New Year in New York
Our family does not like to celebrate the New Year at home. From the prospect of cooking Olivier, watching The Irony of Fate and Galkin and Pugacheva, it becomes sad. So this year we decided to visit friends in New York, we had been going to them for a long time and visas were open. A tourist visa for two years is very easy to obtain, you just need to contact a competent travel agency. Some happy families have their own family doctor. And we have such a “home agency”, where the client is always welcome and sent anywhere as a native. This is San Expo. This year we decided to settle in Manhattan, promised our ten-year-old daughter a holiday in Times Square, where at midnight on December 31, a glass ball descends on the spire of a skyscraper. We were lucky - the travel agent managed to book for us a room in a wonderful hotel on 57th street, immortalized by Remarque in his last unfinished work "Promised Land" ten minutes walk from Broadway and five from Central Park. I think it was not easy for him - both Americans and Europeans like to come to New York these days. It was even more difficult with tickets. Despite the crisis, the airlines were in no hurry to dump – the new year is a new year.
However, after a week-long search, with the help of the American side, the manager managed to "grab" for us an inexpensive ticket to the "British" ($ 900), and even with a return flight from Miami! We arrived on the 30th in the evening. The hotel turned out to be cozy and surprisingly very quiet, despite the fact that it is in the center of the city. Outside the window, large flakes of snow were falling against the backdrop of red brick houses familiar from Hollywood films. The meeting of the New Year promised to be romantic. In the morning, after breakfast, we went for a walk in Times Square. It turned out that the fun was in full swing there. A merry multi-tribal crowd sang, danced and gave interviews to TV stations around the world, which already in the morning took places for a nightly broadcast. It became clear that in the evening Times Square would not be overcrowded. Our reasonable child agreed to watch the ball fall on TV. We went to the "Rockefeller Center", where there is "the most beautiful tree in the world", as reported even by ORT. This is truly a wonderful place in New York. With a skating rink where you can ride if you want or watch how romantic Americans propose to their loved ones. They themselves saw how, in front of a huge crowd, a young man knelt down and handed the bride an engagement ring. Very dramatic. After admiring the wonderful angels located in the park at Rockefeller Plaza, we ended up near the Saks store on 5th Avenue. New Year's showcases "Saks" is an annual event that is worth seeing.
This year, due to the crisis, the design was modest, but it was "the modest charm of the bourgeoisie. " My husband was away on business, and nothing prevented my daughter and I from enjoying a walk through the famous shops of Fifth Avenue. Saks, Trump Center with a huge winter garden, a large toy store, and of course Tiffany. Nothing lifts your spirits quite like looking at diamonds. We, like the charming heroine Audrey Hepburn from the movie "Breakfast at Tiffany's", could not move away from the windows with jewelry from the new collection for a long time. Shoppers had plenty to do in New York. The Christmas sale was in full swing. Returning to the hotel and reunited with her husband, we went to dinner. Nearby we found a nice restaurant "66 Route". It is an American restaurant chain named after an old highway connecting west to east. Americans are very touching about their roads. They have one less problem for sure. It turned out that there were a few minutes left before the New Year in Moscow. The big screen broadcast a report from Red Square, there were BBC news. Red Square was for some reason dark and deserted.
The American teenagers at the next table perked up. Wow, Russia, and the New Year is also celebrated there. Made an order. The waitress smiled slyly, listening to our English. "You're russian? ' the husband guessed. It turned out to be a student from Vladivostok. Many of us work in New York. In this restaurant, many of the waiters were Russian. They congratulated each other. We got through to relatives who remained in Russia and drank with them to the sound of chimes.
It was a lot of fun. It was snowing outside the window. The journey has just begun. In the evening our friends were waiting for us. Leaving Manhattan, the taxi driver asked which road to take us. The daughter demanded to drive over the Brooklyn Bridge. She already knew that her breath would stop with delight when the glittering wall of downtown skyscrapers floated around the corner.
We celebrated the New Year at Brighton Beach. But this is a different New York and a completely different story.
Natalia