Singing, chanting, and the sound of instruments I've never seen before in person flooded through my window.
At first, I was very mad. "REALLY?!! @#$*! I was trying to sleep in today!" Then I looked out my window so see women in colorful robes, with reflective stitching on their sleeves. The men wore simple tunics and pants and nearly all of them were wearing thong sandals. There was one central float that had Indian sounding music blasting from it, and had a banner that read "Hare Krishna" printed around it. I quickly forgot my anger and scrambled to find my camera, but sadly missed capturing the float. The river of singing people lasted 20 minutes, but after 5 minutes, the sound of taxis laying on their horns persisted for the other 15 minutes.
I then headed down to Union Square, to see what was going on at the Farmers market. I got my coffee and sat down on one of the many benches. A short, round man in a red shirt stumbled up the side walk and sat down across from me. He was holding an empty milk bottle and drumming on the bench, making sounds to his beat. He was chewing constantly but had an unlit cigarette sticking out of his mouth. He would mumble for a few minutes in what sounded like different languages, then he would fall silent for a minute. When a dog would walk pass he would wave his hand at it and would shout at it in an unknown language that I would call "Demon". The people around him on the benches were undisturbed but I found it fascinating.
Two of my friends joined me in the park and we set out to walk to the lower east side, and get "The best samosas in the world" from a nameless Indian restaurant. When we entered the restaurant, I had to duck my head to find a table, because the ceiling was covered in dangling Christmas tree lights, chili lights, streamers, beach balls, and soccer/football/baseball decorative lights. The wall was half mirror, half reflective geometric paper. Indian music blared from hidden speakers in the ceiling. All of my sensory receptors were overloaded. I was so distracted, I didn't register the waiter asking our order so I automatically said "I'll have the same". These were the best samosas ever though. It was a buttery pastry filled with carrots, chick peas, corn, potatoes, and spices.
I then introduced my friends to the best Vegan ice cream place I've ever been to called Lulas Sweet Apothecary and got what has become my usual Peanut Butter Fudge ice cream.
My friends and I decided that we would be tourists for the day and went to Times Square. It was filled with people. Everyone was taking pictures. Few spoke English. We sat down on a curb, overwhelmed.
We eventually got up to see a store that was dedicated to M&M's. Over all, I was disappointed. It seemed to be the capital of capitalism.
We then decided to go back to Union Square where we were entertained by a series of street performers.
Then on a whim, at 11pm, we decided to walk to where the World Trade Center stood - it was a very long walk.
When we got to "Ground Zero" I was amazed at how large the space was. The gap in the buildings was larger than most of the parks, and I tried to imagine the buildings towering over me taller than the ones I could see next to me. I couldn't. I had no concept of how tall that could actually be. We couldn't see beyond a fence that hid the area, but could see maybe a dozen cranes frozen in the middle of erecting multilevel buildings.
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