Walkin'

Walking is said to be a great way of exploring New York. You tend to miss out a lot on the subway, the car forces you to focus on the road and even the bus passes the variety of people and landmarks too quickly to capture it all. For me the reason was more pragmatic: busses from West New York to Hoken run semi-hourly, you never know if they will come and if they do, it takes 40 minutes (and $2.15) to get across those 3.8 miles. For that reason, not paying attention to the staggering 32 degrees outside, I set off for Jersey City.

New York signs

Getting around the New York area is very simple - you don't even need a map. All the streets are a 90-degree grid. Typically, streets running from east to west are numbers (63th st, 64th st etc.) whereas streets going north to south have some unsophisticated names (Washington Boulevard, Park Avenue, Garden Street). This way we always know which directon we are going. Surirpsingly, the street numbering doesn't change from city to city and a Park Avenue can run from West New York, through Weehawken and Hoboken. The infrastructure for walking is generally OK, however crossing highways, major rail hubs etc is always a problem.

Moving around the city explains a few phonomena that I've only known from movies and that depict the American reality far better than the European one. "Let's meet at 8th and Washington", typically translated in Europe as "let us meet at the intersection between the 8th Street and Washington Boulevard" does not sound very natural for many Europeans. Neither does the notion of a "neighbourhood". In the NYC area you can find yourself in a Hispanic "neighbourhood" and you can't miss that - you hear Spanish everywhere, shops sell products from Spanish-speaking countries, houses have no gardens, and guys with white T-shirts, black trousers, gold necklaces and shiny back-combed hair dominate the street. You cross one or two blocks, you find yourself in a completely different place - people suddenly turn white, speak English, drive different cars, have a different way of organizing their whereabouts and so on. The notion of "neighbourhood" does not function in such a sense in any of the European countries I've been to long enough. Instead, we have city quarters, areas, settlements etc.

Manhattan, contrary to what I previously thought, is very diversified. Lower Manhattan is the financial center of the world - home to the world financial center and other complexes, where people mostly work and hardly ever live. The WFC has a nice marina and a park nearby, creating an atmosphere of coziness and relax, one I would not expect from that place.

Battery Park

In the south of Manhattan is the Battery Park - another peasant spot with many people relaxing, enjoying a snack or even fishing in the shadow of the nearby skyscrapers.

A distant look at the Statue of Liberty from Battery Park

Here you can already see the Liberty Island with the Statue of Liberty. To get there you take a ferry from the Islander terminal. I have left that for later.

A look at ground zero.

Moving north it is impossible to miss the Ground Zero. Today, for most New Yorkers it is mostly a transportation terminal - an underground rail (PATH) connects the Lower Manhattan with New Jersey. It is however still possible to see signs of rememberance to the nearly 2800 people who died here on September, 11th, 2001. Walking in the area gives a strange feeling, knowing it's the stage of the tragedy we all watched live on TV only a few years ago.

At the World Trade Center station - a flag with names of rescuers who perished in action

The fire engines in the area often display photos and names of the rescuers who perished as the twin towers collapsed. Somehow it is a great pity that the buildings are not there anymore - the Empire State Building is now the tallest, but knowing that there used to be structures that superceded its height takes away some of its splendor. In general, ground zero leaves me with an impression of how great the area and the structures must have been.

Moving further north I entered an area of much lower bulidings 3, 4 storry high. It was not very crowded and full of restaurants and hotels. After some time I decided to bank right, towards the 6th avenue. From there I took the walk towards Times Square, which I reached when it was dark.

Entering the Times Square is quite an impressive experience - the night turns to a day as hordes of people and cars condense trying to reach their destinations. It's not only bright - it's also loud as the drivers excessively use their horns, huge American trucks accellerate and break and, on some occasions, road workers drill in the asphalt (yes, at night). Every step taken at Times Square reveals a famous place or an icon of the American culture - Planet Hollywood, MTV studios, headquarters of large corporations, Madam Tussaud's or the NASDAQ banner are just a handful of the many examples.

A record of the route

In general the trip took me an entire day, although I must admit I was taking it easy. In total I walked 20km and only used public transportation (PATH and NJ Transit bus) to cross the Hudson back and forth. What other song can summarize the day better than "These boots are made for walking" by Nancy Sinatra.

New York, United States