A couple of weeks ago I had a business trip to New York, I needed to leave Guatemala and get to New York ASAP as I was helping my brother to place a hotel supply order for Guatemala. Not only I love to do business but to travel so I guess it was going to be a perfect time for us.
I guess I was really excited as I'd never been there before. I was looking forward to visiting this enigmatic place that has been going through a lot of changes. I guess after September 11th New York turned into a symbol of hope and freedom all at once. More than anything else I wanted to visit the Statue of liberty and the Empire State building, but it was a good experience to visit both places, so full of history and meaning. People from all over the world visit these two places. I was amazed that after this tragedy New York is so full of life.
I always heard about the subway systems so I really wanted to live the
experience and I was impressed with the amount of people that travel
every single day in those. You have to be fast and clever to make sure
you don’t get lost of you get the wrong station, that was a good
experience for me. But guess what during; the experience my friend Jan
and I, got lost, they funny thing was that she supposed to be the tour
guide as she was in NY a couple of years ago, not only that but she was
getting tired and I love that kind of rush and she doesn’t. So it was a
tense and fun experience for me.
We got to the point that she decided we were going to take a cab, and
we did once we though our salvation was the cab. Our hopes were
destroyed when we realized the guy didn’t know how to get to our final
destination in Brooklyn, and then I got so mad that I told the guy to
simply stop the cab and go from there. He felt really bad and guess
what? He was from somewhere from the Middle East so the stereotype was
true, all those taxi drivers are from India, Pakistan, or so. After
that we were able to find a subway station that will take us home
(hotel) , we were so tired after that, I think we walked all together
like 10 to 15 miles and we were not in out best moods.
After that we got to a place where we needed to take a bus that will
take us in front of the hotel. The bus was packed and we didn’t sit
together or so. So our plan was that we going to get off one bus stop
before the hotel to some food and then walk to the hotel. Along the
ride I guess I understood that plan was different so my friend got off
at the bus station and I waited until the next one.
There I’m getting off at the hotel bus stop and my friend wasn’t there,
it was the most funny experience of the day, I was laughing so hard and
she wasn’t having fun, she was 2-3 blocks away from the hotel so I
walked to find her and there she was starting to cry, I guess we got to
live or feel the experience in a different way. Well I need to remember
women enjoy living an intense drama. At the end we ended up having
dinner at this really nice rest-café from the neighborhood, it was a
great experience. It was one of those cafés where everybody knows
everybody and they are a big family, I felt we were the only strangers
but they treated us like one of them.
At the end all I can say is that New York is one of the most amazing
places you can visit, in fact in two weeks I’m going back.
That tells
you something.
Pablo Castañeda is a Guatemalan writer and spends his time between his country and the U.S. He is the
author of Latin Lovers: Do We Really Exist? To read Pablo’s complete bio, click here
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