New York & metropolitan region: (mostly) sedentarian days

If you already looked at a map of the metropolitan area of New York, you realized how small is the island of Manhattan. Especially if we compare with Long Island that measures 200 km long and is all included in the metropolitan system! New york is one of these regions that has always something to show, one of these lucky places in which you can discover new things during years and years.

Manhattan can be divided in three parts, from South to North. In the bottom is the financial district, with Wall Street and the headquarters of many of the corporations from the Nasdaqu, the S&P 500, the Dow jones. It’s where most of the money is made and it’s where you can find some of the talest buildings.

Walking a little bit to the North you can find the Mid town, with its very fashionable districts: Soho, Greenwich Village, Chinatown. The buildings are a lot smaller and it’s where you can find the best exemples of the traditional arquitecture of New york. Iron structured buildings, red bricks and exterior metalic stairs like in Starsky and Hutch, when they have to catch a bad guy running in the city.

And then, in the top of the isle, we have the Upper Town, with its amazing housing costs, the biggest museums, Central Park, the old apartment of John Lennon, luxury cars with drivers, Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein and all their friends. Last thursday, after an other visit to the chinese embassy, we went to the Natural history Museum. Wonderfull. In a giant victorian building built during the second part if the XIXth century, beautiful scenes reproduct the life in the amazonian jungle, the african savana or the artic iceland. We loved it.

We also visited the MOMA, this famous museum which mixes great paints of the most brillants artists of the last century with most anonymous productions that made us think about the exceses of the relationships between art and money.

Just keep walking…

You have to walk a little more to reach the firts popular neighboorhouds of New York: Harlem and the Bronx, on the continent. We can find the other boroughs on Long Island: Brooklyn in the South West, Queens and Kings alittle more on the North.

Manny’s house is a little more in the East, just betwwen the thousand noises of Times Square and the silence of the woods. With him and Le Ana, we’re still living very nice days, sharing a meal at the night or speaking at breakfest, whith our eyes still mostly closed.

Long Island is also the place of the Long Island VW club, a great club we finally met last wednesday. In a german restaurant, with fresh beer and great people, we had a wonderful time, feeling big emotions about the way this people receive us. Now we both have a warm coat from the club and we will proudly walk with them on the amer¡can roads!

On saturday, with the men from the club, we spent all the day working on the bus and one more time, we’re very lucky. We only wanted to adjust the valves but we discovered that one of their supports was broken! Guess who is the bus working with a new pai of valves?! With Franck Don, Steve and the other guys we spent a great day and the bus can look the road with optimism.

We spent the night at Andrea and Brad’s place, eating delicous italian food and speaking until our eyes couldn’t stay open anymore. They traveled a lot too and it was great to speak, share experiences and opinions. On Sunday, with friends from the VW club, we went to discover the Eastern part of the isle. The full blue sky, the shining snow and the yellow vegetation had draw beautiful lanscapes. It was a day full of beauty, from the nature around us as much as from the people around us.

We were very happy to see back the Atlantic Ocean. Our ocean, as Iris said. The Ocean that saw us growing up, the Ocean that unifies our families, as our bus is going to do. A beautiful Ocean, especially in Long Island, where it brings the glacial but pure air of the North pole and where we’re spending sedentarian but wonderful days.