My husband and I planned a fairly active summer this year. With increased gas prices and air fares, a road trip looked both, adventurous and cost effective for us. A week before our trip we booked our tickets with Greyhound buses. At US$312, a round trip for two looked like a steal.
Anyway, our trip started off somewhat badly. Our bus, scheduled to start at 8.15 p.m. from Toronto Bus Terminal left the stop at 9.15 p.m. thanks to lousy scheduling by Greyhound staff where they cramped everyone into a single long queue and allowed people to board first come first basis instead of allowing people to board based on the time they had booked for. Infact the ticket said we had to be at the station an hour earlier to our scheduled departure and we had made it, only to discover there were 200+ people lined up ahead of us for a 52-people capacity bus. Finally when we boarded, we were disappointed to see the seating were no way like the ones shown on the website. With very little leg room we just managed to stay cool and make ourselves as comfortable as possible. As we got closer to Buffalo, NY we saw lots of cars and buses heading towards the border for the long weekend of Victoria Day in Canada. Don't ask what happened next. I am going to tell you anyway. All the buses that were stopped for the customs check were lined up next to each other. There were atleast 4-5 buses ahead of us. To cut a long story short it look 3 hours for us to continue our trip to New York City via Syracuse from Buffalo (Later we heard the last bus that came with us completed the security check at 5 a.m.!!) Starving, with no preparation of carrying snacks plus not finding anything decent to eat, we landed at NYC at 9.45 a.m.(vs. 7 a.m.)and decided to discover the amazing subway system, only to find the subway stations too confusing, dirty and stinking. In any case, after moving from station to station we found out the line operating to our destination was not working that day. So we hopped off from the station and took the famous NY Taxi to the hotel where my brother was staying. I guess I can pretty well say that the trip went northbound there on! Must be the effect of seeing your own blood after eternity.
On Day 1, Saturday, Jay, Navin and I took a little walk to the Woodside neighbourhood and searched for some Indian restaurants. Not finding anything exciting, we stopped at a Thai restaurant to eat some chow. The pad thai noodles and spring rolls went down my gut in no time. With a slight hakka style this greasy food was a winner to me. The boys frowned on the fat sticking to their veg fried rice. For dessert I decided to try the rapidly-gaining-fame fried vanilla ice-cream. In the end, I was like a little kid peeling off the fruit skin to eat it. All that remained on my plate was the batter that the ice cream was fried in.
The afternoon remained nice and warm for spring season and we decided to head to MoMA (Museum of Modern Arts) per Navin's recommendation. The highlight of this visit for me was seeing Van Gogh's Starry Night, Seurat's paintings and other masters. After going through six levels of jaw dropping art and design we stopped at good ol' Starbucks for a cuppa and some snacks. Later we wandered away in downtown near Madison Square Garden and watched the glitz of the Big Apple, glassy eyed. As the sky turned dark, there were some light showers and we took refuge in Macy's, browsing through apparels and turned off at the unreasonable off-season prices. We walked back to Times Square and watched as numerous tourists snapped away at the huge digital billboards, cops and shops. With no gadgets in hands we had no way of finding a nice little restaurant to whet our appetite for Indian cuisine.So Jay decided to ask a friendly NYPD officer "Ahem, this is an unusual request but can you tell us if there is any Indian restaurant in this area?". The officer quietly looks at him and takes out his smartphone and googles Bombay Masala on 49th St. Not really hungry we decided to order something light, only to find the min.billing for each person is about $16 and our order didn't cover the per person requirement. Annoyed at this strange policy we find Pizza hut and order a nice hot Pizza to share between the three of us. Turns out, not only the Pizza is delicious and right portioned but saved some green$ for us! At about 10 p.m.we decide to call it a night. Jay and I are tired from a long bus journey. We plan to take the Hop off Hop on City tour early next morning. As we try to hail a taxi to our hotel we find that it is an off route and no taxi wants to go there. Finally a kind big Afro-American cab driver stops and gruffly asks us to take the ride in his big yellow taxi. Safely dropped off, we head to our rooms to sleep.
Day 2, we head to the City Tour Bus station and take the $55/person package tour to downtown area and Statue of Liberty. The ticket seller was very compelling and we were sold on to add the extra $10 to our package. Having seen most of downtown the previous night we go on to cover Liberty. As the tour guide explains all the landmarks to us we enjoy the excitement of being in an open roof top of the bus. We look at "Ground Zero" and the guide says that they are planning to unveil the largest man-made water falls in the area on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. We head to Battery Park and wait in the long queue (it is said that our line was one of the shortest, for a weekend) with people from all over the world to catch the ferry to Liberty Island. As we wait in the line Navin hears the Hot dog vendor talk in Kannada. He doesn't look Indian though. Thinking it is a mistake we move a few more steps ahead only to hear a busker play "Jana Gana Mana". He plays it once more for Navin to record on his camera. Few more steps ahead, a carribean plays calypso..this time it's "O Canada" for us. We smile and clap. The guy stops Navin and says "You from India? I love Indians..let me play something for you". You can see he has perfected the "Jana Gana Mana" more than the violin player. The line keeps moving. We see another lively middle aged gentleman with a rainbow colored curly haired wig. He is playing an old wooden acoustic guitar entertaining people from every nationality with his wonderful humour and lovely music. His lyrics were spontaneous as he asked people questions about themselves. He asked us where we were from. When we said Toronto, he broke into a song about a man and woman from Toronto holidaying in NYC. He looked at Navin and asked "Who is single?" When Navin blushed he asked if he would marry his sister, a 6'2'' 250 lbs black woman with big t**s who has money of her own. Navin blushed more! So the man went about making everyone in the line smiling and laughing and donating him money. Needless to say he had boxes of bill$ piled next to him. Finally when we had made it to the ticket check the lady looked at our ticket and shook her head saying it did not cover the ferry ride. Disappointed and shocked at being cheated we pouted and looked at the lady with surprised look on our faces. She must have felt sorry for us tourists and generously gestured for us to get in. What a Daymaker! We hopped on the ferry enjoying the ride on the water and saw lady Liberty waiting majestically for us. We took several pics and headed back to Battery Park and found out that the hot dog vendor with several other shop owners on the street were from Bengaluru and could indeed speak Kannada! They were originally from Tibet but had settled in bengaluru for a while with many other Tibetian settlers in Karnataka. As one of the shop owners talked to Navin we found that the Wall Street was a hop and jump away.
Next, we went to the now infamous wall street to see several land marks from movies and stories and news scandals and then the phone rang! Jay's sister and brother in law were in town to meet us all the way from Boston and it was a big siblings' meeting in Wall St. They took us to this nice Indian restaurant named "Utsav" and treated us to a lovely buffet lunch. Their mango mousse was to die for!
After several other small stops it was time for all of us to part. With a tight timeline, Navin headed off to the airport to catch his flight to London. We were dropped off at the Port of Authority Bus Station. Savitha and Balaji headed off to Boston. At night fall, we ate the delicious Iyengar Puliyogare Savitha made for us with home made curd and Frooti juice! And the trip to Toronto was smooth as ever. Victoria Day in Canada was celebrated with Jay and I sleeping away 6 am to 2.30 p.m.
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