You might not know it to look at me, but I’ve been a small-town girl my entire life.
Granted, I’ve spent a few days at a time in The Big City — an occasional jaunt to Chicago to see the Cubbies, three or four trips (one time by accident!) to Las Vegas, a venture to Dallas several years ago to see one of my best pals — but for the most part, I’m much more comfortable in towns no bigger than Carbondale.
So, quite honestly, I wasn’t quite prepared for New York City. Specifically: Times Square.
Obviously, I’ve seen the famous Manhattan intersection plenty of times on TV — usually every Dec. 31 around midnight, Eastern time (11 o’clock our time) — and also in a great scene early in the movie “Vanilla Sky.” In that film’s dream sequence, however, Times Square is devoid of people except for the main character, David, who finds the emptiness very disturbing.
That’s because Times Square, apparently, is always crowded. And, wouldn’t you know it? I happened to visit on its busiest day ever!
My traveling companion, Diane, wasn’t overly concerned about the wall-to-wall people on the sidewalks and streets; after all, she lived in New York, right near the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, back in the 1960s.
She’s seen it all, probably.
“Should we get off here?” I asked her as our Grey Line bus made a stop in Times Square.
“I don’t know. I doubt we’ll be able to get back on,” she replied, nodding toward the crowd of people in line, waiting to get on the bus as soon as we stepped off.
“But at least we’ll be able to find the subway station,” I noted, pointing. “Plus, look: There’s a Hard Rock Cafe!”
As is often the case, my desire to continue sightseeing was trumped by my hunger. And even though I’d previously stated my desire to eat lunch at an “authentic NYC deli” — and, unbeknownst to me, there happened to be one right around the corner (go figure!) — I couldn’t get into the Hard Rock fast enough. Where we enjoyed good cheeseburgers and some bad rock music.
Afterwards, we ventured back out onto the sidewalk. We traipsed through the gift shop at Bubba Gump’s, briefly browsed at a Swatch store and then ended up in the largest, most chaotic Toys R Us store I’ve ever seen.
My sister called me when I was standing on the second floor of the toy store, contemplating running, full speed, through a glass window.
“Sister?” she said. “Where are you?”
“I’m standing in the middle of hell,” I replied, honestly.
She was convinced she’d just seen me on TV, sitting somewhere on the grounds of the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, site of the U.S. Open, where I had spent the better part of the previous two days.
“Nope. Sorry. I was there, but I’m not now,” I told her. “I only wish I were still there!”
Tennis crowds have got nothing on Times Square crowds.
•••
Aside from tennis and a deli, the only thing I was truly dying to see in NYC was the Statue of Liberty. And, like a good tourist, I made my reservations well in advance: I ordered tickets, online, sometime in early June for our Aug. 31 visit.
“Get them for as early in the day as you can,” Diane had told me. “That way, if we want to see more tennis, we’ll have time later in the day.”
I booked our tour of the museum, complete with audio, for 8 a.m. sharp.
Little did we realize the approximately 12-mile trip would end up taking nearly two hours to complete — even though we followed our directions to a “T”!
We had instructions for getting from the questionably named LaGuardia Aiport Hotel (not even the cab drivers seemed to know where it was) to Battery Park: Take a shuttle to the airport, catch the M60 bus to Astoria Boulevard and take the N/W train to Battery Park.
We nearly missed the Astoria stop but managed to hop off the bus just in time to reach the subway station. A fellow passenger told us we could take the N or the W train into the city; however, a closer look at the subway map revealed that the W train didn’t run on Sundays (we would have been waiting all day for that one, apparently).
The N train took us right to the aforementioned subway stop in Times Square, where we switched to the 1 train — only to be told, moments later, that on this particular day, the train was not going all the way to Battery Park. The conductor told us to take a 2 or 3 train to Chambers Street, and then catch the shuttle over to the ferry to the Statue of Liberty.
Meanwhile, the clock on my cell phone told me that we were definitely not going to make our 8 a.m. tour, so I spent a good 20 minutes pouting over my best-laid plans going completely awry, through no fault of our own.
When we finally arrived at Battery Park, we managed to get on the first ferry to the statue, just in time — only to find that the ferries didn’t even start running until 8:30 a.m.! (Hmm, “Big Apple” or “The Land of Hurry Up and Wait”?)
Seeing the Statue of Liberty for the first time, though, was well worth any of the aggravation we suffered while getting there. As I glimpsed her from the shore, “Lady Liberty” actually appeared smaller than I’d expected, but up close, she was every bit as large, in reality and symbolically, as I’d always imagined.
— Diana Winson is editor of The Benton Evening News. You may e-mail her at dianaw@clearwave.com.
