A Evening in the Big Apple

An unscheduled stop in the Big Apple, we had not planned to stop because we thought that it would be too difficult to find somewhere to stay. But when we were driving through the Bronx we both looked at each other and decided to try to find a place where we could park up for a couple of days. Wahid looked up on his GPS where there was a Wal*Mart in the neighbourhood, we found one in New Jersey. It was in a shopping area and there was a bus going into the centre of New York City. We had a quick bite to eat in the MH and grabbed all the stuff that we needed for the afternoon in town and went to the bus stop. To our surprise the bus arrived fairly quickly and off we went. It only took about 45 minutes and that was with heavy traffic. The bus stopped at the Port Authority bus depot and that is located right on 42nd street, not that far from Time Square & the Theatre district.
For me it was the first time in the Big Apple, and what struck me was who incredibility dirty it was on the streets. We have been to other cities in the States, and we had been so impressed how clean those cities were compared to some of the cities in Europe.

Besides, the streets here were not only dirty & smelly, but there was so much noise, cars honking their horn all the time, people swearing and most people seem so self-absorbed. Coming from Amsterdam, I am used to all off that but this was noise: multiplied about 10 times or so. My first instinct was to run back to the bus and get the hell out of there.
Wahid had been to New York a number of years ago, but he could not remember a thing about the area we were at and he has a no sense of direction anyway. So we just started walking not knowing in what direction we were going. Had a look in a couple of shops, all of them to Wahid’s interest though. Then we arrived on Time Square, it was getting dark by then and the square seemed so bright with all those huge neon lights. The square was taken over by tourist, they were all taking pictures and trying to avoid too been run over by the taxis that were zooming by. After a while walking around aimlessly, we found a little Indian fast food place near the bus depot and had a descent curry for less than 15 dollars for the both of us. (We are on a tied budget now that the trip is coming to an end in a couple of months). We went back to the bus depot to find the right bus that would take us back to Saddlebrook, New Jersey. We arrived without any problems back at the shopping centre were we had parked and turned in for the night.