Salt Touched

My soul is painted like the wings on butterflies
fairy tales of yesterday that grow and never die
I can fly my friend

It’s been a year since I last set foot in San Juan, and to be honest, I was hesitant to do so again. Not because I don’t like the port, quite the opposite actually, but because I was almost afraid of shattering the perfection of the memory of my last time here. There are some days that you simply crystalize and carry with you, like a miniature time travel device when you need it the most. My last call here was one of those. You can never replicate that, no matter how hard you try.

So…I did my best not to try.

But there was one call I knew I had to make, because it has been haunting me since I didn’t do something there the last time. Besides, I knew I had to show Kitkat the butterflies.

San Jaun remains an odd port in that it’s not very big, but it is very easy to get turned around. The brightly coloured streets all end up blending together and unless you watch the storefronts and use them as landmarks it’s very easy to get somewhat disoriented, plus the map we had wasn’t the best, but we did find the place eventually. As we approached the doors I shrugged and said

So when Amras brought me here? All I got was a ‘hang a right Sis’ as warning…

Oh?

Yes. So…hang a right.

Now I know how I must have looked last year, unable to really even speak, you just…stand there, and feel yourself get swept up by a multitude of shimmering wings. The artist has captured something in those works that no photograph ever could, even if you were allowed to take one. You feel something untangle inside you, like you’re suddenly breathing easier.

Wow…

Told ya…

I was blinking back tears – though I couldn’t have told you precisely why they were coming – as I approached the counter and looked at the display of tiny pieces that were actually in my price range – albeit at the higher end of it. And lo and behold, it was still there, either the exact same one, or one exactly like it. The owner just smiled at me as I laid it carefully on the counter.

The fact that I didn’t buy this last year has just been…

Following you? I tell everyone that they tend to do that…if they’re supposed to be with you they will follow you.

This one did.

You’ve been here before then?

Yeah, I was here with a friend of mine last year, this is probably my favourite place in the Caribbean.

So I now finally own a butterfly, and it’s the right one. I did try and replace it with other cheaper ones between then and now, I really did, but I just couldn’t go through with it. It had to be that one.

That accomplished my mission for the day, so I let Kitkat take the lead in the rest of the day’s wandering. And we really did just wander. I’m really not the best with directions, so I let Kitkat take the lead for which way to wander. There’s something to be said for just proceeding without a particular destination in mind, particularly when the air is heavy and humid and makes you not feel like moving particularly fast and there is plenty to catch your attention, like buildings the colour of ice cream toppings and markets seemingly around every corner.

Despite hoping that its location would miraculously drop into my memory, I was fated not to come even close to locating the tiny bar that serves the best cocktail in the world – I swear you can only find that place by stumbling on it and you are doomed never to remember its location. Who knows, maybe it actually moves.

Last time I was in San Juan my throat stung from the burn of Caribbean rum and my eyes were dazzled by more than just the shine of butterfly scales. This time it was a day of photography, markets and gourmet frozen yogurt.

Doesn’t matter, San Juan is my “Paris”…I’ll always have it 😉

And it’s always once upon a time in New York City
It’s a big ol’, bad ‘ol, tough ol’ town it’s true
But beginnings are contagious there
They’re always settin’ stages here
They’re always turnin’ pages there for you

Where do you even start? I mean, there are so many possible openings for this that I can’t figure out which to choose.

So, let me just do it this way:

Oh my lord I made it to New York.

There are moments when you look at your life and realize just how amazing it really is. Standing on the freezing cold open deck this morning, wrapped in layers to protect us from the biting wind sweeping in across the harbor, watching the glow of Lady Liberty’s torch against the pitch darkness of pre-sunrise, was one of those.

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free

Indeed.

Okay, the truth is, I have always been terrified of New York. There’s a reason behind that (isn’t there always) involving an instance with a friend of mine who went to New York and came back broken – or at least that’s what it seemed at the time – and I was just the right age for that to make an impact.

Don’t ever go to New York, Shaughnessy, New York? A big bad city like that will take a nice little girl like you, chew you up and spit you out. Promise me you’ll never go to New York.

The chances that Sallie – who fully recovered and actually returned to New York and is now living and thriving there very happily last I heard – even remembers this exchange are virtually nil; but it always stayed with me. It’s one of the reasons I chose to study in London instead of the Big Apple. I had no desire to come here, it did not call me.

I was wrong.

With only one day in NYC, KitKat and I bought tickets for the hop on/off bus that takes two separate loops around the city.

And when we turned into Times Square, despite the fact that I claim never to have wanted to come here, I was too stunned to even shed a tear.

You see it in movies, you see it in posters: the marquees of Times Square have been plastered over popular culture for decades. But nothing does them justice, not really. Even on an open top double decker bus they tower over you. Everything here is larger than life. And the shows. If only we were here on an overnight. No, not really, if we were just here for an overnight I’d have to choose…and which one would I go for? I mean really? Almost every Tony nominee is playing here, from Matilda, to Chicago, to Les Mis and the list goes on and on…the new production of Aladdin opened here and I didn’t even know about it! I really wanted to stand there and stare and stare and stare…and then blink, and stare some more.

And then of course, there was the cross-street, which the guide casually pointed out:

By the way, up that way you can see the Radio City Music Hall housed at Rockefeller Center…largest theatre in New York and home to the Rockettes.

Apparently I desperately wanted to be a Rockette as a child. I have no memory of this whatsoever, apparently I was so devastated when I learned they had a major height requirement which I would never reach that I cried for days….and then proceeded to block out the memory of wanting it at all. But I do remember seeing the Radio City sign a lot growing up, because I was obsessed with an old VHS recording of a production of Disney’s Snow White that played there in the 80s (everyone thinks the first live Disney Broadway show was Beauty and the Beast…it wasn’t).

There is so much in this city that you don’t even know where to look, let alone where to look first. We had intended to hop off the bus at the Empire State Building and see the city from above, but the guide – for whatever reason – didn’t call the stop so we didn’t get the chance, which turned out to be a good thing as we later found out there was nearly a two hour line to get up to the observation deck, which would have robbed us of most of our day. Instead, we stayed on board and got as much history of the city as you can get in just one day – I wish I could remember all of it, I wish I’d taken my notebook with me, but since I wasn’t sure how much I was going to be walking around I didn’t want to carry it around. So I have to do my best by memory.

But there’s just so much.

There’s the New Yorker Hotel where the likes of Tommy Dorsey and heaven knows how many other big band greats used to play, there’s the first and originally largest apartment building in America, there’s the Woolworth tower (the top isn’t actually copper anymore btw), there Madison Square Gardens, there’s the famous New York post office (“Neither cold, nor heat nor dark of night shall keep these couriers from their duty”), Grand Central Terminal. THE COPACABANA! THE REAL ONE! As in “the hottest spot north of Havanna”!

That building over there that’s still under construction? That’s going to be the tallest building in the western hemisphere – apartments there? Start at $80 MILLION…oh, and they’ll throw in a room for your maid!

Y’know, because of course at those prices you’ll have one!

Oh and by the way, the pylons over there? The ones that are barely even noticeable sticking out of the water? Yeah, that’s the remnants of the pier where the Titanic would have docked had she made it over!

Excuse me while my brain shorts out just even attempting to take this all in…

There was only one place in town that I honestly had no desire to visit. Since we were on a downtown loop, it is only natural that one of the landmarks is the shadow of where there were once two towers touching the sky. Now, in the shadow of 1 World Trade (more often called the Freedom Tower), there are fountains and black marble memorials, and a lot of tears. This is never going to be a place that is forgotten, never a place that becomes a park. The beating heart of a nation was pierced here, and it bled, and though it has scared over, the damage is still done. Apparently all the trees at the site are new except one, which was salvaged from the wreckage and nursed back to health and now stands somewhere on the site with a fence carefully around it. The bus didn’t stop there, and no one asked to get off, when someone nearer to the front asked the guide if he had ever visited, he suddenly got very serious

I live here…New Yorkers don’t come here…it’s a sad place. Bad…bad memories.

And suddenly the bus just gets terribly quiet, going from light-hearted to serious in just a second…until we’re past the site and the heaviness dissipates.

Once we debarked the tour bus back in Times Square we still had time to kill (“and time of course because very offended and stopped altogether!” – sorry, I have Alice in Wonderland in my head for some reason) – and we were hungry.

Hard Rock?

Definitely.

Everything in New York is larger than life, which certainly includes the resteraunts. This was by far the biggest Hard Rock Café I’ve seen yet; though it was decorated a bit more subtly then say the one I went to in LA which featured a convertible suspended behind the bar! However, it did have one very impressive feature: there is a wall made out of guitars. And not just any guitars.

Er…KitKat, come take a look at this…

Yeah?

Those…aren’t just guitars…

Meaning?

Those are gibsons.

Now, neither Kitkat or I are instrumentalists, but we’ve both either grown up with or been around musicians long enough that we know a few things…one of those being that Gibson guitars are…different.

You’ve got to be kidding me,.

Nope. Look at the plaque.

And there it is engraved on a silver plate on the wall;

Hard Rock Café New York’s ‘Guitar Wall’: this wall is handcrafted from 300 guitars donated by Gibson Guitar company.

300!!! 300 Gibson Guitars! MADE INTO A WALL!

I swear, only in New York.

As we made our way back through Times Square towards the shuttle bus it became obvious that the half price “TKTS” booth had opened (the shows open up at 7, which means the ticket booth opens at 2, it’s much the same system as the one that operates in London’s West End) – if you want to get cheap tickets, you have to queue. The line for the musicals stretched what looked like a good two or so hour wait, and it was dotted every few steps with representatives in costumes from each show handing out brochures.

Next time…next time…

As we all stood windswept and somewhat shivering on the aft deck for the sail away, watching Ellis Island fade into the sunset-brushed distance…the Cruise Director and I struck up a brief conversation,

So, what did you do today sir?

Me? this is my hometown, I went to school here, found my heart here, found myself here…so I just went out and got reacquainted. You?

Oh…we did the bus tour. But you know, I was always scared of this place.

Why?

I just was…I was…told once I wouldn’t do well here ,that it would break me. I’ve just, always believed that.

Nah, I don’t think so…I think you’d do just fine here. I’ve only known you for a little while…but I can see you here.

Yeah…I think I understand it a bit better now.

I finally got what so many books, movies, television shows and just general social murmurs have always told me:

New York takes a piece of you, it will affect you, in some way, whether you want it to or not. You won’t affect it, not in the slightest, New York cares about no one and nothing, it just is…but there is no way, no way whatsoever, that it can’t affect you…

Like the song says: it’s a helluva town.

Is it raining where you are?

Oh yes…

Thought it sounded like it

You know it’s pretty heavy rain when the person you’re talking to can hear the drops hitting your Tinker Bell umbrella over the cell phone connection.

This is the “week of lasts” for our Canada/New England season. Each time we put a port to our rudder, we are doing so for the final time this year. You simply can’t stay in this area during the winter, or even the late fall really – the heavy rain will eventually turn to snow and biting cold, and that’s not the kind of weather people like to vacation in. so we’re turning tail and heading towards warmer climes – just like birds heading south for the winter.

Personally I like the rain, although it does make me tend to crave fireplaces and hot cocoa.

You don’t notice it as much in this area as you do in say, Alaska, where entire streets pack up and follow us to fun and sun; but all around us in every port are signs that the touristy areas of town are closing up shop for the season. Yesterday in Charlottetown a bedraggled looking empty pier stood where only last week a thriving sea-side restaurant had been; packed up and put away like it was never there. As for Sidney, it’s never been the most bustling town to begin with, and with weather like this even the locals are trenching in for the cold season and barely showing their faces.

And as for me, I have to admit that despite the cold the world looks sunnier now. It could easily be something as simple as the fact that I’ve been getting more sleep, but the haze that seems to have been over me the last few weeks is finally starting to lift. Not that it was particular bad…it was something like, looking through a fog bank and not quite being able to make out the far horizon.

But hey, rain, snow, cold or sun we go on right?

So…Europe here we come!