patrícia furtado

After watching so many films and tv shows set in New York, being here for the first time has this wonderful and weird feeling of familiarity. Two days passed and I still feel like I’m dreaming.

New York city is beautiful, as expected, but I’m also loving the New Yorkers I keep meeting and the way the city keeps changing from block to block. If you go down Broadway, from the Upper West Side to Times Square, you have the feeling you’re shrinking as the buildings get taller and taller, and the crowd gets bigger, and the lights get sronger.

Central Park is a cliche on it’s own. There are incredible numbers of joggers, some left at the entry of the park by their limo drivers, dark skinned nannies prancing around the rich blond babies they look after, professional dog walkers, with a cloud of different dogs on leashes - how I wonder how they keep war from starting with such a crowd!

I still haven’t been south of 34th Street - except for the ferry ride to Staten Island - and I feel like I have walked more in these 2 days than I have in the rest of the year! I’ve been wandering around with no purpose, just going where I feel like at a given moment, and it’s a worderful thing to bump unexpectedly into landmarks: hey, look, it’s the Rockefeller building!

I still have plenty of time to explore, I know. Still, I feel like I can’t lose a second, like New York will slip right through my fingers if I don’t grasp it all. So, off I go, lower Manhattan is waiting!