This picture of me does a pretty good job of summing up my mindset arriving in the deep underground inferno of what I believe was the 6th level of hell. Also known as the New York City subway system.
I was unimpressed as all 5 of my senses were competing with which sense was worse off. We were immediately assaulted by an immense heat as though we were inside of a boiler room. The fact that we were trapped underground with no quick way to escape made this already unpleasant feeling darn well near unbearable.
Concurrently my sense of smell was dealing with an overriding smell of urine that immediately brought me back to my days in the Montreal core on St.Catherines St., while my ears were being deafened by the cacophony of sounds most notable of which were the numerous subway carts barreling through the tunnels. The lonely sax player had no chance at conveying his talent under these boisterous conditions.
Meanwhile I was also getting the pleasure of viewing the deeply neglected subway system replete with dirt, filth, graffiti and crumbling stone.
Alright that covers my senses of touch, smell, hearing, and sight. What am I missing?
Ahhh yes! I swear I could taste the sweat poring, and pooling, off the various homeless subway dwellers who had to endure these conditions day in and out.
Luckily my torment would be quick to dissipate as before we could even get on a subway cart the intercom announced that our route was currently unavailable due to some issue further down the line and that we'd have to find an alternate route.
We decided to walk it because it was only a few blocks away and surely walking above ground with all our luggage in tow would be much preferable to the deeper reaches of hell....but then again.
Other than that our trip was going splendidly thus far.
And while our journey above ground was certainly preferable we quickly realized that some blocks are much longer than others. And even though they are clearly labeled numerically we still had no way of knowing which way was north and which way was south and therefore found ourselves having to backtrack after going down one of the larger blocks in the wrong direction.
But alas sanctuary!
The Shoreham hotel was one of the more affordable hotels located in between timesquare/broadway and central park and we would find it would only take a couple of blocks to get to either of those locations.
After a quick and super friendly chat with the receptionist we were told that we would love our room and she wasn't wrong.
Unfortunately we couldn't get a photo to do the room justice but the reason this room was such a gem was its space.
Sure the view out the window wasn't very good but after dealing with the near claustrophobia of both the subway and the incredibly busy city I had no problem just shutting the curtains and enjoying the fact that this room was unusually large for hotel rooms located in the core of Manhattan.
What they had done was sacrifice a bit of bathroom space which allowed for a much larger bedroom. A larger bedroom that wasn't burdened by unnecessary cluttered furniture but allowed empty space to exist so we felt we had some much needed room to breathe.
Furthermore, even though the bathroom was smaller I finally got to experience one of those multi jet showers I'd always wanted to try. And they are as great as I thought they'd be.
Our reprieve would be short lived as we had much to do and only one and a half days to do it in. So we dropped off our luggage and headed back out to the steel jungle.
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