New York - everything is not at all as they show us
Hello compatriots!
I decided to leave my review about a trip to New York, usually there is no time and laziness to do this at all, but before going there, like many others, I turned the Internet around, saw a lot of beautiful photos, clips, reviews, and as many probably formed some opinion about the city , which I must definitely get into and see everything with my own eyes. So, I have an opinion that in all kinds of sources of information, the city of New York is very much overrated, like America itself. Starting from Kennedy Airport, where we landed and ending with the last day of our stay, the feeling that life in America stopped somewhere in the 90s did not leave, since everything you touch does not have the first freshness - railings, elevators, dishes in a restaurant, hotel furniture, etc. Life just froze, it is clear that there was rapid growth, everything grew and developed and seemed to stop abruptly. Leaving Moscow, and even more so from Russia, in the 90s to New York, it’s really possible that your head just clouded over from everything you saw, but now Moscow has caught up with New York very much, and by some parameters has come out ahead, we are much greener, cleaner, most of the places you touch in the restaurant, park, subway, etc. are all new or very recently made, renovated, installed....
So, starting from the airport, their Kennedy, compared to our Sheremetyevo, from where we flew, it's like flying from civilization to the Soviet Union. Our airport is simply a modern indicator of cleanliness and convenience. Then I got into a taxi with trepidation and thought, well, now we will have beautiful views of the city, but alas, crap roadsides, road repairs, broken asphalt and traffic jams.
The hotel for 5500 per day in the center left the same impression - everything was purchased and renovated 20 years ago, well, in principle, we did not go to live in a hotel, the main thing for us in it is a shower, Wi-Fi and a bed. A lot has been dug up in the city, houses are covered with construction nets, there are scaffoldings, asphalt almost everywhere has a lot of kalleinity and spot repairs with patches, on which even a Toyota Camry taxi, for example, rumbles like an old VAZ. Going down the subway once, I realized why tourists in Moscow walk with their heads up and take pictures of everything, in New York there are narrow platforms, a low ceiling, metal beams with peeling paint, mold and fungus can be found on the walls, and all this can be seen without peering right in front of your nose going up the escalator. The cars themselves are good and fresh.
We went to Brighton Beach, bought tickets for Niagara Falls from a Russian tour company with a Russian guide, so there’s nothing to see in the Russian district, firstly it’s very far from the center of New York, about an hour by taxi, different industrial zones and not the best areas cities. The Russian district is bordered by abandoned houses and boarded up McDonald's. Nothing in the district itself impressed me, they made me feel sorry for everything, the signs on the houses like we had in the 90s - it was written on cardboard with paints - shoes, a lawyer, a cafe - it’s just awful, in Moscow everything has long been removed. We sat on the embankment in the restaurant "Tatiana" all the furniture and utensils were bought a long time ago, the food - well, ordinary, nothing special - dumplings, herring and much more from our usual table. Of course, after a few days of purely American food with soda and French fries, it's like a balm for the soul. By the way, their food starts to bother even despite the fact that once a day we still ate in some good restaurant, and the other two meals are purely American food. They cook pizza really well, sabway is tastier than ours, but still you really want home-style familiar cuisine, in two weeks you start just dreaming about borscht. In the city, evening walks in absolutely any area will be overshadowed, since at 9 pm all closed restaurants, shops and other premises take out huge black bags of garbage on the sidewalk and in some places it’s not just a few bags, but you walk right like in a tunnel, on one side there are skyscrapers , on the other garbage heap. Their famous Times Square - the street that never sleeps, is really always full of people and bright as day. But it made a big impression on me if I arrived 10-20 years ago, and now it’s just big screens of different technologies with constantly flashing ads installed randomly within a radius of 500 meters along skyscrapers and EVERYTHING, nothing really special. Well, the only thing I advise is to go to the Buba cump restaurant on this street, it is very popular, you even need to stand in line there, but it's worth it, it's delicious. The first time I visited such a restaurant in Hollywood, the family really liked it, now we do not miss the opportunity to visit again. In the same place, be sure to visit the Madame Tussauds museum and some other wonderful museum nearby, but you won’t miss it, it is filled with various eccentricities. We visited the Rockefeller skyscraper, I can say that the night city in the photo on the Internet is much better than you see it live. We flew in a helicopter over the city, it's much more interesting.
Central Park did not cause any enthusiasm, everywhere along the paths for some reason a rusty and rickety metal fence that spoils the whole view, the only thing that impresses is that you are sitting on the grass, there is greenery around, and the horizon is covered with skyscrapers all around. And since the park is like a park, our Tsaritsy park, for example, is even better. And of course, I’ll put in my two cents about shopping, which is so praised on the Internet. In general, you can find not bad stores of famous brands with prices 30-40% lower than in Moscow, there is a difference even more, BUT basically everything that comes across is ordinary consumer goods, no different from stock stores in any city. I typed in Google - shopping in New York, the very first article where a certain clothing designer highly recommends the store - Centry 21. My wife and I specially went there by taxi, arrived and were disappointed, we saw Centroobuv stores in Russia, that's the same thing. Plastic disposable shoes, incomprehensible clothes of dubious quality, but sometimes with expensive labels, and so floors 5-6, and not only we ran into this article, we met a lot of Russians there. Advertising works fine, the Americans are great here, but the store and its contents are g….
We went to the advertised areas of Chinatown and Little Italy, in fact, these are the same houses as everywhere else, only different signs on the houses, and in the Italian restaurant we were served by a resident of Tajikistan, who spoke Russian very well and we must give him his due - well, straight Italian, fit into their color.
For 12 days of stay, we spent 2 days on a trip to Niagara Falls, the rest of the time we went through New York all the way and across, and he gave the impression that you never need to return there again, the world is huge, there are many more interesting places and even such that you want to visit again and again. The city itself is all under repair, with broken roads and garbage, but the suburbs are radically different, everything is like in the rest of America, clean, beautiful and comfortable. We received a visa half a year ago for three years, for the new year we traveled all over California by car + Las Vegas, and so Los Angeles made a much greater and positive impression. Very clean, people are all positive and relaxed)). In New York, it feels like all normal people are sitting somewhere high in skyscrapers, and below are tourists and all sorts of rabble.
By the way, advice, do not buy any tours to America, tighten up a little, plan everything yourself, there is enough information on the Internet for this. I am English, like my wife, we know very poorly, but this did not stop us from traveling around 4 cities for the new year and visiting a bunch of places, and visiting New York a month ago. When we were traveling in a bus with Russian tourists to the waterfalls, I looked at their tours, most of them went that way. I felt sorry for them, judging by the schedule, their poor either on the bus, or on the plane, or out of the bus and running through the beautiful places of America, while passing by very close to much more interesting places. They spend the entire main vacation somewhere and enjoy a small part.
Also, hotels and car rentals did not cause a lot of negativity, they all take a deposit, but then some of them forget to return it to the card.
As a result, we were satisfied with our vacation, we saw another world and a city, but what they show us in American cinema and the Internet is actually not at all like that.
