The People Along the Way. . .The Woman in New York City

I have shared with you many of the places we visited on our recent vacation, and even many of the things we ate along the way -- I'm still dreaming of the red velvet cheesecake!

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I thought I'd like to share with you some of the people we met.

Coming from the very deep South, the stereotype here of people who are from the Northeast can be that they tend to be, well, not very outgoing or friendly.

I have to say from our week in Boston and New York, we met so many people who reached out to us to offer help, directions or guidance. I never felt unsafe or threatened in anyway and I felt that if I needed assistance, all I had to do was to ask a "local".

Having said that, I will add that we had one humorous event while in the subway. We were standing waiting for our train to arrive, which it seemed we did a alot, and a woman approached our oldest daughter. She asked if she knew which train she needed to get to a certain part of the city. Now Marie had taken it upon herself to master the NYC subways system, the map of which she first described as being "the whole box of Crayola crayons". Marie was able to show the lady on the map exactly which line to take and at which station she should get off. I chuckled to myself that if that lady had known her directions where coming from someone from ALABAMA, she probably wouldn't have felt so confident!

On our first morning to NYC, we navigated to the Rockefeller Center (thanks to Marie's helpful direction.) We actually arrived there early for our scheduled time at the observation deck on top, so we were standing on the corner trying to decide what to do to fill the time. A very nice New Yorker with the sweetest grin turn to us and asked if we needed help finding our way somewhere. We were so impressed that someone would have gone out of their busy way (because everyone in New York seems to travel - by subway, car or foot - at warp speed) to help us. We told her we had actually found our destination for that morning, but we jokingly asked if she would be willing to go with us for the rest of the day. She laughed and told us that she would, but that she had to go to work. I had the feeling that if it had not been for her job, she may have just joined us and shown us a New York that one can only see when shown by a local.

What a blessing to have met this kind-hearted woman on our very first morning. She alone in that one sentence shattered our perception of the "typical" New Yorker and perhaps changed our attitude toward all the citizens of that city for our entire stay.

May we find that we shatter some attitudes of New Yorkers traveling to our little city one day as well.