On my U.S.A travel - City life

From Washington D.C, we traveled by Chinese operated bus to New York. We reached the city of sky scrappers at 2a.m.

NEW YORK (9th July - 11th July)


The bus dropped us at Madison square garden. At that hour of night, there were very few people on the road. Walking few foot steps ahead, we reached the metro station. The station was huge and the network seems to connect all nooks & corners of the city. Initially, it took us a while to understand the right route to reach our hostel (Lafayette) in Brooklyn.

After a very good sleep on the clean sheets, we woke up all refreshed & set to roam in the city. We first went to New York tourism center to find out the interesting places to visit in New York. I was overwhelmed with the number of possible options and felt that I have too less time to spend in the city. We decided to go for some of the commonly visited places, instead of doing anything off-beat.

We started from Lower Mahanttan & visited Wall Street first. The buildings on the streets were sky tall & posed a challenge for Jomy to take a good photo of them. The streets were very busy, people walking up & down the street, no one acknowledging the presence of others. There were no false smiles, greetings between the passers by, which I found to be very normal (unlike other parts of U.S). There were street vendors, mostly Pakistanis selling Halal food, pretzels and sandwiches. I don't know of any other place in U.S where food is sold on streets. I was quite happy to see this and ordered halal food for myself & Jomy. We fed ourselves sitting in a park along the side of Wall Street. I felt absolutely relaxed, sitting there without any worry & watching people passing by.

From there, we moved on to other places like Statue of Liberty, China town, Cathedrals, Empire State building, Central park etc. Central park was huge (~800 acres) - We didn't bother to walk a lot there. We found a nice landscape & made ourselves comfortable there.

Late in the night, we went to top of the Rockefeller building to catch the view of the lighted city - The view of Mahanttan skyline from there was astounding. I have never seen a city to be so beautiful before. We spent our time here till midnight and then planned to check out the night life at Times Square. Oh my god, even at 2A.M in the morning, there were so many people on the streets. The square was very well lit with huge colourful ad boards and the place was lively.

On the next day, we went to Times Square again. The place was really crowded and we tried to walk on the other nearby streets. Around this area, we found lots & lots of arts & entertainment theatres. There were so many shows going on every day in the city and found it to be opulent in arts & entertainment. Later in the day, we had our dinner in Hard Rock Cafe at Times square which I always wanted to go. The place was wonderful, with very good ambiance & music. After treating our belly well, we decided to call off for the day & took the metro to the hostel.

I found this city to be very interesting and to have many aspects which was missing in most of the U.S cities. I tried to relate it to my experience in Mumbai and could find similarities in many ways. I loved this city and I wish that I had few more days to spend here, in New York. But, the time had come for me to say Ciao to U.S and be back in Bangalore.

Ciao U.S.A...

On my U.S.A travel - Niagara & Washington D.C

After taking an overnight flight from Salt Lake City, we reached Buffalo International Airport to see the world famous Niagara falls.

NIAGARA FALLS (7th Jun)

We reached Buffalo airport around 11:30 a.m, hour & a half later than the scheduled time. Our rental car booking got canceled due to late arrival! After enquiry at the information center, we came to know about NFTA - NFTA provides good bus transportation in Niagara county and it charges only $3 for 25 miles drive to the falls.

The bus stopped at a very short walking distance from HI hostel located in a really olden part of downtown. This area seemed to be once a wealthy place, now occupied by not the well to-do families. May be the houses were passed to them second or third hand without any thought of renovating them.

We reached the hostel earlier than the actual check-in time (4 p.m to 6 p.m). So, we had to leave our luggage in the common area. We refreshed ourselves in the common rest area and started walking towards the falls. As we approached near the falls, there was a drastic change in the surroundings. There were quite some Punjabi dhabas with plenty of Indians around. In the near by parks, we could see Indian families relishing their home packed foods. It felt like without any warning, we were flung out of U.S and suddenly ended up in India! Anyway, we walked further towards the falls.

When my first sight fell on the falls, I was not greatly excited looking at the world's second largest waterfall. Yeah, it was king-sized. But, it didn't immediately arouse any great interest. I was wondering if anything was wrong with me! Still wondering about that, we purchased tickets for the historical "Maid of the Mist" boat ride. As the boat took off, I felt that this trip would be a great experience (don't know why!). Once the boat moved for some short distance, we could vividly see the voluminous falls from its base. As we approached closer, the roar of the falls became louder and strong winds were gushing. The wind brought lots of water and it felt like I was touching the falls.



The Niagara falls has three sections - American Falls, Bridal Veil and the Canadian Horseshoe Falls. The Canadian falls was probably 3 times bigger than the American falls and was much more beautiful. The boat ride was a wonderful experience and I was soaked with water. Feeling the monstrous falls from below it felt like really awesome. That was the moment, I realized the beauty & greatness of this place and found what was wrong with me then! I can embrace nature by being part of it, feeling it and not by merely observing it from far :)

Late in the evening, we once again went to the falls to enjoy the night view. The route to the falls from our hostel is through the olden town area. We were quite unsure of the safety as there were many strange looking people in the streets. But, some families were spending their evening time in their balconies (so unusual of U.S) and that gave us a slight sense of relief. They looked amicable and kind of greeted us into their streets with a smile.

At the night, the falls is lit with different colors of light. Red, blue, green, white, yellow etc. and that makes the night view very special here.

In the morning, we started towards the airport to catch our flight to Baltimore near Washington D.C.

WASHINGTON D.C (8th Jun)

A whole day of visiting U.S monuments was right in front of us. We visited White house museum, Washington Monument, State Capitol and various Congress buildings. Also, we could see White house from the fence(!) Washington D.C was full of administrative buildings and our legs were damn tried walking from one place to other.

HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM

In the afternoon, we chose to visit Holocaust Museum. This is a living memorial of the past and it includes details about Nazi assault, Rise of Hitler to power, fate of Jews when Hitler was in power, final end to all of these misery. It had lots of articles like clothes, shoes and other quintessential which were used by people during that miserable time. There was also an actual rail car which was used for transporting Jews all over from Europe to Ghettos, concentration camps and killing centers. I sensed helplessness and deprivation of hope when I entered into it.

Along the hall way, there were photos of hundreds & hundreds of Jews who had been killed by Nazi tyranny. At several places, there were videos on genocide & antisemitism committed by Nazis. One of the videos on genocide deeply bothered me and still bothers when I think of it. It was the fact about German doctors using Jews for their research - It was like using Guinea Pigs for research in laboratory. Most of the Jews used in those research became mentally retarded, died miserably. The sight of it was dreadful.

I must say that very high quality of research must have gone through in bringing up this museum and also a very great care is taken in arranging the facts & evidences. Unbelievably all the evidences there stood with full of life (death?) when I was amongst it. I am not a first timer to all these Holocaust facts. But, the way the whole museum is set up took me to the miserable 1930/40's.

At the end of the exhibition, tears were rolling down from some people's eyes. At that moment, I felt strong and bold, weak & vulnerable at the same time...