You Made Me Love You

Dear New York City,
I really didn't want to fall in love with you.  I can't afford to live there, and it's expensive to travel there, but you still got to me.  So many wonderful things so close by, such variety of humanity, great food, bookshops, coffee shops, and the parks, parks everywhere!
You really made me love you.  Such diversity, even on the same block!  Having lived most of my life in cookie-cutter suburbs, you were a welcome breath of fresh air.  Oklahoma seemed isolated enough after coming back from a visit home to L.A., but now, oh, my gosh.  Downtown and Bricktown help, but still, there's only one NYC!

We recently spent three far too short days in New York City.  The photo above was the view out one of the windows of our hotel room.
I expected too much noise, too many people, and to feel psychically blasted by all the emotions of SO MANY PEOPLE.
Instead, I found a place that was noisy, sure, but no worse than here, really.  There were lots of people, but they were moving and not causing a problem for me.  As for the psychic energy, well, New Yorkers are pretty contained.  They keep most of what's going on in check.  There were a few instances of obviously annoyed people, but nothing openly hostile.
The biggest surprise for me in the city was how compact the whole place really is. You see Times Square and Rockefeller Plaza on TV, and they look HUGE.  They aren't.  Things take up surprisingly little space.
You can walk all over there, and it doesn't occur to you until later that you've walked so much.  There's so much to see, even in one city block.

Our hotel was in a great place.  Murray Hill, close to the Empire State Building.  You could also see the river from our hotel.  The Chrysler Building wasn't far, either.

 

Some of the room, though mostly these shots were to show that I put my "stuff" all over the place as George Carlin observed that we humans do...

East, more or less, from our hotel room window.  You can see the river.

The hotel itself, the Dumont Afinia, was absolutely wonderful.  Such a lovely view, a great location, a great, comfortable room, and a very helpful and efficient staff.

Above:  Nighttime views from our hotel room windows.

I had a great time visiting with friends I had only met online before, and finding that we are indeed just what we expected of each other!  So many sights to see, and not nearly enough time!  At least we got to Central Park and to MoMA.  I got to see Starry Night, and a few other famous paintings I was looking forward to seeing.  I wish we had decided to divide and conquer a bit though. I'd have seen more of the things I wanted to see if we had split up.  Trying to accommodate everyone was slowing us down.  We were obvious tourists, wandering around making photos of everything, and straggling along in a long line, one of us usually had a map out, it was hilarious!

 

Here we are in Washington Square Park  Fi, Mary, Larry, me, Geoff and Hayden, and Matt.

New York Public Library.

Arch at Washington Square Park

In The Park

We had to leave far too soon.  I took a LOT more pictures, and our friends have shared some of theirs, but I just don't have time or mental energy to post more right now.  The trip was wonderful,
but I would like to have had time to see more things, to spend more time with our friends, to get a better feel for the place.