Saturday, November 1, 2008

NY Adventure Part VIII (Halloween Frightmare)

Halloween was beautiful here. The weather was warm and sunny. We had an excellent time touring through the Guggenheim Museum, and then spent the majority of the rest of the day at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. My only real regret about this whole trip has been not having quite enough time at The Met. I honestly did not realize just how HUGE this museum was. Or how absolutely fascinating. We strolled through so many galleries of things: Egyptian art, Asian art, Greek and Roman art......we got lost a couple of times. And we still didn't manage to see the whole thing. Next time I will skip the Museum of Natural History (it was interesting, but not as much as the Met), and probably would skip the Guggenheim and spend much more time at the Metropolitan. It was amazing.

On our way back to the apartment we saw lots of kids out in costume. Most of the shops and businesses seemed to be sponsoring trick-or-treating in the late afternoon. And that was fun to see. So many cute little kiddies, all dressed up and all excited about the candy...haha.

Things got a little sketchy after that. The village parade that I was so excited to see....well, we never made it. We TRIED to make it. We took a subway ride down to the village where we got stuck in a huge wave of people exiting the station out onto 6th Ave. And I mean stuck. Like seriously stuck. In a tiny, narrow corridor with dozens upon dozens of people still pushing their way off of the trains, and for some reason noone was exiting the station. We were being pushed and shoved and nobody could see why the crowd wasn't moving. The way the exit gates worked, noone could get back into the train area. We were locked in. I actually came close, like VERY close to having a full-blown panic attack. I'm claustrophobic anyway. And that was tight, and airless. Bruce admitted to feeling a little panic himself, so it wasn't just me. But finally things started moving and we made it back up to the street where I thought things would improve.....

There were just soooo many people down there for this parade. We walked for blocks trying to find just one area where we might could see at least part of the parade, but the crowd was too thick and too deep. There were a couple of spots where we got jammed in, almost as bad as the subway. And people were getting irritated and mean. There was some shoving and yelling, and Bruce and I decided to ditch our efforts before somebody went completely postal and got violent. I'm really not exaggerating. It was the only time I have felt unsafe here in this city.
And also....we were so paranoid after that subway incident, that we kind of wanted to get back to this area of Manhattan before the parade was over and everybody was trying to leave that area.
We came home and watched the parade on tv. A little sad, but true, and oh so much more satisfying than being stuck in those mobs of people. We did get to see a lot of characters all dressed up down there, though. NYC really parties for Halloween. Its just a lot rougher and wilder than we anticipated.

No comments: