bench with a big sword, and he seemed surprised that I didn't realize tai chi could be done with swords. He had been doing it for about 3 years he said. He told me some good places to eat in china town, and admonished me not to look at the food, because some of it doesn't look very good. There were also groups of people practicing kung fu, and an old guy playing basketball by himself. I wandered through some of the side streets, and it was truly amazing. One street was mostly barber shops. Another had several nickle and dimes stores. They were packed with all sorts of goods in no particular order or arrangement. As I looked through one, a huge white guy came in (the first I had seen in a while) and his head was almost touching the ceiling. Someone said something in chinese to him and he answered back in chinese and his accent was perfect. The markets were all open, and some of them had already been stripped clean of fish, but others had frozen fish of different types piled up on tables and baskets of fruit and vegetables on display. There was a little covered alley with shops on the sides, and in the window of one little shop, I saw a poster with a chinese elvis impersonator, singing into a microphone and wearing full elvis regalia.
I went into a shop that sold herbs and medicine, and everything was in chinese. I couldn't tell what anything was because it all looked the same. The only english I saw was a curious poster showing the human ear and which parts of the ear relate to other parts of the body. There was even a section of the ear that represented the butt. It must have been for acupuncture or something. As I walked around the little streets and watched the people, I absolutely fell in love with china town. I wanted to stay there longer and experience it more, but I had to catch a flight back that afternoon, so I had to leave. I visited a buddhist temple on my way out. There was a room with a huge golden buddha and rows of little kneeling pads for worshippers. Monks were sitting at a table in the middle of the room singing hymns in chinese and striking gongs of different types at regular intervals. They were really out of tune at first but as they continued they got better. There were pictures along the walls showing events in the life of the buddha, and most of them struck me as pretty ridiculous. One said that when he was born, he took seven steps and seven lotuses appeared where his feet had been. Yeah, right!
I got on 5th avenue and started walking north toward central park. I went through little italy, then later I doubled back and walked south to greenwich village, but it was just normal buildings and nothing special, so I walked back north again. I went into a few shops, one was a book store, I think it was barnes and noble's, that looked very small, but as I went inside, I noticed that the books were packed in tightly and there were a lot of books! There was a little door at the back that lead to another room full of books, in all there were about five rooms, each leading to other rooms, and I also noticed that there were two more floors, each of them packed tightly with books and not much free space between shelves! I also walked into Macy's for a few minutes, but everything was ultra expensive. I tried to buy water or snacks a few times but nobody took discover. Finally I found a place that did so I bought some water for my headache pills (I was feeling good, but I took a couple just in case), and a cherry pastry. Later on I found a little pizza place so I got a slice of veggie pizza and sat in the window to watch the people pass by and scarf it down. I probably ate more than I really needed to, but what the heck, you can't go to New York without eating pizza, right? I kept thinking about Michael Scott and his trip to New York, I saw his favorite pizza place, "Sbarro", and also I ruined somebody's picture by sticking my tongue out as I walked by in the background, as he was so fond of doing. I even saw Michael Scott himself on a big screen in times square during a commercial for "the office".
Times square was amazing, but not in the same way as china town. It was all bright lights and tackiness and excitement and tons of people. Big television screens and huge advertisements where everywhere. I finally saw the section of broadway that everyone talks about, the musicals and other shows and attractions, and then it turned into seventh avenue. I didn't spend much time in times square, I walked straight through and toward central park. Just after times square, I went into a little shop and got my only souvenir, an "I
I finally pried myself away from the museum, with much difficulty, because it was time to get back to the airport. I hailed a taxi, but the ride to JFK took an hour and twenty minutes, and I was just too late for my flight! Luckily, the woman at the desk found me another flight out, leaving from LaGuardia, so I got another taxi to get there. The driver was Korean, he made me guess, and Korean was my second guess. He told me that there are actually four china towns in New York, and the biggest one (biggest in the world) is in Flushing. He also said the second biggest korea town in the world is in Flushing. Anyway, after a brief but entertaining ride, I was at the other airport. I had to go to the "Marine terminal" for some reason, and caught a mostly empty plane to Washington, and then another mostly empty plane to Jackson. As we lifted off from Washington I could see the Washington Monument and the White House lit up in the distance, I thought about how I'd like to go back to Washington again, but I want to go back to New York more.
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