These Vagabond Shoes

New York, New York. It is always the same place and yet always entirely new. In order to fly to Brussels cheaply, I had to have a stopover. I could have a four hour stopover in some airport, or I could have a 12 hour stopover in NYC. With a 4 hour stop over, there really isn't time to comfortably leave the airport and get back for your flight, so you end up sitting around trying to digest some overprice airport food that you didn't really want, and looking at the duty free alcohol and chocolate that you don’t need. But a 12 hour stopover in NYC? Well that I can work with.

So we landed at Newark sometime after 7am. My big backpack was sent right on to Brussels, so that was great. I grabbed the air train and then the train to Newark Penn Station, and got the path train into NYC. I headed down to Sixth and Spring Street to start my first waling tour of Soho, Little Italy and Chinatown. It was great. She talked about the garment factories and the fires and all the Cast Iron Architecture. I had never really walked around Chinatown in NYC, so it was great. I grabbed dumplings at one of the little shops she stopped at (as did everyone else), and liberally doused them with sriracha sauce. Delicious.

I had a few minutes to grab a coffee and some free wifi before my second tour with the same guide began. This time the tour was a Lower East Side Food Tour. We again stopped for dumplings at another place. We also stopped for Matza bread.

I opted just before the last stop to head into the subway and retrace my steps back to the airport. It was a good thing too, because there was bad timing between every one of my connections and I barely made it back in time.

But I did, and I got on the flight, and I watched New York City fall away behind me, and the ocean spread out beneath me. I thought a lot about that great body of water below me, and how much closer and large it will be in just a few days.