Musings

On the morning of 6 January, at 5 am, girlfriend and I got on a taxi that drove us through light snow to the airport. a quick check-in and baggage drop later, we stepped on through security and got on our first plane – a KLM flight to Amsterdam.

The HEL-AMS plane was an Embraer 190, a type I’d never flown before. Small but comfortable enough. After an uneventful 2,5 hour flight, we set to transfer to our Delta flight to JFK airport. Delta had chosen an Airbus A330-200 plane for this, and I have to say it’s a good aircraft. We were seated on row 29, right next to the emergency exit, so we had plenty of legroom. The in-flight entertainment kept us sane through the 7,5 hour flight (I watched Scott Pilgrim, she watched Toy Story 3).

Having landed in NYC, we had our fingerprints and photos taken at the border, and after formalities took a bus to the Port Authority, just a couple blocks away from our West 47th street residence.

After a night’s sleep and a good breakfast, we set out to go out and about. The first leg of our epic trek would be 50th street subway station, where we got on “the first train downtown,” the E to Ground Zero, where a memorial tower is being built. We decided to walk a little ways north, but the “light snow” turned into the most annoying kind of sleet – into the closest subway entrance we dived.

We made our way to the B&N on 5th avenue, where I searched for a book friend Shirina asked for… to no avail. Girlfriend got us a handy foldable map, and I began to covet a Nook/Kindle/tablet computer even more than before.

Having been on the go for a couple hours, we started feeling a little low on energy, and hopped across the 5th to a deli and had us a pair of paninis. Girl had also bought postcards from Barnes and now needed stamps – our new map proclaimed that the closest USPS office was at Grand Central, so walk there we did and got us some.

Then we went inside the terminal. And whoa, that place. I’ve been to all of London’s stations and they were impressive, but this one took the cake. We wandered around there for a while, admiring the place, witnessed a wedding taking place, and started making way to MoMA.

I don’t really have a lot to say about the place. Modern art is oftentimes just too weird for me, and a lot of the stuff there just didn’t evoke much in me. The kitchen exhibit was interesting however. On the other hand, the building itself was uninteresting in so many ways it bored me, in the same way Kiasma in Helsinki does. This is where London’s Tate Modern wins by a massive degree.

At this point we needed some rest and headed back to home base.