Content area
Full Text
For 15 years they've been calling it the Big Apple, which is fine. Yet that hardly conveys the virtues and complexities of a scintillating lady with the vivacity of Liza Minnelli, the freshness of Brooke Shields, humor of Lily Tomlin and, when she's at her very best, the classic beauty of a Catherine Deneuve.
Like most metropolitan areas, it has its problems. Climbing aboard a crowded mid-Manhattan bus with incorrect change for the fare box, we suddenly found half a dozen fellow riders riffling through pockets and purses to help solve our dilemma.
New Yorkers are in fact the most provincial of all humans, taking pride in or defending their town with all the fervor of a Balkan villager. Yet many of us have forebears whose first stop was in New York, moving on to the Hartford Valley as Teutonic toolmakers, Scandinavian wheat farmers to Minnesota, Mediterranean fishermen to Gulf ports, whatever. They all came.
So this is the quintessential American city, an amalgam of the good, bad, wondrous and worrisome in us all.
Here to there: TWA, American, Pan Am and United will get you to JFK, PeoplExpress to Newark, all non-stop, several others with stops. Take a bus from JFK to two stations in Manhattan, cost $8, or one from Newark, cost $4.
Getting around town: Bus or subway both cost $1. Our cab fares around Manhattan averaged $4-$5 with tip.
How long/how much: It's a city of superlatives: 100,000 hotel rooms, 25,000 restaurants, 150 museums, 12,000 taxis and almost 400 theaters on and off Broadway. Making even a small dent in this behemoth takes at least four days, better a week.
...