Visiting New York City

I was born in Brooklyn, but my parents left when I was two. Now Faith and I are at the John F. Kennedy airport having just finished visiting friends in, yes, Brooklyn. Our stay was very pleasant. We saw a production of Shakespeare in Central Park (“Much Ado About Nothing”), beheld a ball-game on Coney Island, and ate at many EXTREMELY good restaurants. We were both surprised how quickly we took to the city, and agreed that we could easily live here someday. The food, theater, variety of people, public transportation, museums, the New York Public Library (a veritable church for books and those who love them)—the list of plusses is almost endless. The expected negatives—the crowding, concerns about personal safety, the difficulty of using the subway—turned out to be very weak negatives indeed. The streets were less crowded than expected, we never felt even remotely unsafe, and the subway is thoroughly manageable. (Also, people are more than happy to help out.) A “specific” terrorism warning reminded us that we still live in an unpredictable world, but the warning had no impact on us or our activities. (Nor did it have any appreciable impact on most New Yorkers, it seems.)

We are extremely relieved we came here. Besides simply enjoying the city, this extended layover was our chance to become at least partly acclimated to a very large city. On visiting the site of the World Trade Center, we found a sign that read: “If you can survive in New York City you can survive anywhere.” Given that we did survive, we took these words to heart.

As I write this, we are a couple hours away from boarding a 747 to Paris. The flight is only about seven hours long and we will arrive in France tomorrow morning. I will try to write again from there.