So I just back from a trip to New York (New York, how original, I know). But it was amazing nonetheless, and not to mention incredibly sweaty. I’m the kind of person that begins to wither as soon as the temperature starts to simmer above the 20 degree mark… yeah, sad. Maybe I’m suited for life in Calgary afterall.
Anyways, due to my post-vacation depression (and boredom), I wanted to make a journal-esque post recapping my experience in the Big Apple, including the 5 brief hours I spent being stranded in Montreal. Let us start this recapitulation of events with…
Day 1
The trip started off pretty well, we left nice and early for the Calgary airport. The flight to Montreal went smoothly (I say this because I slept for the whole 4 hours and something minutes). The flight to New York however, was the absolute worst, because it didn’t happen. Turns out, every morning flight to New York that day was cancelled due to thunderstorms there. Now a cancelled flight is no biggie, not a huge concern of monstrous proportions determining the fine line between life and death. However in this case, it might as well have been. Every single morning flight, from every airline was cancelled, incoming or oncoming, to every airport in New York (JFK, Newark, LaGuardia). There were a couple hundred (maybe even thousands?) of travellers who were basically, stranded at the Montreal airport. And every other flight for later in the day was completely booked, meaning the earliest flight out was for the next day at 7:55pm.
In retrospect, I probably should’ve been okay with staying in Montreal for one more night. It’s really quite a lovely city. In retrospect that is. At the moment I was too busy panicking about not being in New York. Eventually, after exhausting all other options (which were few and far in between), we decided to buy 3 tickets for a 9 hour Greyhound bus ride to New York, where we would arrive at 1:38am in the morning. Hey better than 9 pm the next day, we figured. The bus wasn’t scheduled to leave for another 5 hours, which gave us some time to explore the Montreal downtown area.
The downtown area is decorated with an abundance of funky little niche shops, colorful pedestrians and older, rustic brick buildings surrounded by a plumage of wrought iron gates. Unlike it’s western neighbours, Montreal breathes their own Francophone culture with pride, exhaling an appreciation of their history through an exorbitant display of art and culture.
Unfortunately, I can’t speak further of the beauty in the city of Montreal, having only spent around 10 hours in total there. Likewise, I can’t speak French very well either. The extent of the use of my “fluency” in French measured up to be when a waitress asked how we were in French, and I answered so-so. When she continued speaking in French, I had to tell her we could only understand English. I guess I should’ve paid more attention during French class for all those years.
Anyways, around 5:30 pm, we finally boarded the Greyhound and were off to New York.
Day 2
Finally, finally, we were in New York. At this point, I had already become quite skeptical we would ever get there. Our first day in New York consisted mostly of wandering down the streets of SoHo (where our hotel was) and doing some shopping (yes I am vain, sue me).
We went around SoHo, up to Houston street and probably around NoHo as well. We passed through Chinatown, which is huge compared to ours, and eventually ended up around the Williamsburg bridge.
At this point, the day drew near an end with the sun beginning to hover towards the horizon, and we took the subway back to our hotel. Speaking of the subway, the stations are literally like saunas. It was so ridiculously hot and humid down there, I think I was close to being reduced into a puddle of human flesh and nastiness the first time we took the subway.
Anyways, that concludes the first two days of my travels. This blogpost ended up being a lot longer than I expected, with all the picture spam. More to come later!