Trip to New York III

After the Niagara tour, I and my friend got back to our hotel in the evening. We had a couple of hour till sleeping time. So, we went to The Empire State Building to see night view of Manhattan. Even though we woke up early in the morning that day, we weren't sleepy. The building was near our hotel, it was just two blocks east. It took us about ten minutes on foot. But the observatory was crowded. So, we had to wait long time for our turn after a security check. I heard that public buildings like that have a heavy security check for safety in New York. I felt something weird because there aren't any security checks at public buildings in Japan. After a long wait, we finally got in the observatory. It was a kind of open-air observatory. The sky was clear and quiet breeze was blowing. I was excited about the beautiful night view in the moonlight. The scene was like a bright jewelry box. You can see whole Manhattan and adjacent islands such as Brooklyn, Queens and Bronx. That was the best night view that I had ever seen. I took a lot of picture of the night view. I'll never forget the beauty of night view.

The following the day, I went to a photo shop to develop my photos. And I walked around the Central Park. The park was located to the center of Manhattan. I heard that there were many kinds of facilities such as museum, concert hall, athletic field, pond, castle and so on. Inside of the park was quiet and good for relaxing. I thought it was very nice that there was a quiet park in the lively city.

The night, we went to see a Off Broadway Musical called Stomp. It was a kind of dance and sound performance. My friend said that was the most popular and easy musical because there were no words but only instrument's sound. I enjoyed the energetic performance. Especially, I was impressed by the amazing sense of rhythm. Seven or eight actors and actress made the complex rhythm sound by cans, plastic tubes, lighters, and other items. We had gotten the tickets at our hotel. It was very expensive.

After that, we went to a bar near our hotel and met Mike. I told him about the price of the ticket. He was surprised and said that the service charge at the hotel might be expensive. Actually, the service charge was almost half of the whole price. We made up our mind to buy tickets at the counter of the theater next time. Drinking at bars in New York was a lot of fun. Customers, waiter and waitress were friendly. A man who sat next to me was talking to me for a while. He came from Morocco. I thought that New York was exactly international city. Meeting people in foreign countries is exciting.