The Big Apple

I love New York City! I never want to live there but I can see why so many people do. Jeff and I spent a fun-filled Saturday as New Yorkers, including a double-decker tour bus ride all around Manhattan.

We saw Rockefeller Center, the World Trade Center remains, Empire State Building, Times Square and more. We had lunch in Greenwich Village and tasted, for the first time in our lives, real food. We ate at a brick oven pizzeria run by two Italian brothers from Naples who moved to New York two years ago. I did not know tomatoes could taste like that.

We enjoyed dinner at a fantastic restaurant on the second floor of Grand Central Station. This was my favorite spot in New York City. There is something both thrilling and reassuring to me about an enormous, breathtaking room with multiple doorways to travel in all directions - choices, options, chances, pathways...freedom. The Statue of Liberty may be one of America's most regarded symbols of freedom, but I think Grand Central Station is a commensurable representation of the opportunity that is granted in this country.

After Jeff left, I ventured out to Union Square on my own for a little business in the big city, putting on my best New Yorker attitude of course. I walked fast, talked fast, ordered quickly, aggressively hailed cabs in high heels, and was satisfyingly ignored by everyone. This is one of the reasons I love New York City. People ignore you. They don't look at you or talk to you. This fits me because I do not like to "chit chat" with strangers. I don't talk to people on planes or while standing in lines. I enjoy moments to myself too much to be distracted by someone else. :) No matter how lonely or bored I may look to a stranger, I enjoy sitting by myself for a quiet dinner - leave me alone please and thank you. This was not a problem in New York. No one approached me (including the waiter who I had to follow into the kitchen to ask for a glass of wine).

The cab rides were exhilarating, including the profanity in Spanish by my cabbie (which I understood some) at an Arabic cabbie who just cut us off (whose response I couldn't understand, but I got the point). Got to love New Yorkers!

The week passed along with more traveling in the southwest, where I caught a cold from the many rides on tiny planes (Alexis, I know you can relate to that!). But things got much better Friday night. I got to see the best thing a beat down, traveled-out, New York lady could ever see: the two most handsome boys in the world at the Phoenix airport. Oh, the site of them after a week on the road...well; My God, my cup runith over!