I SURVIVED THE NEW YORK SUBWAY!!!
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OK – so maybe the title is a LITTLE dramatic. Above you see my hubby in a bit of a predicament. We had purchased a $10 metro card for hubby and I to make it to the Statue of Liberty and back our first night at Toy Fair. We *should* have had enough money on the card to get us both there and back but the ticket machine overcharged us so my husband was in the subway and I was not. I walked over to the money machine to add more money onto our metro card and the family next to me couldn’t get the machine to accept their cash. Only the little girl spoke broken English so I told her to give me the cash and I would put it on my credit card.
…..which would have worked great if the money machine was working. We tried ALL four machines – no luck. They were ALL broken and not accepting money! SO here we were around midnight with my husband in the subway area and I was stuck outside of it. (note to the wise – don’t go in the subway along in the middle of the night!) Others in our area began to realize they were in the same situation so evidently the “New York” thing to do is to just open the emergency alarm doors and go through.
IT WAS LOUD! Alarms blaring in the subway – I’m sure you can imagine! I was terrified that cops would come out of nowhere and arrest us because we walked through the emergency door and set off the alarms…..until this happened several times on our New York adventure. It seems that this was nothing new and blaring alarms were nothing to turn your head at! HAH!
So once we made it through the alarms it was a whole different world down there! In just one night I saw pole dancers on the subway looking for money, singers, guitar players, even a pretty amazing drummer who had no arms! Kudos to him!
BUT it was amazing (and scary sometimes!) to ride the subway. I had only been on a subway one other time in Chicago and I was petrified to ride it! Not because I was afraid of the ride itself but of the people and filthiness underground! It was certainly a whole new experience for me! SO if you’ve never been in a subway before – make sure you go with a buddy and prepare yourself for the unexpected!
We went thru something like what you went thru. I was looking for a T-shirt saying I survived the New York subways. Statue of Liberty was an experience I will never foreget. There was 9 of us.