City Highlights

The Big Apple, the Asphalt Jungle, the City that Never Sleeps, the Melting Pot. Huddled masses and teeming shores. It's all been said about NYC. We were only there for a scant 24 hours, but it was enough time to get a surface sense of the place. It's aMAZing.

It's a city of hyperbole: over the top glitz and excess. The best of everything---food and fashion, art and architecture, cult and culture.

It's a city of extremes: From the ethereal to the visceral. From the silly to the sublime. From the Midnight Cowboys to the Holly Golightlies. From the anonymous waves of blank-faces expertly side-stepping you on the street to the no-apologies rubbing-of-elbows (and other body parts) on the subway.

It's a city of contradictions: Neon versus  shadow. Wealth versus squalor. Breath-taking, drop-your-jaw beauty from a distance versus turn-your-stomach grime and spittle at your feet. Spotless, freshly-pressed Brooks Bros suit versus torn t-shirt and paint-stained jeans, side-by-side at the corner of 42nd St and MadisonAve, waiting for the light to change.

In our short time there, several negative stereotypes were neatly dispelled. For one, NYC residents are not mean or particularly cranky. They may be busy, worried, or hungry. They have bad days like we all do. But without exception, each person we had occasion to speak with was polite, helpful, and even friendly sometimes.

Highlights of our first visit: Enjoying a wonderful dinner with friends in their vintage Brooklyn red-brick row-house, complete with stoop. (Think the cover of  "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.") Walking west across the Brooklyn Bridge as lower Manhattan revels in the morning sun. Lunch at Grand Central. A surprise performance by two talented, acrobatic, break-dancing young men in the aisle during a 3-minute subway ride. Getting lost in the marble corridors of the 101-year-old New York Public Library and then finally emerging into the vast and glorious expanse of its famous reading room.

I'm not sure I'll ever be able to tolerate the place for more than a couple days at a time--I'm too accustomed to the wide-open, quiet spaces of home (and this peaceful R.I. blueberry farm). But we will return, now that we've learned a few ropes. Some must-see items on our next visit(s) include many of the usual things: the Museum of Natural History, MOMA, the Smithsonian, the Empire State Building, Central Park, the infamous sidewalk in front of The Dakota, Rupert's Hello Deli, and the diner where Harry had that famously informative lunch with Sally. Then there's Broadway. . . . . . . . but we may have to start buying lottery tickets before we do that trip.

This may be the last post this trip until we're home. Thanks to all of you who were able and willing to add comments--- I know several of you tried but were confounded by this quirky Googly program.

Happy Father's Day, everyone!