New York City: Downtown

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With prospects of coming back to USA bleak, I desperately wanted to see New York city before I leave.
The 'to do list' had reading a book in Central Park, long exposure shots of Times Square and sky diving in Poconos mountains. I was also looking forward to hiking and camping in Catskill Mountains.

I ditched my initial plan of going by Chinatown/Greyhound bus from Chicago, the cheapest mode of travel, as it took almost 24 hours and friends who had done it didnt have anything good to say about it. So I took the flight and landed on the La Guardia airport. The moment I came out of the revolving doors of the airport all kind of smells hit me along with the hot humid mumbai like air. The most prominent was that of tobacco. As I would experience over the next two days, the city smokes like a chimney. You can see small sutta groups everywhere outside the buildings. Mehta was there to receive me and we took a bus to his home in Journal square, Jersey. We went out on the Indian street to dine. It had all the Indian cuisines with surprisingly good taste and cheap and was way ahead of Chicago's Devon street. Samosas, dosas, parathas, lunch, thali all the stuff under 5 bucks. We had parathas at the newly opened and poorly serviced Parathas place.

I had two days in New York city and decided to split them up for the Downtown and Midtown areas. The next day I took the metro from Journal Square to WTC. The metro is an air-conditioned, rarified version of mumbai locals and if you are taking it from Jersey all the passengers are desis too. In my red T-shirt and khaki shorts, I stood out among all the formally dressed software professionals. The metro whizzed through the tunnel beneath the Hudson river between NJ/NY to the WTC construction site. I came out of the station and got a bit confused on the 'slalom' created from numerous 'jersey barriers' and 'planters' looking for directions on 'french barriers' ( construction lingo for wtc 😊).

I headed southwest for the Battery Park esplanade to walk my way to the Liberty island ferries. Its a beautiful and quite isolated pavement facing the Hudson river and the Upper New York Bay with amazing views of Statue of Liberty and the Jersey sky line.

I reached the ferries terminals for Statue of Liberty and Ellis island . The number of visitors that can go to the crown of the statue and the monument pedestal is restricted. The crown tickets are booked in advance while for the pedestal, you have to reach early. Tickets can be bought for the Statue of Liberty and/or Ellis island with and without audio tours. If pressed for time, Ellis island which is an immigration museum, can be skipped. I bought the tickets for both with audio tours and stood in line for the ferries which had a 45 minute waiting period. There were Europeans and there were Europeans all around. It is an awesome ride with amazing views of the 350 ft tall patinated copper statue of Liberty. Once of the island, I took the audio tours which is informative but a bit long. The island has some panaromic views of the New York skyline. After about an hour I moved on to Ellis Island.

Ellis Island was the 'Port of Entry' for about 12 million immigrants from 1892 to 1954 (wiki 😊). Now its an interesting immigration museum which takes you through the process that all the immigrants went through. Nothing much has changed between then and now. There was a rule which required all the immigrants to have at least $25 for sustenance in US. The immigrant officer used to ask, '' Do you have $25 ? ''. The immigrants most of them without a penny said yes and they were granted the entry. Sounds familiar, doesnt it ?

I took almost 3-4 hours for Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island and returned to New York for lunch. Mehta works on wall street (!) and we went out for lunch. After lunch, I spent the rest of the evening walking through the downtown seeing the raging bull, wall street, American exchange, South Street Seaport and Brooklyn bridge. At about 6 pm, as Mehta got off his office, we headed to Exchange Place , the first PATH station from WTC to Newark. It is a definite must for the panaromic views of the Manhattan Skyline. After a sumptuous meal of Mysore Masala dosa, I called the day off.

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