“If we’re going to visit America,” my wife said. “Then we have to visit New York.”

I couldn’t have agreed more. It was her first trip across the Pond, and it had been more than ten years since I had been home. After a few days in New York, we would travel by bus to Pittsburgh to visit my family for Christmas.

Seeing New York is always seeing America for the first time … It was my third time in the city, but again, a decade had passed. So this time, I was anxious to see the city, and America, through my wife’s eyes. It was a journey we were making together.

By chance, an old friend from my Prague days was now living in midtown Manhattan. He was on holiday in Puerto Rico, but left word and a spare key with the neighbors. So we had a comfortable apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, five minutes’ walk from Times Square, for free.

The first morning we set out, still exhausted from the 12-hour flight from Istanbul. “Are you hungry?” I asked. “What do you want to eat?”

“That!” my wife said, pointing toward a breakfast truck parked near Broadway and 42nd Street. Of course. Her first meal in America, and she wanted street food.

“Whaddya got?” the proprietor asked. He was handing out breakfast sandwiches and hot cups of coffee.

“Two egg and bacon sandwiches and two coffees,” I said, confidently.

We sat at a table nearby and ate, with Times Square, even at that hour, beating all around us.

After breakfast, we got the subway down to Battery Park. It was too cold and rainy to get the ferry out to the Statue (plus with the airport-style security and long queues, it was an hour-long wait), so instead I walked Ozge over to the waterfront, where we had a nice, if distant, view of Lady Liberty. Ozge posed with one of those silver-painted guys who dress up as the Statue and walk around on stilts.

We walked a few blocks, reaching the memorial site of the Twin Towers.

The last time I’d been in New York, memories of 9/11 were still vivid and fresh, and the site was just a big hole in the ground surrounded for blocks by chain-link fences. Now, to see the completed memorial — two immense, elegant pools, with the names of the dead etched into the stone, as well as the finished new tower in the background, was surprisingly emotional.

While Ozge walked around, surveying the memorial, I took the opportunity to light a cigarette and reflect. Ten years —

“Excuse me, sir!” a uniformed female police officer approached. “You need to put that cigarette out.”

“Uh? Oh, sorry!” I said, completely flustered, feeling like a fool. “Where —?”

“Right there! Put it out!” She may as well said, “Drop the weapon!”

I put it out.

The morning passed quickly, as we continued our tour of Lower Manhattan … Wall Street, the financial center of the world, the original federal building with the statue of Washington standing on the steps, the beautiful old church squeezed incongruously between all the jutting skyscrapers. I had a nice memory of that old church … On my first visit to the city, it had been a wet, grey morning much like this one, and I’d gone into the church to get dry. I’d sat on one of the back pews and nobody minded, and an orchestra had been quietly playing for the faithful who were in for their daily prayers.

“So what do you think?” I asked, curious to get my wife’s impressions of the city thus far.

“The streets here are all so organized,” she said. We were used to the chaotic jumble of Istanbul. “Plus,” she went on, “It all feels familiar, like those images of New York we see in movies and TV shows.”

It was true; in New York, one does always feel like a character in a story, a familiar story. Today, it was our story, or so we felt.

###

Afternoon. We took the subway up to Columbus Circle, at the foot of Central Park. With the Christmas season, there were wooden kiosks set up in the park selling different foods and drinks, and people sat out in the cold, wearing coats, jackets and scarves, eating and talking in loud, excited voices.For me, it was like music — after ten years abroad, to hear everyone speaking in my native language. It was like a radio antenna in my ear had been dulled or turned off, and now suddenly switched back on. I could hear everyone in the city talking at once, it seemed, all their little dramas and stories flooding into my ears …

We walked up to 72nd Street, with the park on our right and the buildings of the Upper West Side on our left. We reached the Dakota Building, where John Lennon and Yoko Ono lived, and where Lennon was shot outside on the sidewalk in 1980. Any self-respecting Beatles fan has to put this destination on his or her list.

The Dakota was having some kind of exterior renovation, for the whole front facade facing the street was covered up. Nearby, a street seller was hawking Lennon t-shirts and buttons. We went to Strawberry Fields and the “Imagine” mosaic, where groups of tourists were getting their pictures taken. Ozge and I figured, why not? We posed together, holding up “Peace” signs over the mosaic, and a lady from Denmark took our picture. A guy sitting on one of the benches began to strum “Imagine” on his guitar, and people began to sing along with him.

“Yes,” a Russian man said to a companion. He seemed very moved. “Imagine all the people of the world!”

It was cliche, kitsch, sure, but we didn’t care.

Evening. After a rest at the apartment, we showered and dressed, then went out for dinner. Times Square was all lit up and buzzing. We found an Italian buffet and crammed our bellies full. A side note: I had to go to the men’s room. So in the Continental style, I asked the waiter for the toilet.

“What?” he whipped around, startled.

“The toilet,” I said.

“You mean ‘the bathroom,’” he corrected, looking at me as if I were a redneck from Tennessee — no, West Virginia.

“Sorry,” I said. “I mean, the bathroom.”

“Downstairs.”

Ozge insisted we see a jazz show our first night in New York. Great minds think alike. I’d wanted to take Ozge to Irridium, where I had seen the late great Jackie McLean perform during my last vist. But there was some faux Eighties group called China Crisis playing there. There was nobody special at the Village Vanguard either, and the Blue Note — I don’t remember who was playing there. Finally, we settled on Birdland, where Catherine Russell was playing with her group. We did a quick YouTube search, and found her. She played old school standards, which is what we were looking for, so we booked the tickets to the late show online.

When we arrived at Birdland, we confirmed our reservations with the hostess. The first show was still going. All the tables were full.

We didn’t really feel like going back out to Times Square to wait for another hour — the incessant noise and crowds were doing our heads in (a surprise, come to think of it, as hardened Istanbullus we should have been well-accustomed to big city noise).

The hostess took pity on us.

“Would you like to sit up at the bar?” she asked, in a sweet voice. Ah, jazz people — the best people!

The barman, coincidentally named James, set us up at the end of the bar with a couple glasses of wine.

“Been working here five years,” James said. “Loved every minute of it! Every night is a real treat.”

When the second show began, we were moved to a table right up near the stage. Catherine Russell, an elegant, polished singer, took us on a journey over the next hour or so down alleys and slender backstreets I knew well — Porter, Armstrong, Gershwin. Holding hands, my wife and I went down those sentimental avenues together, under candlelight … “It had to be you, it had to be you/I’ve wandered around/finally found somebody/to make me be true …It had to be you! Had to be You!”

The evening was over. We walked back through Times Square on our way to the apartment on 8th and West 53rd. We were feeling over the moon — what a day! And what a night! And we had tomorrow, and the next, and next …

“Louis CK! Get your tickets to Louis CK!” a street crier’s voice interrupted our reveries.

— Wait, Louis CK? We love Louis CK. It seemed like a miracle.

“Where?” we asked, our sleepiness suddenly vanished. “How much?”

We paid the money, and literally ran to the comedy club (it was just a street or two over).

The man taking the tickets in front of the comedy club handed us a list of the night’s acts. We scanned the unknown names, dismay quickly creeping in.

“What about Louis CK?” we asked. “The man who sold us the tickets said —”

“I don’t know what you heard,” the man said, unsympathetically. “This is what we got tonight. Take it or leave it.”

I don’t want to revisit that part of the story. The long and short of it is there was no Louis CK. Our first night in America, in New York, and we’d fallen for the oldest trick in the hustler’s handbag. “The guy we bought the tickets from in the street said …” Coming from Istanbul, we were far from naive, so it cut to have been taken in so easily. Long story short, we didn’t stay long, and went back to the apartment.

###

In the morning, we got word from my parents that they were expecting us in Pittsburgh the following morning. It was a misunderstanding, as we’d planned to arrive the day after. So that involved us having to call a service number and change our reservation. We were standing on 34th Street, in Midtown, with all its usual bustle and clamor, trying to understand the faint voice of the operator. By the time we finally confirmed the changes, my wife — with the “Louis CK incident” still fresh — was understandably frustrated.

In Manhattan, the way to deal with such setbacks, or anything actually, is to walk. Just walk! So we did. We walked from 34th Street up to the Metropolitan Museum of Art — some sixty blocks! — along 5th Avenue, passing the famous shops — Cartier, Tiffanys, the Apple Store — all of them lit up with Christmas spirit. American flags waved like banners from above near the newly renovated St. Patrick’s Cathedral - shining like a stalagmite, a piece of perfectly cut glass — and we passed Rockefeller Center.

In front of the city library, some break dancers were giving a performance.

“Whatchall gonna do when we do this?” the leader asked the crowd.

The crowd responded with claps and cheers.

“That’s right! That’s right! And whatchall gonna do when we do something you like?”

More claps and cheers.

“Wrong! Y’all gonna give us your MONEY!”

The crowd laughed, and we watched the performance for awhile until we got cold and walked on.

At a truck near the Grand Plaza hotel, we stopped and had hot dogs.

Much later, cold and exhausted, we finally reached the Met, and went inside …

###

The next morning, we were sore from all the walking the day before. I suggested we have breakfast at Tom’s Restaurant — the “Seinfeld” cafe. Getting there involved just taking the subway up to 110th St., and a five-minute walk.

I don’t know if the breakfast at the “Seinfeld” cafe is known to have curative powers, but for us it did. Ozge had said she’d always wanted to try “diner” food. And we’re big fans of the TV show, so that’s why we went there.

It was not crowded, the service was quick and friendly. Ozge had her first proper American-style breakfast: eggs over-easy, with home-style potatoes, bacon and toast. And lots of coffee.

“They just keep pouring coffee!” she observed, after a third refill.

“Yep,” I said. “Bottomless cups of coffee.” It was one of the things I’d missed for sure.

Revived by the breakfast, we walked back through the Park and over to the Guggenheim, where we bought a few gifts. Then we decided it was time to take on the Empire State.

In my previous visits to the city, I’d never gone up the Empire State building. Seems elementary, I know, but somehow I’d never gotten around to it.

“Trust me,” a lady in front of us said to her companion. “I’m a New Yorker, and I’ve never been here.”

“Really!”

“It’s something for the tourists,” she said. “We New Yorkers never do it!”

And yet there she was. There we all were.

I’ve never been one for high places, but Ozge wanted to see the city from above, which was a perfectly reasonable request. We took the elevator up to the 86th floor (you could go up further, to the 102nd, but you had to pay extra).

Reaching the 86th, we went out onto the terrace, which wraps around the building. I quelled my anxiety long enough for us to take a selfie, then retreated back to relative safety while Ozge went around the terrace, taking photos of the vast cityscape far below.

She returned, and we stood together, looking out towards the Statue, far away and tiny in the harbor. We were in America, we were in New York, we were standing on the 86th floor of the Empire State building.

Most of all, we were together. And we still had a long way to go! Pittsburgh in the morning, family, Christmas …

I wish there was something here I could say — something profound — to end the story, something poetic and insightful, to reward the reader who has made it this far. What is there to say? New York is New York, and it always will be. Sweeping, grand, filled with voices, music, people and dreams. So goes New York, so goes America, too. After so many years away, it was thrilling to see that things — some things anyway — hadn’t changed as much as some would have you believe.

“Do you like it?” I asked my wife, as we walked along in search of dinner.

“Like it?” She looked at me as though I’d just asked if two plus two equals four.

“What do you think, baby? It’s New York!”

###

James Tressler, a former Lost Coast resident, is a writer and teacher living in Istanbul.