Prologue:  Nic and I haven’t done any hard-core urban tourism since our 2016 jaunt across the pond to the UK.  I’ve done little to prepare mentally (other than re-watch Taxi Driver last week).  Usually my default for the summer is to find remote places under trees and sit there until I need to do otherwise.  With all the time spent in a small room with thirty teenagers, in a school with over 3,000 people, the space is nice, so I often prefer the solitude and quiet of nature to the hustle and bustle of urban streets for my vacation time.

That said, I have to admit that I’m also a bit of an introvert.  I can be social.  However, my thinking tends to the long term prose, which doesn’t always lend me to small talk.  As we are traveling in a group of teachers, and I generally don’t really like making small talk about school, it is a fight to pull out of my own introverted ways.

Despite this, I’m juiced about touring the city where I haven’t been in close to twenty years, where I came for a quick afternoon.

Act I: Mishaps in Manhattan

The morning starts with a text: the flight has been slightly delayed and we are no longer flying into LaGuardia, now into JFK.  However, this is a small blip compared to the fecal masterpiece that our husky has painted on the kitchen floor.  What was a leisurely stroll to the airport turns into a rush to clean the kitchen and get out the door.

At the airport, we meet two of our travel guides in the long-term parking and make our way to the terminal.  Admittedly, I’m running on scant sleep, and I play this to my introversion and do crossword puzzles, slowly nursing myself awake.

Finally, we are in the air, then on the ground, taking the bus from JFK across Queens and Brooklyn into a hotel in Chinatown.  While it seems somewhat odd to be a tourist in my own country, my eyes and media memory begin to connect with landmarks from stories of television, literature, music, and film.  It may seem a moot point to a native New Yorker—just another slow drive across the Brooklyn Bridge—but for an outsider, these images are often created in a fictional world first before they are physically true.  To the right (as we weave through road construction) rolls a hilly, expansive cemetery, and I think of hearses weighty with flowers, burying Don Vito as Sal offers to make the deal on his turf, revealing himself as the traitor. We pass a street that could’ve housed Aunt May and Uncle Ben’s house in the original Spider-Man.  As we turn the corner, the iconic Manhattan skyline appears, the establishing shot for so many famous stories.  I’m watching the map, dreaming of places that I can take a run in the city.  Perhaps for an introvert like me, it is my favorite way to see an urban landscape.

Put a hold on that.

I’m sitting close enough to the front of the bus to hear excited conversation.  It seems there is trouble with our arrangements.  I try not to speculate, but it seems a particular omen.  We cross the bridge and a 99 cent Pizza counter on the right.  The sidewalks are glutted with pedestrians.  Open wall space is tagged; each light pole is peppered with stickers and scribbles, marking the brief existence of a random passer-by.  We stop near a hotel that is not ours.  Then we start again.  Soon, we’re at our hotel, but we’re staying on the bus. We thought we had found a pause to relax for a bit, but forget it Jake:

Long story short.  The fearless and dominating USNWT came to town this morning for a morning GMA spot and a victory parade before flying cross country to crush it at the ESPYs and late-night TV on the West Coast.  Lots of people came into town.  Our hotel overbooked our rooms.  Oops.

So, we’re not homeless, but we’re in limbo, and the group is getting restless.  Sitting the hotel breakfast nook, I look for runners to see if there are good routes.  Maybe four pass in the hour we sit.  Eventually, we get metro cards and head off to dinner at a place calls Ray’s Pizza.  There are locals, just hanging out getting a slice and a beer, that give the large group sideways glances as we give Ray a round of applause and he tells his story.  He reminds me of the old man who sings “C’e La Luna Mezzo Mare” at Connie and Carlo’s wedding, and I half expect him to break into song.  He proudly gives us a tour of his really clean kitchen storage and prep room downstairs where “nothing is on the floor.”  The pizza is good, especially as it is the first substantive thing I’ve had to eat since a smoothie and a breakfast wrap at the Charlotte airport.

From here, we walk to the High-Line.  It’s an old elevated railroad track on the west side of Lower Manhattan that’s been converted to a nature walk—no small feat in this vast concrete jungle.  The walk has viewpoints that give us our first good introduction to the architectural canyons of the city, becoming more and more modernized.  It is later in the day, and more and more runners fill the street.  The sun begins to set, the shadows begin to blanket the city in the romantic feeling covering the young couples, families, and citizens taking in the evening sun above the city streets.

Soon we arrive at Chelsea Market.  It’s not unlike similar markets in other cities—a converted industrial building housing small shops and restaurants.  Of course, I’m initially drawn to the bookstore, but I begin to regret filling up on Ray’s, as the place has so much food to sample: Korean, sushi tacos, boozy milkshakes, Pho, olive chocolate almonds, raw oyster bars, Mediterranean street food.  Ray’s greasy pie has me filled and contented, but if this place ever decided to set up samples, I might stay here all day long.  Nic and I split a milkshake and head out to meet the group.

It is nightfall as we emerge.  It’s Wednesday, but the city streets are still alive with pedestrians. We are offered the opportunity to walk further or hit our hotel.  Most of us are drained after this day of travel that we elect to find our rest.  On the subway, still packed with people, I see a guy in a sleeveless Spider-Man shirt talking, and I start to think of all those stereotypical New Yorkers that I’ve seen over the years in films as real people.  Across the tracks, a train runs parallel, filled with people, then darts in to the dark of another tunnel.  We get off near 7th Avenue and pop up on a street corner near a vendor.

The hiccup in reservations provides us with a fortuitous twist at the end.  Our booking has been moved to the Wellington.  It is an old hotel.  The rooms are small.  They are undergoing re-modeling.  There are no room fridges, no vending machines, one ice machine on the ground floor.  There is no complementary breakfast, but the diner attached will sell you a $7 breakfast in NC for $25 or the attached gift shop will sell you a bottle of water for $3.  The A/C is old.  The rooms are small.  The bathrooms blast scalding hot water.

Why is this fortuitous?  Go out the front door.  Walk two blocks to the right and you’re in Central Park.  Walk ten blocks to the left and you’re in Times Square.  All of the sudden, the potential for running routes got much, much more interesting.  Maybe, I think, I’ll set an alarm and get up in the morning.  But this is a fool’s dream.  I’m so tired when we finally get into the room that I shower up and crash, forgetting to take my contacts out for the night, and sleep like the dead.