Trip to New York I

I went to New York in September 2005. I went there with my friend, for sightseeing. About six months ago, I and my friend had gone to a restaurant and talked about traveling abroad. Then, I thought that New York was exciting city. And my former English teacher Mike was in New York and I was an expecting him to give us a kind of sightseeing tour in New York.

I went to New York for the first time. The flight took about twelve hours. It was not so comfortable but I could sleep well. A man I met at Narita airport, said twelve hours flight is the best time for sleeping. If we were going to San Francisco, it takes about nine hours. You can't sleep well as the flight is only nine hours. The man told me that sleeping well would minimize your jet lag.

The first day, we arrived at our hotel at 8:30 p.m. and then, I met Mike at the lobby after a long while. I felt very happy for seeing him in New York. After a greeting, we went out for drinking with him. Our hotel was near Penn station on 7th street in Manhattan. The location of the hotel was really convenient for sightseeing, because it was near the train and subway station, and it was in the middle area of Manhattan. We walked around Times Square on the way to the bar. The illumination of the buildings and signs were colorful and beautiful. And the streets were very busy. I thought that people went out to the lively area at Friday night. I was a little familiar with the sights in Times Square. My friends had told me that there are a lot of scenes of that area in American movies. After a few minutes, we arrived to the bar. Mike said that he missed Izakaya (Japanese style bar). I heard that there are no Izakaya in America. People in America goes to bars or restaurants for drinking. It was nice and old bar. We laughed and drank and had many fun conversations about old memories and recent news.

The second day, I and my friend joined in sightseeing tour in Manhattan. We went to Central Park, The Statue of Liberty, Ground Zero, Down Town area and so on. I thought New York has many kinds of area. You can say it's a multicultural society. People in New York came from other countries such as, South America, China, Korea, Italy and so on. I thought that the multicultural society like that makes New York active. In the area called Little Italy, there were a lot of outdoor stalls of foods and souvenirs. I heard there were a kind of Italian festival in that season. The festival street was too crowded to go through. After that, We got back to our hotel on 33th street on foot. Walking on street in New York was fun. There were a lot of old and artistic buildings, interesting shops like delicatessen and the different styles of traffic lights than Japanese ones.

The following day on Sunday, We went to China Town with Mike. There were a lot of Chinese restaurants and souvenir shops. The sights of the town reminded me of the trip to China in February. I didn't think there were any differences than real China. People in China Town ever speaks Chinese. Of course they could speak English, I think. After that, We walked around Greenwich Village and East Village. There were a lot of artistic wall-paints on buildings. After that, Mike took us to a hamburger shop. He said that he came to this hamburger shop several times and they serve nice and big hamburger. The hamburger was very big. Especially, amount of meat was very much. I remembered that I used to go to pizza shop in Atsugi with Mike and other friends. And We used to order a lot of plates of pizza more than we could eat. Actually, I couldn't finish the hamburger, but it was really delicious.