It's been a couple of weeks since I was in New York and I figure a brief post about it is in order. Thanks to everyone who offered their great advice before the trip. It was much appreciated. The following are my incredibly concise impressions of the city garnered from a whirlwind trip. Please forgive inaccurate place names and the like.

THREE DAYS IS FAR TOO SHORT

I guess this one is obvious to anyone who has ever been to New York. We really only had two nights in the city and this proved to be considerably too quick. Even staying focused in Manhattan, we barely scratched the surface.

WALKING IS A GREAT WAY TO SEE THE CITY

I was very surprised how close everything was in Manhattan. I had expected that one had to take the subway to get between neighborhoods all of the time, only to find that you can walk all the way from Chelsea (where we stayed at the lovely Chelsea Inn) through Greenwich Village through Tribeca through Battery Park through Wall Street through Chinatown through Little Italy through Soho in a good morning's walk. Even with wintery weather, walking was a wonderful way to get a brief sense of each neighborhood.

CLEAN STREETS AND COURTEOUS PEOPLE

I found almost all of the infamous stories about New York to be grossly untrue. Granted we were only visiting for a few days, but we found all of the areas we walked through and the subway to be relatively clean. We also found people surprisingly friendly. People thanked you for holding a door open, apologized for bumping into you on the street (no my wallet didn't get stolen), and were generally very polite. Even driving in Manhattan, cab drivers and others on the road drove aggressively but were reasonably courteous. Also, I'm not sure about the cause of this one, but I only saw one homeless person the whole time. This had more of the effect of making me ask "where the heck did they put the homeless people?" as opposed to making me feel like a problem had been solved.

THE MET IS TOO BIG

On the last day we were in New York we went to the Guggenheim Museum in the morning and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the afternoon. There was a confusing line to get into the Guggenheim, but it was certainly worth the wait. I was a bit lukewarm on the current exhibition "Singular Forms (Sometimes Repeated)" but the permanent collection, and really the building itself, were worth the whole trip in themselves. We unwisely arrived at the MET around one o'clock without having eaten lunch. Their collection is so vast and so dense that we left around five having strolled through maybe a third of the galleries. I guess this should just give me the impetus to return to New York sooner rather than later.

I SHOULDN'T NEED AN EXCUSE TO VISIT NEW YORK

Aside from some icy winter driving at some points, I honestly really enjoyed the entire trip. I had a great chance to spend a week traveling with my girlfriend. We enjoyed great food, we met some nice people, and we saw some wonderful things. I can totally see the attraction New York has for so many people. Enough said. I'll have to return soon.