Nice New Yorkers: Riding the Subway

Riding the NYC subway

You may have read my previous post about my misadventures in the New York City subway upon arrival at Penn Station in NYC. After the temporary women’s restroom fiasco, which involved skating through a copious amount of urine in a scary subway elevator, I was feeling sorta cranky about New Yorkers. (Skating through urine is considerably cheaper than skating at Rockerfeller Center, but I really can’t recommend it.) New Yorkers, alas, had so far been either terse or completely unresponsive.

Photo Op: Madison Square Garden

We left Penn Station—for some reason we actually had to go OUT of the subway and walk down the street to another subway entrance in order to get on the train to the Metropolitan Museum. In doing so, we happened to be at Madison Square garden, so, what to do:

After this not-to-be-missed photo opportunity, we proceeded to enter the subway. Eek! I had read enough about the subway (and btw, it might be a good idea to actually read the stuff about how to navigate the subway, rather than just pinning it to your “New York City” Pinterest board) to know we had to buy a metro ticket, and:

• We should buy one we could add money to, to use throughout our stay.
• Sharing one ticket is okay.

We went to the machine where tickets are purchased. We stood in front of this machine staring at it.

Enter a very helpful New Yorker. This guy was hanging out at the entrance by the ticket machines, just telling everybody how to purchase their tickets. He gave me step-by-step instructions. (This possibly was a way for him to earn some money, but he didn’t get any from me because I was way too stressed out. Or maybe he was just a good Samaritan…thoughts?)

We got our metro card, somehow managed to swipe ourselves in, went down to the tracks, then wondered what side we should be on and if we were going the right direction. Asked a couple of people, who claimed they didn’t know. Really?

In the subway: a really nice New Yorker!

Discouraged but not quite defeated, I asked someone else and she was SO NICE! She told us all about the ways we could get to the Met. One involved changing trains, so we opted for one that meant taking just one train then a long walk (through Central Park, so seemed like a fine idea).

I told her this was my very first time on the New York subway. She said, wow, the very first? First subway ride, first metro stop? She totally entered into the moment with me. It made my day!

The garbled speech of transit workers

NNY (nice New Yorker) gave us a lot of helpful information. We got on the next train together, and I asked, will the stops be announced? She said, well, sometimes. But whether or not you will be able to understand the announcement is a different matter. Just then, the subway person made a totally unintelligible announcement! Whereupon NNY rolled her eyes and I began giggling uncontrollably (not really. About the uncontrollably. I was in complete control of my emotions per usual OF COURSE.) It sounded exactly like the Saturday Night Live skit about the garbled speech of transit workers (http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/transit-workers/n10376?snl=1).

Our nice New Yorker–unfortunately I didn’t ask her name, or I would immortalize her now in this here blog, though sainthood would be more appropriate–chatted with me until she had to get off at her stop; she was going to work. She told us how many stops we had left, and I counted them off on my fingers (so lucky I have 10). I could not understand a single transit announcement. We got off on 79th, started up the GPS, and began our trek to the Met.

How to ride: The subway for dummies

Only thing—we would have been better off to exit at 81st as per our original GPS directions (this discovered when the first leg of our walk took us past the 81st street subway exit.) Lessons learned:

• If you look up directions on Google Maps, you can choose the subway as one of your options. It will tell you what entrance to go to—you must go to that entrance—what train(s) to take and how many stops.
• You can trust the directions. If you go in the entrance specified and take the specified car (A, B, C, etc) you’ll be going the right direction. I THINK. Sometimes as you go in, you can choose to go either downtown or uptown. Otherwise, I guess it’s going the direction you want to go.
• Count the stops as you may not be able to understand what the heck the announcer is announcing. Sometimes at a stop, they will announce what the NEXT stop is going to be, which is helpful. Don’t count on that happening, though.
• To identify the train, watch it as it’s coming in. I sometimes found it hard to identify trains from the side. I know, I know, the letter is there, but I was too busy looking at the meaningless numbers (18889) on the side of the car and having a minor meltdown to realize up at the top (at intervals) is the letter of the car.

Bee and I had some disagreement about direction. She said you couldn’t tell what direction the cars were going, but it seemed to me they were going the same direction on both sides of the tracks. My main problem was I couldn’t identify the trains. This made me quite frustrated, and me frustrated sounds a bit like Minnie Mouse on crack. My vocal pitch causes dogs to bark several blocks away.

Calm down!

All this frustration was largely about stress. Once I was able to calm the heck down, everything became so much easier. So calm down! Easier said than done, I know, but it DOES get easier. By the end of day 2, I could actually ride the subway without dangerously high blood pressure. It probably also helped that I had more than 4 hours sleep and a decent cup of coffee. Not so my first New York subway ride.

Strolling through Central Park

After our successful subway ride, we had a great walk through Central Park. We were extremely lucky in the weather that day—it was about 45 degrees! (That same day in my hometown of Minneapolis was more than 30 degrees colder.) Central Park is so lovely! We saw a building that looked like a castle with a little lake, which I have since discovered is the lovely Belvedere Castle on Belvedere Lake:

Going to the Met

Another thing our nice New Yorker told us: the Met’s entrance fee is a suggested donation. I knew that, having done my research there. Actually, I seriously considered purchasing a membership–you get a discount if you don’t live in NYC (I’d hope so!). I was worried about spending a lot of time in line.

One thing I’d read mentioned that even if you have a pre-ticket, you still have to spend time standing in line to check your bag and your coat. Well, right in the gate Bee and I split up, she to check our backpack and coats, me to wait in the ticket line. Smart, right? One thing I didn’t know: the coat and bag check is absolutely free. Cool!

The ticket line wasn’t bad at all. I decided to pay $15 apiece for our tickets. (I felt a little diffident about that, until I ate in the cafeteria and paid $14 for a sandwich. Ouch and I’m glad to support the Met. It’s a GREAT PLACE even if it does have the world’s most expensive sandwiches.)

I was so glad we decided to take a chance with the line. It may have helped that it was fairly early in the day on a weekday. We got into Penn Station about 9 a.m. and (some in my party claim) we didn’t get to the Met till noon. OK, maybe it was noon-ish when we actually started in to the exhibits. Not early in my neck of the woods, but I don’t think NYC is an early-to-bed, early-to-rise kinda place.

I’ll say more about my experience at the Met in another post (hint: superlative! Loved, loved, loved the Met. Was there for hours and didn’t want to leave, but they made me).

Lots o’ New Yorkers are NICE

My best piece of advice on riding the NYC subway or otherwise getting around New York: if you need help, just ask somebody. Yes, some New Yorkers may be crabby. Some won’t know anything. Some will pretend to not know anything. But many more will be beyond helpful, not only answering your immediate question but going out of their way to get you to the right place. And some of the nicest New Yorkers you will find write this awesome blog: Mad Hatters NYC. Check it out to get a lot of great info about visiting the Big Apple—I did!

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