First Time, Big City

I’m back from my first trip to New York City. I always think of salsa whenever I say the full name – excellent advertising, Pace! Anyway, NYC had never been on my list of places I wanted to visit, but DH2U had a business trip there, so I tagged along.

I’ll confess: This is my second attempt at writing this post. My first version was a list of all the things I saw. I bored myself. I’ve decided to focus more on the unusual.

Within my first hour in the city I’d jumped a subway turnstile in front of a cop. By the time we got to the hotel in Mid-Town Manhattan, I learned that street crossing signals are more of a guideline than a rule. I also found out that the famous Waldorf Astoria hotel is no more.

Okay, so I did touristy things as well. I ate a bagel

and a hot dog (from a halal street vendor)

and pizza. And DH2U and I saw a play to celebrate the 10th anniversary of our meeting.

Of all the touristy things I did (and boy, did I do a lot, as the 80,000 steps my Fitbit logged in three days can attest), my favorite had to be my United Nations tour.

I had taken the tour of their location in Geneva almost 20 years ago, so it was wonderful to see the New York facility. The building has so much history – Rockefeller buying the land and donating it to the United Nations, the Scandanavian countries designing and paying for the committee rooms, and how the mission of the organization has had to adapt to a changing world.

As I was waiting for my tour to start, there was an announcement that the Security Council was in session. Not surprising considering what was going on in the world. History might have been being made as I was there!

I hadn’t realized how much of an emphasis the UN places on sustainability. Hearing more about it during the tour made my choice of souvenir an easy one.

Many of my friends have fallen in love with the city. I had a wonderful time, but I wasn’t enamored. Will I go back? A definite maybe. It was big and there are so many more things left to see. Then again, the same could be said of the world. But DH2U does get sent to NYC relatively frequently …