New Jersey (TAN): A city with its soul dipped in insanity, round the clock, every single day of the year.
This was my third time here, my most favourite city in the world. Now here’s where the magic lies. New York City for the third time still felt like the first time.
This is probably why I could not write about New York City while I was there. It blew out of my imagination, out of my writing capacities.
Super colourful. Super energetic. This city never fails to excite me. I was there for only a day this time, more of a 27-hour-stopover between Washington DC and New Jersey. And this time, unlike the last two times in Manhattan, we stayed in Queens.
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NYC is made of five boroughs – Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and Bronx. This was my first time in Queens, and we stayed near the 21st Street Queens Bridge station. This is an area totally different from Manhattan — Queens has an industrial belt close to the East riverside, and during the daytime you see workers wearing helmets busy packing and unpacking goods boxes.
The pink hued Queens Bridge overlooks the calm East River, and you can sit on one of the several wooden benches on the park and stare at the Manhattan skyline, a dream woven in concrete. Queens has small neighbourhoods, unlike Manhattan that is busier and bustling with palatial old world buildings and modern skyscrapers, branded stores and expensive eateries.
This time, we climbed atop the Empire State Building, and watched the city from the 86th floor observatory. It looks like a big lego game done right. There is a fantastic souvenir store on the ground floor of the Empire State Building where you can find fridge magnets, key rings, bottles, sippers, pens, photo frames and a lot more. I bought a miniature Empire State Building with King Kong hanging from the top!
The large flower pots behind Macy’s Mall in Manhattan have shifted few hundred feet to the right. The roadside stalls selling sugar coated peanuts and chicken gyro are the same. For USD 5, you can buy a good handful of sugar coated peanuts, and a lemon drink for USD 1.30.
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Author Aryani Banerjee gives us a peak into her US trip in this series
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