Mirjam's World - Travel - USA

New York is one of the most famous cities
in the world.

Who hasn't heard about Lady Liberty and
the Empire State Building, just to mention
two. What I found out was that when I
would hear the word New York City or
The Big Apple I would actually picture
Manhattan which is just one of the five so
called boroughs (the others are: Queens,
Bronx, Staten Island and Brooklyn) with a
population of approximately 8,000,000
(Manhattan itself has 1,600,000
inhabitants).

I visited Manhattan twice so far: once in
the fall during the week and once in the
spring. Both visits were memorable. I got
to experience the crowds and fast pace
of the city on a working day and almost
no cars and just a few people on a
beautiful, early, Sunday morning - still
could not find parking though…

The first time around we traveled with
the New York City Subway which is
definitely the best way (quite
reasonably priced too) to get around
Manhattan. We started our visit at Grand
Central Station where we noticed
(beside the fantastic architecture and
"billions" of people in a hurry) a long
line of people in front of a book store:

Alan Alda was signing his
new book. Later on we
also saw Steve Taylor
exiting one of Trump's
buildings so I concluded
that sightings of rich and
famous in Manhattan
must be a common thing.
We visited Ground Zero
and remembered the
victims of 9/11.

As I was walking around
I was remembering the
movies I have seen about
this city, all the books
I've read and stories I've
heard.

I was thinking about the millions
of people who came here from
all over the world in hopes of
starting a new life and the effect
of this city on world culture. I
got to practice three different
languages in one day, we found
an excellent "Soppresatta" in
one of the delis in Little Italy
and got ourselves a hotdog in
Central Park.

We even
succeeded to stop
to take photos by
the famous
sculpture of the
bull and one with
the Statue of
Liberty in the
background. We
had dinner in a
little Italian
restaurant and
followed the
advice of one of
our friends and
went to see Time
Square at 11PM. It
was fantastic:

the flashing lights of advertising
panels, thousands of people,
yellow cabs, and even rickshaws
getting people from one part of
the city to the other. It was
definitely a full day.

The second time I visited
Manhattan I got to see the inside
of St. Patrick's Cathedral. It is
truly magnificent - one of the
finest in the USA.

When I came out of the church I was
shocked - the street by the Cathedral
was packed with hundreds of NY police
officers.

They turned out to be quite nice and even let me take a picture of them and kindly
explained that they are getting ready for a parade. It was a celebration of the 60th
anniversary of Israel and I got to see one of the things that New Yorkers are known
for - their parades! How exciting! 5th street, which was closed for traffic, turned
from almost empty to totally packed in less than an hour. I felt unbelievably lucky
to have the chance to see this. It was awesome. Oh, and when I go to NY next
time I am going to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art and SOHO and …