NYC Christmas Dream - Part 1

A few weeks ago a friend of mine from church and I had a conversation about NYC and how we've never gone to the city during the Christmas holidays. As my friend, we'll call her Litgirl, and I marveled about the wonders of the Big Apple, we had this fanciful idea of what it would be like to be out there during the Christmas season. What with the lights, the tree at Rockefeller Plaza, ice-skating in Central Park and the Christmas wonderland in Macy's, how could we not aggrandize what the experience would be like? Therefore we decided to plan a day trip to NYC in order to do the "Christmas thing".

So today, after weeks of waiting and great anticipation, Litgirl and I boarded the train which transport us the 2 hours into NYC. We had a later start in the morning and so we didn't arrive in to the city until almost 1PM. Now, I normally don't do the "touristy" thing when I hang out in the city, however today was an exception because it was the Christmas season after all. Well, our grandiose plans of taking pictures in front of the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Plaza, shopping along Fifth Ave., and ice-skating in Central Park, sort of went south as soon as we arrived into the city. What with this being the last weekend before Christmas Eve, it appeared that the rest of the Tri-State area pretty much had the same idea as Litgirl and I. Upon our arrival into the city, we were met with multitudes of people. It was madness, it was insanity. What the hell were we thinking??? Nonetheless we trudged along, determined to arrive at each of our destination. Even if it was going to kill us. Let me put it this way, as soon as we saw the sea of people (and I literally mean SEA of people) in Rockefeller Plaza trying catch a glimpse of the infamous Christmas tree behind the skating rink, we decided that it wasn't worth trying to push our way amongst the crowd just to get a crappy, lopsided picture of the Rockefeller Christmas tree. Litgirl and I decided to walk over into Lexington Ave. to catch the subway down to Union Square's holiday market. Although there were a lot of people at the market, it wasn't as suffocating as it was in mid-town. After perusing though some of the stands, Litgirl and I picked up some prints of the Brooklyn Bridge to give as Christmas presents to our siblings. I decided not to give my brother the usual Gap/Banana Republic type sweater and actually put some thought into purchasing something that may add to the aesthetic faculties to his office or room. Later on we subwayed it further down into Canal Street where we haggled over goods with the ever-so-cheerful merchants. By the time we finished haggling in Canal Street, Litgirl and I were pretty much spent and so we took the subway back uptown to Penn Station, where we caught our train back into Jersey.

Despite of the insanity of the crowds, I still had a great time. Good company can usually turn a mediocre experience into something unforgettable. Thank God for Litgirl. :D