Slicing the Big Apple with a Bike

The Saturday before I left New York, I rented a bike and spent half a day to tour around the city.

The way the streets and avenues of New York were laid out, it was impossible to get lost. And though for much of the way I was not using the biking track (it was by no means intentional; I only found out on my way back to Central Park to return the bike that there was a biking track on Second Avenue), the traffic was not too heavy, and, more importantly, the drivers were tolerant of bikers. I cringe at the thought of riding a bike on the busy streets of Hong Kong which apparently have no place for bikers and where hostile drivers would honk at anyone or anything that dares to get in their way. Competing for the use of the road with them on a bike is a very dangerous and stressful thing to do indeed.

But this morning in New York was very pleasant. The weather became fine just in time, after two cloudy and rainy days. I cruised to a bicycle show, then accidentally stumbled into a weekend street market, before having lunch at a Japanese vegetarian restaurant someone recommended, the food of which was as good as he said.

Had I not been told to return the bike before 3:30pm, and had I not lined up a visit to MET (The Metropolitan Museum of Art) in the afternoon, I would have made more use of the bike to explore this city whose charm I was beginning to discover but which, unfortunately, I was about to leave.

But that's what travelling is like. There is never enough time to do the place justice.