I love New York City. Oh yeah! New York City!

Title's from "I Love NYC" by Andrew W.K. just so you know.

Having never been to New York City and only knowing it through The Media, I had no clear expectation of what I would find. Now though, I’ve had a brief glimpse of why people say it's the best city in the world.

My friends and I eschewed motor transportation and just hiked through Manhattan. We had 12 hours to do it in and we were determined to hit up our two desired locations: Campers (shoe store) in Soho and Central Park.

Walking down any of the 5th-8th Ave., I find myself feeling much less claustrophobic in Manhattan than say, Hong Kong, probably because it was early in the morning and with the wide sidewalks and four-five lane road, there's a greater sense of space between the towers (until you get into midtown, and well, that feeling goes out the window). It was very enjoyable actually walking through a near-empty Manhattan, since the city didn’t get going until 11AM (when we arrived, there was already a line-up of tourists itching to go up the Empire State Building). It was interesting watching the city’s residents wake up and slowly open up their shops, revving the economic engine that is Manhattan.

We walked through a bit of SoHo and Greenwich Village, but it was all too brief to really get a sense of what Jane Jacobs loved about the area. What also didn’t help was my focused pursuit of a Magnolia Bakery's cupcake, made more famous by SNL’s “Lazy Sunday” skit. And yet, I had to ask THREE different NY residents before I got an idea of where it was, the third being (I’m guessing) a transplanted Aussie who told me to just head west on Bleecker Street. Turns out, it was way the hell west (West 11th Street and Bleecker, FYI), but man, those cupcakes did have mad frosting!

We then headed up 8th Ave, which apparently was home to a gay district (if not ‘The’) as well as a weekly roving street fair on West 23rd Street. It was these impromptu non-touristy New York experiences that I enjoyed the most. But once we reached 31st Street, it was time to blend into the jam-packed crowd walking through Times Square. Pure sensory-overload, that’s how I would describe it. Everything exploded on a grand scale in neon-colour (made even more apparent in the evening). Even the blind could follow the New York Stock Exchange ticker tape. And of course, who could forget The Naked Cowboy, a Times Square staple…

Eventually we were free of the crowds and into the quieter attraction of Central Park. Time running short, we enlisted Omar and his pedicab, as he toured us through the lower half of the park. A Malian (?), a fan of the Celtics and Jay-Z, he showed us various notable landmarks (2nd oldest carousel, Central Park zoo, the fountains, Strawberry Fields, etc). You could spend an entire day in Central Park alone, but it was nice to be inside some greenery, if ever so briefly.

Best part of the trip: Manhattan’s grid system made it very easy to navigate, considering I had never been. The landmarks helped too. Runner-up was finding The Onion in newspaper format. It’s teh awesome!

Worst part of the trip: Being held up at US customs for 1-1.5 hrs because 3 of the passengers were trying to cross the border without an entry visa and with only their non-Canadian passports. Runner-up was that I couldn't bring back any Magnolia cupcakes...

Photos are all on Facebook. I’ll link them once my friends puts them up.

EDIT: oh wait, they won't let me link up...ummm...if you don't have Facebook, sorry.
EDIT2: Oh man, how could I leave out THE CUPCAKES as the best part of my trip?!