New Yorkers are NICE! Except for one.

Ok, make yourself a drink and get comfortable, this one's going to be a long one!!! This week, mom's visiting from Tuesday evening through mid-day Sunday, and when we were planning the visit, we decided to have a big gala day in New York City, with two main goals: a dim sum lunch in Chinatown, and a visit to the Orchid Show at the New York Botanical Garden. This required lots of pre-planning, since Chinatown is at the very south end of the city, and the garden is north of Manhattan, in the Bronx... but I'll start at the beginning.

We left home with enough time to get to the train station in Dover (less than 15 minutes away) and park, not counting it being nearly 10am and all of the parking lots were full! But when we drove by the station, we noticed the VERY FIRST parking spot was open, so we gleefully pulled in. Then we realized that the parking meter was broken (thus no one else had parked there), but we said, "screw it!" as the train was leaving in about 5 minutes and we didn't have time to look elsewhere! Oliver was *very* fascinated with the train, as you can imagine... he spent the whole trip to the city (about 75 minutes) watching the doors open and close, looking out the window, watching other trains zoom by, and just generally admiring the novelty of it all. Here's a picture of him on his first train trip.

When we got to Penn Station, we followed signs to the subway lines and got a train straight to Canal Street in Chinatown. The reason I've called this entry "New Yorkers are Nice" is that the ENTIRE day, every single time we got to stairs or an escalator or a door (which is OFTEN, when you're navigating the NY subway system), someone came right over to help us. We never asked, they just came right up and offered - they held doors, carried the front of the stroller up or down stairs, helped with directions, often at great length. It's one thing if it happens once or twice, but it was all day, consistently, and it was quite impressive! Except one guy, but we'll get to that later!

So when we got to Chinatown, we walked several blocks to our restaurant, passing the busy street vendors selling purses and scarves, Chinese souvenirs, toys, fruits and vegetables, fresh fish (see photos). We chose a highly rated dim sum restaurant, Ping's Seafood, and had a wonderful assortment of our very favorites: shrimp dumplings, pork and shrimp shumai, pork buns, sticky rice, crispy dumplings... all insanely delicious. I got two portions of pork shumai, as I knew Oliver loved them - he couldn't get enough!! As you can see...

Sadly, the time came when we had to finish our dim sum lunch. :-) We got the subway up to 14th street, then changed trains to go allllll the way up to the end of the green line in the Bronx, the second to the last stop. Unfortunately, the Botanical Garden is about 10 blocks from the subway station, so we could either walk or take the bus, and there was a bus waiting right there, so we hopped on. As much as you can "hop" with a big stroller, a near-30 pound boy, and two increasingly fatigued women! We told the driver we'd like to get off at the garden, and he said he'd make an announcement (foreshadow). So we went to the back of the bus (as requested by said busdriver, with our big stroller). A few minutes later, after we'd stopped, we heard an announcement to the effect of "mother with stroller, exit here for the Botanical Garden." So we jumped up, made our way through the throng of people to the back door, and a man there tried to yell to the driver to OPEN THE DOOR! And two seconds later, the bus drove away from the stop! So we were trapped on the bus, watching helplessly as the huge grounds of the garden passed us by and we got farther and farther away. A few blocks later, the bus finally stopped and we got out, exclaiming very unladylike things to the bus as it drove away (or more specifically, to the driver, the one New Yorker who failed us miserably)... what's the point in saying you should exit the bus, but not opening the back door and then driving away???? So we walked as quickly as we could back to the garden entrance (we were now late for our scheduled entry time), and thereafter returned to our only good NY experiences!

With tickets to the orchid show at the garden, we wandered around and marveled at it all - a very impressive exhibit! Oliver, surely exhausted at this point (approaching 4pm) with no nap all day, was happy to run around and investigate everything. He had lots of admirers as he went from place to place, kept everyone smiling.

When we left, we had to decide if we'd try to make our way back to the subway station, then take a subway (during rush hour) down to Grand Central, then have to get to Penn Station from there - OR take a cab! So we decided to take a cab! Which turned out to be a wonderful decision - it wasn't *too* expensive, and Oliver finally got to take a nap! He was strapped into a safety belt between me and mom in the back (eek, no car seat!!), and within about 3 minutes he was snoring next to me (see photo in part 2), and got to sleep almost 40 minutes, when I had to wake him up at Penn Station (which made him very grumpy, poor thing!). Such a well-deserved nap - what a great boy he'd been all day!! And talk about New Yorkers - our cabby actually apologized to us about the heavy traffic!! We were enjoying every minute of the ride, though - sleeping boy, a chance to sit down, perfect!

At the station, we quickly realized there was an express train leaving for Dover in about 4 minutes, so we rushed down to the track, and we managed to catch it, even making our way with the stroller down a big escalator! Amazing, considering the hundreds of people swarming around. As soon as we got on the train, two businessmen jumped up and offered us their seats - we were so grateful! Oliver was a bit cranky on the ride home, not terrible though, and certainly understandable. The icing on the cake - no ticket on the car when we got back to the parking lot! So, that's pretty much the story of our day, a wonderful day in the big city. Now Oliver and I are all geared up for another trip to Chinatown in a couple of weeks, where we'll be meeting Rachel and Beth and little Saul for dim sum... you can NEVER have too much dim sum!