Aapo in NA: New York City

Thanksgiving in Canada took place on the 14th of October this year, so 14th and 15th were days off from classes. These were the only days I knew beforehand I could take off, so I had planned a trip to New York City for 11th - 15th of October already in July. Other than that, midterm exams were coming up for most people in the last couple of weeks, but my first midterm isn't until tomorrow. So I guess the best thing to do the night before is to write a blog post, right?

Big Apple

I arrived to NYC just before midnight on Friday, and was at my hotel around 1 AM. In the next following 4 days I got acquainted with local Subway system (which worked great by the way), walked roughly 15 km per day on average and tried to do and see as much as possible. I'll just add pictures and captions at the end of this post, and point out a few things that I found worth noting.

Street performers were (at least for me) a hidden gem in a city, that has so many other attractions to offer. I've come across these kinds of performances in bigger cities before, but the variety and skill of those individuals or groups is still amazing. I found that just walking through parks was definitely a great way to spend some time, while watching those people do their thing.
This shouldn't come as a surprise, but NYC is really expensive. My hotel was one of the cheaper ones, and let's just say that there weren't any children or families around (and I can understand why). Compared to other cities you can see the difference: before I came to St. John's in August I stayed in Toronto for a few days, and the hotel there was roughly the same price but much, much better. For the same kind of room that I had in Toronto, I would have probably had to pay 2x the money in NYC. Tourist attractions are very expensive as well, and luckily I managed to steer away from most of them. When you add tipping, donating to street performers etc, eating and all that, I found myself using ATMs alarmingly often (credit cards were not very reliable). I haven't dared to check out my bank account balance yet.
Public transport just works. All I had to do was get a MetroCard, and I could travel all around Manhattan, Brooklyn and much more without even thinking about taxis, buses or city-bikes. Only when I went across the river to NJ, I had to get separate train tickets.
NHL stadiums (at least the ones I went to) were surprisingly quiet. On average I'd say a regular SaiPa game is louder than a regular NYR/NJD game, even though the attendance in both games was probably 15 000 - 20 000 compared to SaiPa's average 3000 - 4000. And I'm not even exaggerating. So I guess "Tunnelma kuin SaiPan pelissä" is a valid praise after all. The level of play on the other hand is significantly higher: it's no wonder that NHL players make millions while Liiga players make a few hundred thousand per season at most. The NFL game I went to was great in terms of atmosphere, but to be fair, the attendance was about 78 500 so you'd expect a bit more noise.
Homeless people were extremely friendly and polite, which is something that I rarely hear mentioned. Not a single (homeless) person tried to press me to donate or insult me or anything like that. Even if I didn't give anything, everyone wished me God's blessings or "Have a nice day". I know my sample size is very small, but I've come across much more aggressive beggars in much shorter time spans in other cities.
On my way back to St. John's, I was supposed to fly via Toronto, just as I did when flying to NYC. However, my flight to Toronto was delayed so that I would've missed my connection to St. John's (which was also the last flight that day). I went to speak with Air Canada customer service officials, and no more than 10 minutes later I was physically sitting in a plane going to Montreal, from where I flew back to St. John's. I'm still amazed how easily and quickly the issue got sorted out, especially when considering some of the policies by other airlines (did someone say United?).

While I was supposed to be preparing for my midterms I've started planning what to do after the final exams, before coming back to Finland. I can't make any too detailed plans until I know my final exam schedule, but I booked flights from Orlando (Florida) to Helsinki on 20th - 21st of December, so at least I'll be home for Christmas.

-Aapo

Manhattan was pretty impressive from a plane at night.

Hudson river, Statue of Liberty, part of New Jersey (pictures from One World Trade Center, tallest building in the wolrd outside of Asia)

New Jersey

Manhattan

Downtown Manhattan, Brooklyn (across the river)

Other WTC towers.

WTC memorial.

Central Park. The contrast to surrounding infrastructure is quite noticeable.

A group doing some weird stuff in Central Park.

Washington Square Arch. Not quite as impressive as Arc de Triomphe.

This guy (IG: @howdidyougetthepianohere) was casually playing Chopin in the middle of Washington Square Park. The piano is custom made (cost around $60 000) so that the acoustics are best underneath the piano.