The NYC Experience: City on the Rebound

Morning Walk
Line @ Shake Shack was crazy
Not too much open at this point

New York rebounds fast!
It's pretty amazing actually.

I know that the clean-up will take months - and maybe for some - even years. But the speed at which shops and restaurants have opened is staggering. Part of the bus system was back up by 2pm today. The airports will open tomorrow. They opened 4 bridges and 1 tunnel today. They were also hoping to restore power tonight to a huge block of downtown - Unbelievable!

I took a walk this morning from my apartment on 50th St down Broadway to 33rd St, then back up via 8th avenue. At that time, about 30% of the shops and restaurants were opened even though we were still getting rain and lots of wind gusts. There were city crews out cleaning up and fixing stuff. There were quite a few people out and about.

At noon, we went out for lunch and walked down 9th Ave. About 50% of the shops and restaurants were open. We stopped in at a pizza place that had limited food but they were serving up what they had. I checked out the local churches, hoping to volunteer, but there really wasn't much going on in our area - things were getting back to normal. When I got home, my internet was down so I wasn't able to google volunteering until later in the evening.

I spent the afternoon catching up on my Smashbook and spent about 3 hours printing pics, smashing and journaling... it was a good activity for me today and definitely helped pass the time in a constructive way.

We Skyped with mom and dad when the internet came up and I started searching for volunteer opportunities - nothing was online, but Gina has seen a URL on the news. So I will try to catch that on the news tonight and hopefully be able to volunteer the next couple of days.

The one felled tree in our neighborhood - 50th St & 9th Ave

Gina was ready for a walk, so we went out for dinner - to a little Italian place on 48th and Broadway that has a piano bar. The service was TERRIBLE, but the piano bar was a lot of fun and the food, of course was fabulous! We took a walk down into Times Square and got some pictures - there were not many people out at all, but I'd say about 60% of the businesses were up and running. It was truly amazing to see so many places open for business so quickly. We popped in to the M&M store and they were blaring music and people were dancing all over the store - it was quite a scene!