Our first trip to New York occurred almost immediately after we had jumped into our new business. We had attended the Seattle Gift Fair, and we were invited to go on to the New York Gift Show. Now Art and I are West Coast People, the farthest east either of us had ever been was Colorado. Although we were excited at the prospect of going to the Big Apple, we also were a bit apprehensive, but taking the advice of a friend, we made reservations in a hotel that we were assured was in an "ok" part of town, with the added caveat of "don't wander around by yourself at night".

We arrived in the early evening, gathered up our luggage and got in the long taxi queue. When our turn arrived we handed the driver the piece of paper with the name of our hotel destination. He didn't speak or read English, not one word. He was able to acknowledge that he knew the hotel we wanted to go to, but that was the first and last bit of communication that passed between us during the long, long, long ride into the city. Wow! That first time driving into Manhattan is really something you never forget. All those buildings and that skyline that you have only seen on NYPD, or maybe Cagny and Lacey!

Anyway, we drove and drove, then drove some more, until I began to think that I recognized certain places and buildings from maybe fifteen minutes earlier when we had passed them the first, second, and once, even a third time. It occurred to me as we wound in and out of incredibly busy streets with a man that occasionally let loose with a battery of unintelligible sounds, that none of us, Art, me, OR OUR DRIVER had a clue where we were. We continued to dart in and out of traffic as Jabul (we had been together so long now that we had managed to exchange names) grew increasingly agitated.

Suddenly with a squeal of tires and a triumph noise from our driver we swerved across traffic and slammed to a stop in front of our destination. Thanking him profusely (we really were very grateful to be getting out) we gathered up our belongings and wandered into the lobby to check in. Tired and tense, all we wanted to do was get our room so that we could think about getting a couple of beers and dinner. Now New York has a reputation for being a bit more abrupt than we West Coast People are used to, and the dour girl that checked us in was able to maintain that reputation. She exuded the air of someone who had her own things to be doing, and that we were an incredible annoyance and interruption in her evening's plans.

Glaring at us and sighing with the burden of it all, she gave us our room key and pointed to the elevators. We dragged our luggage across the lobby and just as we got in and the doors were about to close, a very lovely and refined looking woman in a full length fur coat fashioned from the remains of small rodents, hurried up to the elevator. Art held the door open for her, for which she graciously thanked him. As the doors began to close a second time, another woman, a bit younger than the first, and again, nicely dressed, (no dead animals though) came hurrying across the hall and grabbed the elevator door to hold it so that she could get in.

Immediately the first woman sprang forward with the quickness of a cat. Placing both hands on the younger woman's shoulders, she gave her a terrific push back out of the elevator, then quickly pushed the "close" button so that the doors snapped shut and the elevator began to lift before the other poor woman could even regain her balance. "The people in this town are just like animals" growled our elevator companion, then smiled sweetly at Art and me, who by now were plastered against the back wall of the small box, trying to act nonchalant and like nothing out-of-the-ordinary had occurred, wondering how long it would take us to get to our fifteenth floor destination. The rest of the short ride up was tense (for Art and me) but uneventful. As we exited at our floor, our fur clad companion never offered a word of explanation for her bizarre behavior, just gave us another of her sweet smiles and politely wished us a pleasant evening. Welcome to New York!

Lots of money purchases you very little room in Manhattan. Dumping our bags on the bed, all we wanted to do was wash up and see about getting something to eat. However, we quickly discovered that there wasn't room to open the bathroom door until you had closed the entry door. Oh well . . . .

The entire last two hours had been so surrealistic, and with our friend's warning not to go out at night seeming to be more and more appropriate, we decided the only way we would be able to have a meal, yet still survive until morning in this city, was to eat in the hotel. A flyer in the lobby had advertised an Indian restaurant on premise, and after a bit of a hunt, we discovered it down a steep flight of stairs, deep in the bowels of the hotel. Still a bit cautious from the experience with the "elevator lady", we peered around the room, taking the lay of the land and its occupants, which, it turned out, were only the two of us. Although it seemed odd that there was no one else in the restaurant, we weren't about to venture further afield. Ordering a couple of Taj Mahal Indian beers we settled in for what turned out to be an absolutely excellent meal. Later we realized that almost no one in New York would ever consider sitting down for dinner before 9:00 p.m., but we just figured that whatever the reason, we were grateful for the lack of dinner companions, considering our recent encounters.

And so we passed our first night in THE CITY, and had our initial experience with the wild and wonderful world that is Manhattan. Suffice it to say that we soon realized that we would not be taking our life in our hands if we ventured beyond our hotel lobby after dark, and with that first night under our belts, we were ready to start exploring this ever changing, fast paced, good, bad and fascinating place that Tom Wingo in "Prince of Tides" so aptly observed as being "too much of too much".