"The tourists are back... For the last few weeks, they have packed the streets of Midtown Manhattan like a motley invading army, tilting their heads back to gaze at the skyscrapers and filling the air with a broken music of French and Bengali, Slovak and Texan... Official statistics are hard to come by. But for the last week, more than 1,000 tourists a day have been dropping by NYC & Company's Visitor Information Center, a level not reached since before Sept. 11, 2001, a spokeswoman said... 'We have been seeing the numbers we used to see,' she added. 'It's like a new beginning.'
-- Robert F. Worth, The Tourists Are Back in New York, in Case You Haven't Noticed
The New York Times