Surreal

The D Space
That's how I'd describe New York.
It’s easy to see why this is the greatest city on earth.

Fiona and I visited it from April 26th to 29th. We flew from Austin via DFW to LaGuardia.
Fiona searched and found some really good deals on priceline, so we stayed at the Paramount Hotel right in the heart of Manhattan, half a block from Times Square.
Also , smartly she had us flying into LaGuardia which is what you definitely want to do if you want to stay in Manhattan, which is what you should do if you want to visit New York. New York is Manhattan and Manhattan is New York..

Flying into LaGuardia is awesome, the plane flies very low right over Manhattan giving you a fantastic view of the city. The stewardess asked me to turn my camera off since we were landing, but I’d waited 25 years for this, and I wasn’t gonna let a stewardess spoil it for me.. I got a few pictures of Manhattan while landing.
LaGuardia, from the sky, (cause it is fairly easy to spot it, because of all the planes circling around it) looks tiny. And that’s because it is. It has two runways , and they cross each other! One of them juts out into the East River so that makes it easy to spot..

Interesting tidbit…90% of all airline delays in the US occur because of a problem that originated at LaGuardia. Because it has just one landing runway(the other is for take offs), we got a great view of Manhattan as we circled over it.

Flying low you get a good view of Columbia University (you can see the name on the Baseball field), Madison Square Gardens (where the New York Nicks play) and the Verazzano Narrows bridge connecting Brooklyn and Staten Island (the worlds longest single span Bridge, bigger than Golden Gate).


And of course there are the fabulous skyscrapers of Manhattan. Even though I’ve seen tons of pictures, it still didn’t prepare me for the sight of seeing the Empire State, Chrysler building, MetLife and Citicorp for the first time.

On landing, I was tempted to kiss the ground, like the Pope. But didn’t. Instead we got our bags, and took a cab. Its ridiculous how small LaGuardia is. It’s also probably very old, so we had to literally walk out into the street to pick a cab.

For all the folks back home, here's an illustrated pic explaining the various sites . Click on the picutre to see a larger view.



The cab ride wasn’t too bad. Fast and quick, and not as hairy as I thought it may be. Mostly because there wasn’t much traffic. We drove from queens using one of the tunnels, and into Manhattan. We drove through the garment district which was a lot like driving through Linking Road in Bombay. We also got our first taste of Manhattan traffic, and the typical taxi cab drivers absolute disdain for the rules.
There are very few private cars in Manahattan, just a lot of yellow cabs, and more expensive, “Black cabs” and Limousines. Our taxi driver did not believe in the concept of “right-only” turn lane only being for cars turning. He would repeatedly take the lane, and then merge into the straight lane. Over and over again, on every block .So what would have been a 1 hour drive took only around 25 minutes. In 25 minutes we were at the 4- Star Paramount Hotel, NYC.

The Paramount is a very "modern" hotel. A "4-star" in Manhattan, that is priced in the $400/night range, Fiona pricelined it for around 130$. Great find. And half a block from Times Square. We had the biggest room on the floor, which , even though we were prepared for a small room, was still shocking. WE had a queen bed and No walking space. Fiona and i couldn't cross each other without bumping into each other There wasn't even space to put our bag horizonally on the floor !!!



I was still happy. I'm a skyscraper freak, and i loved the view. Not your typicaly Manhattan view, but nevertheless some nice tall building out of our window. Even more pretty at nite.



I think at this point we already knew that this was going to be a fabulous trip.