NYC

I got to go to the Big Apple last week for work and I must admit it's a little different than my small town in Maine. Some of the major differences are.

Traffic lights
In Maine we have traffic lights, contrary to popular opinion, in fact in my town we have two of them. They are even the upgraded ones that change color from red to green to yellow, not just the blinkers we used to have. In NYC though they have lights all over the place, even some for people telling them when they can cross the street.

Restaurants
Ayuh we got these in Maine too, some are even the cool ones that you don't even need to leave the car to eat. Some are the fancy ones with printed out menus and some of the real fancy ones even have cloth napkins. In NYC though, every block had dozens of places to eat. Most of them I have no idea what it is I would have been eating, so I avoided them. One of my cardinal rules is, if you don;t know what 50% of the menu is, you shouldn't be there.

Nightlife
I know Maine nightlife seems like an oxymoron, but there are things to do in Maine after hours. You can have a bonfire, go visit friends, do chores like shovel snow, or chip ice, go to sleep, the options aren't exactly endless, but there are things to do. In NYC though you can apparently do anything at any hour. They had places open even past 9:00 when I went to sleep. Heck I bet some of them were open till damn near midnight.

Driving
I don't usually get car sick, but Holy Crap, cabby's and drivers in general are nuts down there. I mean I've been known to swerve and cross lanes, but only to avoid a chicken in the road, or a moose. They switch lanes just for practice I think, which would be fine, if there weren't cars already in the lane they wanted to suddenly move to. And what's up with the horns? I'm pretty sure you could disable a car by disconnecting the horn. People wouldn't know how to drive in the city without one. In Maine I use my horn to say "Hi neighbor!", in NYC I'm pretty sure, based on the hand and finger gestures, it means something different.

Overall it was nice to see, much different than I'm used to. The people were interesting, though I think I insulted the cab driver once or twice. He knew it was my first time to NYC so wanted to show me some sights. "and this is central park...".
I should have just ooohed and aahhed, but instead I blurted out "Really trees and grass? I've seen those before". Whoops.