Madame Tussads & Empire State Building - May 2 '08

It was around 2am on May 1 when we started sleeping.Gopal and Raj started scanning through the TV Channels. Raj (Rajender Gurram) is my team mate and a very good friend of me. He cannot live without two things. One is very good spicy andhra food & the second one is movies. I asked them to switch off the TV.mmm..No Chance....I was very tired & started sleeping placing an alarm at 8:00am.

We got ready on time and the hotel graciously dropped us in the Jamaica metro railway station. These hotels have good habit of providing complimentary pick up and drop to nearest railway station & airports. We got the tickets to Penn Station(34th Street). It was a 25 min travel from Jamaica to Penn Station.

Times Square listed in the top of our plan for the day. Geetha and Gopal are the navigators of the tour. They both had a map in the hand and plan in the mind. We just followed them. Geetha has been to Newyork already a year back and she knows quite lot of places there. That helped us a lot. She got her parents to US recently & care on her parents throughout the tour is phenomenal.

In the mean time - we reached Penn Station & took a subway train and got down at 42nd street to see Times square. Its not only that Newyork was busy. The underworld of Newyork was also busy. As we reached Times Square - our hands became reflexive to our vision & the cameras started twinkling. These guys told that we were going to Madame Tussads. I didnot know what it is. I was busy listening the busy of Newyork.

We entered into a building. There were two rows of queue standing and there was a stair case nearest to the entrance. It resembled some textile shop in chennai. We already bought the Newyork city pass so we didnot stand on the line. We got our tickets showing the pass and walked in.

As i walked in, I saw Morgan Freeman standing.....I walked towards him. But he did not move. Then i observed its made of wax. I remembered seeing my friends posing with Diana, Angelina jolie in orkut. Oh...this is the place they took all those photographs..Its the wax museum of Newyork. It had almost all the celebrities of the world and the only Indian was M.K.Gandhi. Then what else to say. The musuem would never need any lightings as the cameras flickered more than 60 times per second. We started taking orkut snaps but did not end until after 3 hours.

There were lot of photos that were taken in the museum. The photo that i love was the one i took with Morgan Freeman. Cos of the excellent role he played in Shawshank redemption. I would say I liked him in the movie than Tim Robbins.When you like somebody you ll like all the things associated with them & no matter what it is. mmm..Yeah..I love that photo.

It was around 3:30 we came out of Madame Tussads. We all were very hungry. The plan was to go to "Saravana Bhavan" for lunch. We caught a subway train and arrived at a station. I dont remember the what the station was. Later we came to know that it was a wrong station to go to Saravana Bhavan but the right station to go Central Park.

We got two taxis to go to Saravana Bhavan. The address we had was 102 lexington. Gopal,Geetha's Mom, Geetha's Dad were in one taxi and me,raj, geetha were in the other one. Gopal's taxi took them to Saravana Bhavan. The taxi we took drove us to 102nd street lexington. As we reached there we saw there was no saravana bhavan. Oops...!! we were screwed for the second time but this time not by the sardar.

We called Gops and he told that they are in Saravana Bhavan and it is in 26th Street. Wow..We travelled from 102nd Street to 26th Street, Lexington. It took around 40 mins to reach there. The traffic was less but the signals were more. One thing i understood during the drive was NY is horizontally divided into streets and vertically into avenues. It was a costly understanding ofcourse as we paid 25 bugs more to beat this bush driving around.

After the lunch the next place of visit in our list was Brooklyn Bridge. 28th Street & 23rd street are the subway stations which are near to Hotel Saravana Bhavan. We walked to 28th Street and catched a subway train to Brooklyn Bridge.

It was around 6:30pm we reached the station. You need walk a while to reach the bridge from the station. The breeze was cold & little heavy as we climbed over the bridge and it whispered that we are little late to see the bridge. There was an american joking on the road in that chill weather. Gopal & Me faced towards each other and uttered "Ooty kuluru la anchu manikku joking thevayada....??"

As we climbed we saw her. I remembered i have seen her picture somewhere. How can I forgot? she is the one who posed on the wrapper of my nightmare subject's Textbook - Engineering Mechanics by Beer & Johnson. I am so fortunate to clear that subject.

She was 3/4 mile in length & she stood across the hudson river. She connected the brooklyn & Manhattan of Newyork. Steel wires woven on the top suspended her potraying the art of civil engineering. It was absolutely chill and windy and we prepared to leave.

Our next plan was to visit Empire State Building - The world tallest building as WTC is destructed. We reached there around 9:30pm. The reception welcomed us stating that it is obsolutely misty and it was a zero visiblity day. Empire State building has 102 floors. They will take you to 102nd floor and you can have an excellent view of Newyork. As i told - it was a zero visibility day. So like attending classes in the college for attendance - we went to 86th floor and 102nd floor. But could not see anything except the cloud/fog around us.

The Travel to Newyork - May 1 '08

This is one of the excellent trips i have been to.Eyes stayed away from the outlook, ears did not rest on the office phones & index finger tapped on the cameras to the keyboard instead. We laughed more than we spoke. We saw more than we breath. We saw the width of the world in the breadth of the eyes.

It was around 4pm i came from office on May 1st to catch the flight at 6pm. I was actually late but i am little early than Voldemort(Gopal).The itenary to Newyork was San Antonio - Atlanta -Newyork JFK Airport. Anyhow we reached San Antonio airport around 5pm. All the crap security checks got over and we boarded the flight on time.

The flight was operated by Delta Airlines. It was a small one - 75 seater. There are two things that an air carrier should consider while operating flights. The seats should be spacious enough for the comfort of the passengers and the air hostess should be good for the comfort of the bachelors. You should not be tall and fat to get seated on that flight comfortably. On the second one - the flight is not eligible to carry eligible bachelors like me.

Anyhow the pilot drove smart and landed to Atlanta on time at around 8:30pm..When we landed Atlanta we saw the flight. I told Gops that the pilot should park the flight in a kaayalan kadai and get pericham pazham before he leaves for the day. Gops patted on my comment by his immediate out bursting laugh.

We had one hour gap for the next flight to Newyork. We bought rice bouritto in a mexican restaurant for the dinner. The flight to Newyork was a good one. It was around 9:30 she started moving away from the gate. She speeded through the runway, climbed up, pierced into the air and exhibited the technological extravaganca. I have not become crazy enough to describe a take off but i would say i enjoyed that.

As she climbed up, pilot screened some crap movie and as i saw no one saw the movie. We also did not like that. Voldy took his lap top and screened"Hotel Rwanda". It was a film on the war between two communities in Africa - Hutu & Tutsi. Nearly one hour went on the movie.

Pilot announced that we are 100 miles away from Newyork. Actually the two rows infront of us were empty. It was a thursday so no wonder that its empty. I shifted from my seat to the window seat in the front row. I looked through the window. We were approaching New york and the pilot reduced the altitude gradually..We almost reached New york city. It glittered like a gold of zero carrat.

We landed on the John F Kennedy Airport at around 12:30am on May 2nd, The friday. Geetha waited nearly an hour to collect her baggage. JFK is one of the busiest airports in the world. Every minute a flight will take off and every minute a flight will land.

We came outside the airport and took two taxis. Myself, Geetha's mom & Geetha's dad were in one taxi and others were in the other one. To our surprise - the taxi driver was an Indian - Punjabi - Sardar. We told him where wanted to go and he speeded up the car.

We paid for the taxi and reached the hotel. We gave the reservation print out to the receptionist and he slapped on our face saying that we have reached a wrong hotel. Actually we booked hotel in Comfort Inn near JFK but the sardar dropped us in the other comfort inn. we got screwed up. Not only us the other cab where raj, geetha & gops travelled was also screwed. Because when sardar started from the airport he asked the other cab also to follow him.Probably this should be added in the list of existing sardar jokes. Anyways we were screwed up.

The receptionist was a hyderabadi - doing MS in Virginia University and working here as a part time. Bad donkeys - small wall.He helped getting another taxi and we finally reached the hotel where we have booked.....