New York is like nowhere else. On a cool day in October, while attending a convention at the New York Sheraton next to Carnegie Hall, a close friend and I opted to play hooky from professional meetings and spend a day on the streets of the Big Apple. We rode the subway to Wall Street and spent a half hour watching the morning news reports in front of the New York Stock Exchange. Then we hiked to and all around Ground Zero and the new construction there, feeling the enormity of that horrible moment. From there we hoofed up to City Hall and over to Chinatown for a light lunch in a busy but wonderful restaurant. We hiked through Little Italy, So Ho, and over to NYU. We stopped in Greenwich Village for a beer at a quaint pub where we could relax and read the Onion at an outdoor table, and we dropped in on a wild costume store so my buddy could pick up something for a Halloween Party back home. We came up through the Garment District, past the street venders and past Madison Square Garden, and, eventually, we cut over to the Empire State Building and had another beer in the bar at its base. By this time it was dusk and cool, so we walked more briskly over to Radio City Music Hall and past the Rainbow Room, and finally arrived back at the hotel in time to change and go to dinner near Times Square at Becco, a fabulous Italian restaurant where the wine flows heavily and the three dish special leaves my mouth watering (even now). This long hike, some 80 city blocks, gave me an appreciation for the totality of NYC that I will treasure for a lifetime. Good company, good food, and unbelievable diversity. It was a work out, but it sure beats a long run in the park.
