My first week in NYC

So I am coming to the end of my first few weeks in NYC, I am heading back to the suburbs of Atlanta in a few days, where I will be furiously working on a costuming project, spending time with the young adult kids, and then coming back here to finish setting up the apartment. I will bringing some stuff from the house like plates, and other stuff I have in triplicate to make the apartment more homey.

I am very lucky to have pen pal of sorts.  Writing to someone daily helped my chronicle my journey.

Here are some of the more "fun" occurrences as they happened:

I am on the bus to NY right now. I should be there In a few hours. I need a Xanax. I thought I was all hardy and such. I could rough it. I'm not above the bus. Ummm. Apparently I'm a delicate flower. First, the lack of communication. How dare I expect customer service and think my questions should be answered. This is the bus lady and it costs $50 round trip. Shut up and get in line. I climb onto the bus and I say "the floor is sticky". An older pretty well put together woman looks at me and says "and..." I. Other words, were you expecting caviar? I silence myself and settle in only to find that my seat was In The back of the bus. The front rows were reserved for the workers they were transporting to work. For real. So I'm the back of the damn bus with a bunch of folks that are neither aware of or give a darn about niceties. They brought aboard the most pungent smelling food and ate it noisily. When they were done they fell into sleep apnea filled slumbers. I wanted to get up And poke people to make sure they were breathing.
 And finally as I settled in and was comfortable with an adorable tattooed young male nestled into my shoulder, I saw a roach. I like to have died. Everyone else was like. Oh yes, a roach , let's call him Ivan. Me, I'm trying to get a photo of it for my online review while simultaneously calculating how far a walk it was from that point. And when I got up for our potty break, I saw thAt everyone had thrown their half eaten dinners in the floor. There were little sewAge streams on the bus. At least that told me I could take my butt back to sleep because the roach/es were not thinking about me. It had a virtual smorgasbord to enjoy. 

While I was on the bus, I got a phone call from my kids.  Son finally passed his road test.  Not
because he had failed it before, but because he kept putting it off.  At least now I could relax that both kids could drive and be independent in our absence.

Then I had to get from the bus to the apartment:

 Uber. They are supposed to find the passengers by GPS. The driver "could not find me" yesterday. Then a cab refused to take me. Finally a cab driver picked me up but told me, I really don't want to take you but you looked nice. The problem is that I was getting picked up in Chinatown at the bus stop to go to the financial district. For one, it was a cheap fare. For two, downtown is congested. The streets are very, very narrow, and it's a waste of time for me. The driver that took me said it a $13 fare... I gave him 20. If I didn't have 3 bags I would have walked the mile. Interestingly on the news today they are talking about how some dignitary was refused a ride to the Bronx because it's not so nice there and they can't pick up a safe return fare, so their time is wasted. They're talking about how NYC cabbies and UBERS cherry pick the customers preferring only he rich areas, but I have first hand proof that they won't go to the Wall St area too.

I found that the best shopping requires at least a 15 minute walk:

 I'm going to have to reacquaint myself with the subway. Today we covered a lot of miles.. First we walked a mile to Bed, Bath, and Beyond, then we stopped at Whole Foods for my Toms of Maine toothpaste. Then we decided to go to IKEA even though my knee was giving out. We tried to get there by subway and failed. Wrong train, the. Wrong direction, then... Oh wait, we have to take a bus to get all the way there... We called an Uber and it was about $20 at that point. Then a memory struck me... Something about a ferry and IKEA. Apparently, On the weekends you can take a water taxi to IKEA for free...from Manhattan. And actually IKEA will refund your $5.00 ride of you spend $10 during the week. So the ride home was free across the river, maybe 10 minutes, Then a 10 minute walk. I can't feel my feet right now.

So that was the gist of my first week.  Rediscovering NYC is quite a challenge.