New York City "The city that never sleeps". Whoever came up with this slogan had a very good and legitimate reason. I experienced this in person on my trip to the NYC on the Memorial Day weekend (25-28 May, 2007). The city overflows with energy and people. The more and more you see the essence of the city, more and more you feel and love the city. This is one instance where the Law of Diminishing Returns fails. Life just never seems to stop there at any time of the day. People scrambling across the city, Lots of people, Visitor, people commuting to work, people holding placards reading "End is here" or "Why lie, I need a brew".
I and my friends Gocha & Pammu, Monty, Vibha and Lee, 6 of us met up in this city as tourists. We arrived on the 25th. P&G and Monty reached NYC in the morning flights and me and Lee joined them in the might. Here starts the travelogue of ours in New York. The trip was smooth, but not without incidence or fights or pulling each other.
Day 1 - 25th May 2007
P&G and Monty having reached the city in the morning around 10, had their on plans of places to go. They went to the Ground zero (WTC), Brooklyn Bridge and the Wall Street. Lee reached around 9 in the night and went for the movie "Pirates of Caribbean - End of world" with her friends. I reached NYC around 10:30 in the night. Landing in La Guardia was a sight in itself. Coming from the south west side the flight was flying low on top of the buildings, Hudson and the sea, the city was illuminated gold in color, lights from buildings, vehicles in the road. Next day we had to drive to Niagara from NYC and I had specific instructions on not to get drunk. But it’s New York. I reached the hotel where I was put off and had a beer, this was on top of the whiskey that I had in the plane. Later Monty joined me in the hotel and with him I had couple of rounds of beer. By this time it was day two around 12 in the night and we were supposed to pick up the rental van at 4:30AM. Since I was in no position to drive I called up Lee and asked her to tag along and drive. Here starts the day two.
Day 2 - 26th May 2007.
The day started at 4:00AM in the morning. We were supposed to pick up the rental mini van at 4:30. Guess what, we were in deep slumber and managed to get ready by 4:15. We reached the rental around 4:40. The fun starts here, I had forgotten to recharge my credit card, so the credit card was out of question for payment. Lee didn't have a card and Monty only had debit card. I gave my debit card and I don't know what the rental guy was doing but he was having troubles with the card and they needed proof that I was going to return. Great as though I who hasn't driven more than 10-15hrs in US am going to run off with the stupid mini van. Anyway I gave him my flight details and there we finally had the van in our hand. By this time it was 5:15 and Gocha was screaming at us for being late. Finally Lee took hold of the car and offffffffff we go.
Driving in Manhattan was fun. It was as if the buildings and stuff were put in place and then they build the 6 lane roads with the space available. The gap between two parallel cars is like a feet. Swing and miss. Hold your breath and lane that’s the trick. Anyway the roads weren't that crowded in the early morning. First stop Vibha's place. Thanks to Monty's navigation skills and Lee's driving we completed the first pit stop safely. Then we were supposed to pick up P&G from some Julius street and we got lost in the maze of streets in NJ. Thanks to gocha's cousin and GPS we were finally found. We started of to Niagara finally at 7.
The drive was fun. Everything was flowing like water; Monty was in his usual pulling everyone. We were already 1hr behind schedule and only thing we didn't want was another snag in the journey. It finally hit us when we saw warning on side asking to tune to 1610 or 1640 for on road update. The news echoed in the van "Exit 230 closed due to an accident at 6:30. Follow detour". Great! But we hit the snag much before exit 230 around 10 miles before. Traffic was not moving. We decided to have a smoke outside, got out, I had lit the cigarette just then the traffic started moving. Threw out the cigarette and got into van, but turned out that it was a false alarm. Still stuck. Finally after an hour and 15 min we were moving.
Niagara
We reached the Niagara Falls around 4PM and decided to first check in the hotel we had booked and guess what the room was not available. Lesson learned never trust a desi in US, this was a desi hotel. Decided that we will look for hotel later and went to see Niagara Falls. Finally after all this, we reached Niagara Falls, but the fun doesn't stop here. We would have crossed around at least 100 toll booths on the way to Niagara, took the turn towards the falls and saw another toll booth, Goddamn!! Another one, just what we needed now. As we were sitting in the van waiting our turn, something didn't feel right; doubts grew in the mind whether it was the border to Canada. No one except P&G had passports with them and Monty was on extension, when the doubt flashed in our minds, we started looking for an exit. Saw a small opening and took it only to end up in the incoming traffic lane. Lucky for us that there was no traffic, took a hard right jumping a red light in the wrong direction and were back on track. While looking for a parking spot we saw the board saying "To Canadian border" at the turn we took before, parked the car and went for "Maid Of the Mist" ride.
Maid of the Mist
We had warnings that the queue for Maid of the Mist ride would be very huge and will have to wait for more than 2 hrs to take the ride. So we were prepared, but it turned out that we didn't have to wait long and was on the boat within an hour. Boat started moving and went below the American side of the falls first. Falls was gigantic with crystal clear white water flowing down. The American falls is 170ft in height and 1060ft in width and around 150,000 gallons of water flows down every second. Spray of water crystals from the fall was rising even higher than the falls. Water was freezing and below the falls the boat was rocking like a cradle. Cold water was splashing all over us, but the view of the falls was so breath taking that everything else was insignificant and this was just the American falls. The boat started moving slowly towards the Canadian falls. Canadian falls also known as the Horse shoe falls is of 167ft in height and 2600ft in width and around 600,000 gallons of water fall of it every second. Boat was surfing on the waves generated by the falls. Force of wind generated by the falls was so huge and chill that the raincoats were flying off and making us numb. Cold silver spray was all over. But each and everyone was enjoying the falls, savoring it to the last moment and awestruck by the massiveness and beauty of it. Finally when we were out of it, felt that we didn't have enough of the falls.
To be Cntd...
Cheers...
Aj
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