What a week - and it's not even done. This morning, my brother got married in Central Park. The day went beautifully; it was more perfect than any of us could have thought possible. Therefore, October 11 is a story for another day, and I'd instead like to write about the day before that, Wednesday. After about five hours of sleep, my parents and I boarded a train into Grand Central Station. I have seen it many times before, so we rushed through and got to check into our hotel at 1PM, even though we left at 9 that morning.
My dad had a hopeful enthusiasm for his own plans that slowly deteriorated as it got later. He wanted to walk around the streets and go into whatever place interested him instead of hitting the tourist sites, but it was the day before my brother's wedding and his fiance's parents were driving into the city from Wisconsin. We meant to only stop in to say hi before breaking off to indulge in our own plans, but were roped into having lunch with everyone. My brother was intent on taking us to P.J. Clarke's, citing little facts like how Nat King Cole proposed there and it serves Buddy Holly's favorite cheeseburger (if I'm remembering these correctly). Of course he only had a general idea of where it was, so it took us over a half hour of wandering the streets after a taxi ride, with his fiance's mother having a bad knee, to find it. Though the food was good, it was late in the afternoon by then, and it seemed like everyone's own plans had gone a bit awry.
The mood was rather low after that, and not helped by the fact that we wasted a bit more time sorting out hotel issues. It was past 5 by the time we finally split off and worked out the subway to get to Chinatown. My dad had earlier regaled me with tales of Chinatown in the 70's, where he happened inside a door which led to a hidden bazaar, which sounded too cool to be true to me.
Turns out, it was. Perhaps we were looking in the wrong place, but as the sun began to set we entered into Chinatown and were met with a lot of jewelry shops, tourist stores, and restaurants (which at the time was unhelpful, since we were still full from the late lunch). Every place seemed the same. There were kitschy, tacky tourist shops; restaurants (some of which were famous, making us more regretful of lunch); tea rooms (which seemed cool, but I'm not a fan of tea); foot massage parlors (a surprising amount); and half-outdoor shops selling natural herbs and a variety of dried things, which all had the same distinctive, strange smell I could not place.
While it was interesting and certainly seemed like a foreign pocket in the middle of NYC, I could only feel exhausted and vaguely disappointed by its lack of variety and authenticity. I might be singing a different tune if we went in with an empty stomach. We soon gave up and, after becoming a bit lost, made our way back to the hotel. At that point, which was pathetically only 7pm, I had to dedicate myself to homework.
So in summation, I spent a day in New York wasting time getting lost and dealing with hotel crap, wandering disappointed around Chinatown, and doing homework. The punchline is that exhausted as I was by then (I guess I have no stamina), I think I only got one or two hours of sleep when I resigned myself to bed. The next morning I had to be up by 6AM to prepare for the wedding, and that day I knew real exhaustion. Since that day is still today, I am currently writing this in a very sleep-deprived state. However, I'm pretty proud of myself for surviving, and considering how disappointing yesterday was, today was a blast. More on that is SURE to come!
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