← PreviousDoing a chalet, Québec style24 December
While all of France is getting ready for Christmas Eve dinner, it's 10 am in Montreal and we're all set to hit the road to NYC, the city that never sleeps. Our first car-share passenger, Lucas, arrives a little early. He's a French-American who grew up in Montpellier but is doing an internship in New York at the studios of the famous photographer JR. We then welcome two young French women from the Paris region, originally from Guadeloupe, who are on a working holiday visa in Montreal like us. We set off chatting and after an hour we reach the much-dreaded American land border. To enter the USA by land you need a different visa from the famous ESTA you usually get when flying. The land visa is obtained at the many border posts between Canada and the USA. You have to get out of the car and wait for the customs officer to call you and ask a few questions before you get your visa. As one of the two French women had already gone to NYC by land a month earlier and Lucas has an American passport, only three of us needed the visa.
In the end, this stop at customs still takes us close to 30 minutes. Visas in hand, we leave the building and walk towards our car, waiting in the car park a little further on. At that moment, one of the French women is stopped by a big moustachioed American customs officer who happens to be passing. He aggressively threatens to confiscate her phone and lock her in an interrogation room if she doesn't put it away immediately, because taking out your phone at American customs is forbidden. American customs officers are known for being very unpleasant and unfriendly, but we're stunned. Phones are indeed banned inside the building, but threatening to lock someone up for looking at their phone outside on the way back to their car… Throughout this little episode at customs we'd sensed some stress in our two Guadeloupean friends, so we ask them if everything is all right. They confide that they had been dreading American customs and were afraid of the American police, largely because of the colour of their skin. We can only understand, even though we know full well that, being white, we will never experience anything like it. After this little episode we hurry back behind the wheel, as we still have five and a half hours to go before reaching our destination. The road is very beautiful, running through the mountain scenery of Vermont. Apart from a snack break on American soil, the journey passes mostly in silence and snoring.
New York really is the overcrowded world-city described so many times. Already at the first toll the traffic thickens considerably, and the approach to the metropolis confirms it: even on Christmas Eve the city is packed. As we cross the Hudson River on the George Washington Bridge, we get our first glimpse of the city lights and their immense skyscrapers. We drop our passengers at Astoria Boulevard station in Queens, right next to our accommodation, and take our leave to settle in. The two little dogs are waiting for us impatiently, going wild behind the little barrier made especially for them. We quickly understand the social dynamics between them: the male, Reinly, subtly dominates his companion Khaleesi. She is a rescue dog and you can feel her fear as soon as you get too close; she growls and bares her teeth. We sit down on the sofa after putting down our bag and let the animals come to us while we call our families to wish them a merry Christmas. They inspect us, wondering whether we're humans they can trust.
After circling us for a few minutes, we've passed the first test, since they come and settle next to us to be stroked. Stéphane gives Khaleesi little massages; she's still trembling a bit but seems to be getting used to us. But as he touches her belly, she turns around and quickly bites him on the nose before curling up, sheepish, at the other end of the sofa. With two little marks on Stéphane's nose, we take Reinly out for a walk on his own, because Khaleesi won't let anyone near her. The little dog knows his route by heart and he's the one guiding us around the block. After doing his business and his twenty-minute walk, we can feel the tiredness overcoming him and the walk back to the building is at a decidedly slower pace. We've barely got back before we head out again, impatient to finally discover the Big Apple.
Astoria Boulevard station is a few minutes' walk away and looks exactly like the clichéd image we have of New York subway stations. Raised up on enormous steel girders, it stands along the N line, which links Astoria to Coney Island via Manhattan. The rolling stock is old, almost unworthy of such a powerful city, but the age of the network, founded in 1911, makes it very hard to modernise. Every train is endless, perhaps twice as long as their Parisian counterparts. It's the evening of the 24th and the carriages are of course almost empty.
Our first stop is the Rockefeller Center building and its iconic Christmas tree, but as we come out of the station we're swept up in an extraordinary commotion. All around us rise the giant screens of Times Square, a nightmare for epileptics and the eco-conscious, or a waking dream for children who love lights. It's pitch dark, but on this exact spot the sun isn't really necessary, as you'd think it was broad daylight. All the senses are stimulated: advertising videos follow one another at breakneck speed, the crowd raises the noise to a level surely harmful to your hearing, and the food trucks fill the air with the smell of hot dogs and pretzels. We see the incredible influence of American soft power, which brings tourists, ourselves included, to visit places idealised by Hollywood. Times Square is surely the place with the highest concentration of people in all of NYC, and on this Christmas evening it's almost hell on earth. Despite the density of people the atmosphere is festive, but we're still relieved to leave the human tide behind.
Bad luck: we find another one in front of the Rockefeller Center tree. Once again we extract ourselves to admire this old building, put up in 1930. When you stand at its foot and look up to try to take in its full height, you almost get vertigo, the structure is so imposing, and you better understand why New Yorkers invented the word skyscraper. Our route then takes us to the Bryant Park Christmas market, a must according to the guides, but we quickly realise that the Christmas spirit is only accessible to the width of your wallet. The little stalls feel fake and the prices are outrageous, but that's only logical given the prime location, a stone's throw from the Empire State Building. Prices are no lower in the gigantic brasserie where we stop not far away, but hunger and tiredness are catching up with us. It's already 10:30 pm when we come out, and after walking up Seventh Avenue and a detour past the sadly famous Trump Tower, we take the N line again from one of the Central Park stations to go back to Queens. The subway is still just as empty; it's close to midnight, and it's in this unusual calm that we return to the apartment.
We've barely stepped out of the lift when the little dogs start barking, and they jump all over us as soon as we cross the threshold. We make sure they have enough to eat and drink for the night, and we fall into the sleep of the just.