Six days in the bustling Big Apple can make coming back home to a putrid, stale Orange County a very hard thing to do.

New York City is an extreme change of pace from the sprawling, isolated, crummy sidewalks of Orlando. I traded in gas money for a subway card and decided that a few shady stares on the train (and the risk of getting stabbed) were far better than tolerating mindless road rage on I-4. While this was not my first visit to the city, it was the only time that I could wander around freely following our own itinerary unchaperoned. Of course this only meant that we’d often bicker endlessly over directions on a map but what is New York City without a late-night lover’s quarrel in front of seven drug addicts and a blind guitarist in the subway?

My boyfriend and I stayed at the Wellington Hotel for 3 nights and spent the rest of our evenings in Astoria, Queens and traveling to the city. Our primary purpose was to find swanky bars and lounges to catch as many World Cup Soccer games as possible. Meanwhile, I was busy trying to figure out how long it would take me to pay off my credit card debt after all the shopping I was hell-bent on doing. I’ll leave the majority of the soccer commentary to my boyfriend. That’s right, people, he’s going to be guest posting.

Nearly every street corner hosts a slew of vendors selling insufferably huge movie star sunglasses, junky posters and city skyline photos. My interior radar for knockoff handbags and other miscellaneous crap nearly sent me into an epileptic fit as I tried to caculate how long that fake leather smell would last me on a “Louis Vuitton”.

As a tourist, it’s hard to know exactly where to shop and how to find the most interesting items. Browsing through East Village proved to be a challenge since most of the items in St. Mark’s Place are outrageously overpriced or generally targeted to a certain demographic (those fabulous Lolitas jamming out to Billy Idol). Window shopping made me feel painfully out of date and I learned that Boho skirts are very much in and everything else is pretty much out. Now I’m compelled to throw out my entire wardrobe and wear a wrinkly piece of see-through fabric all day and be worshipped for hipness. I bought a ten dollar wrap around skirt and proved that there are indeed bargains in one of the most expensive cities in the world.

Kinokuniya Bookstore, a japanese bookstore across the street from Rockefeller Center, turned out to be my ultimate kryptonite. I bought 34 bucks worth of adorable yet useless asian stationary and Japanese magazines (although I’d recommend going to Chinatown or Astoria for Asian drinks and magazines since their about 3-4 dollars cheaper). This is the extent of my very sad obsession.

Absorbing the culture and fine arts of New York City is as easy as heading over to the J.P. Morgan Library or MOMA on Free Friday afternoons. Being in the presence of mindblowing art by Frida Kahlo, Jose Clemente Orozco, Salvador Dali and Vincent Van Gogh at the Museum of Modern Art left me completely breatheless.

Even more impressive was the incredible collection of genuine handwritten pieces of literature at the J.P. Morgan Library. Only thin glass panes seperated me from the graceful, careful handwriting of Edgar Allen Poe and the nearly 300-year old music notes of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. I was practically starstruck that I had the manuscripts of Brontë, Milton and Lincoln all splayed out before me as if they were all written moments before I had arrived. Like, ohmigod, I would’ve taken a picture with Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol but the security guard wouldn’t let me bring my camera!

I will always be dumbfounded by the need for New Yorkers (or any city dwellers) to vacation and/or move to Orlando, Florida. Perhaps they’ve been fooled by the expansive cheapness of International Drive or the immaculate fakery of Disney World. I suppose there is only a certain level of city life that one can tolerate before moving on to a different place. However, Florida is not exactly the tropical paradise that I imagine most people think it to be. But, you can drive to an expensive recreation of it if you’re willing to sit in 45 minutes of bumper to bumper traffic among throngs of SUVs all sporting Bush/Cheney bumper stickers and cutting you off before an exit.

I would comment more on how great watching the World Cup Games with an actual fan base in NYC was (in Orlando they think it’s an international drinking contest) or how aggravating it was to watch the games on ESPN (a channel that insists on covering the screen with the most useless sports information at crucial moments during a game) but my boyfriend has offered to guest post. I know you must be pretty excited to get a glimpse inside the mind of the man I am dating. If you figure him all out, would you please, please let me know.

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