New York and Niagara - 1

Before beginning to write about my vacation, I would like to mention that I am an Indian who is working in Houston, TX, USA from past 1 year at the time of publishing this post. So, my perspective of seeing different places in US might sound different and might sound like a “Common man” from India. This might be a good informational post for those who want to visit NY for the first time.

I would like start with my trip’s plan at a high level. My wife, daughter and my self had recently went on 5 day vacation to New York and Niagara. My daughter is just 16 months old by the time I am writing this post and she enjoyed the trip too. We visited the places between September 8th and September 12th both days included. We started our trip from Houston, TX on Sep 8th and reached New York the same day. We stayed in New York for 3 days, till Sep 11. By the evening of Sep 11, we were in Niagara, NY and reached Houston, TX in the mid night of Sep 12th. Effectively its 3 days in NY, 1 day in Niagara and 1 day in travel. Luckily, the climate was absolutely good all these days in both the places. It was neither hot nor cool and was absolutely suitable for roaming around.

        We started from Houston to New York (NY) by an early morning flight. It was a pleasant journey and by lunch time, (we lost 1 hour) we were in JFK International Airport. I knew that the airport is big and is one of the busiest airports but it was bigger than I expected. Through out my stay in New York (and still), I had a question that when did they plan and construct all this city? It is surprising. We planned to stay at my friend’s place while in NY. Their house is at Jersey City, NJ which is on the other side of Hudson River. This river separates both New York and New Jersey states and specifically, New York and Jersey City cities. Both the cities are well connected by road and rail. Two tunnels, Liberty tunnel and Holland Tunnel form the road way and the train service (PATH) connects both the cities. The train service is also inside the water. It is fun to travel inside the tunnel for the first time. We opted to travel with the help of public transport. So we had travel to Jamaica station from the airport terminal via Air Trains. These air trains are like the proposed/running metro trains in Bangalore, Delhi and Hyderabad in India. From Jamaica station, we took a subway train to Port Authority which is a place where you can get public transport to all places around NY. I should tell this here that there a second world beneath the ground in NY. The whole subway train system. Again, a question runs in my mind. When did they build all this?

After getting out of the subway, we took a public bus service to Jersey city from Port Authority. This bus goes through the Liberty tunnel and it a different experience to travel through the tunnel. May be the daily travellers will not feel the same. On the first look through out this journey, except the few high rise buildings that we had seen, I felt NY was very much similar to Mumbai in all aspects. Not sure why I got that feeling but it was very much similar to Mumbai that I have been seeing in TVs and movies(I didn’t visit Mumbai yet). Also it is very difficult to travel via the subways unless we start getting used to it. It is always recommended to take the help of someone local to NY before we take a decision about the train we need to catch. Also at the first look, I felt the city of NY is comparatively very old than Houston. I felt that Houston is brand new and New York needs some paint.

After having lunch, we took rest for sometime and in the evening, we went out to visit Madame Tussauds and Time Square located in the mid town of NY. By the way, as far as I understand, NY is broadly segmented into Downtown, Midtown and Uptown. Most of the tourist locations are present in Downtown and Midtown. Madame Tussauds is a wonderful place where wax statues of renowned people of the world are placed through out the floors of the building. The great thing about these places in NY is that photography is allowed at all the places. This is in converse to few tourist spots in India where photography is not permitted. I recollect the wax statues of Mahatma Gandhi, Amitabhji, Sharukh and Salman in the museum. The 4-D Avenger show was also exciting. It was my first 4-D show that I have ever been to. If you haven’t been to Madame Tussauds, its time to visit once.

          As it is always suggested to visit Time Square in the nights, we walked towards the Time Square from Madame Tussauds. The streets are lively with visitors all over. I recollected my walk on 6th Street in Austin, TX. We had dinner at an Indian restaurant in between. Time Square is small place surrounded by lights of all kinds, huge screens and sky scrappers. The atmosphere was so lively that even if you go in the midnight, something would be happening over there. Tourists can look around standing in the center where on one side, on top of the building, the new year ball is visible. This ball is rolled down on the new year eve and there will be approximately a million people watching and celebrating this on that day. After this we came back home and that was how our first day of the trip concluded. There were few places in the city which made me really feel that I was in an Indian city like Mumbai for sometime. The subways were hotter than the actual temperature of the ground and as a first time visitor, I felt very insecure and scary in the subway station especially after listening to various shoot-out incidents that happened recently in US. Even the subways reminded me of Max Payne game and 24 television series !!

I am planning to write about  the rest of New York trip in second part and the Niagara trip in the 3rd part.