Joe & Deb USA 2014: Day Ten

Day Ten

Nooo Yawk Nooo Yawk.

Our first bite of the Big Apple. Started off at Grand Central Station, quite an impressive building from the outside, but the main hall inside is huge and pretty spectacular with it. Spent a bit of time taking photos and watching hordes of people scurrying hither and thither. Then it was time to figure out the subway system. As usual, pretty simple once you figure it out. Buy a ticket, load it with money and away you go. Cost is $2.75 per trip. Initially we only wanted to get $10 worth of travel, but we only had $20 notes and the machine didn’t give change more than $8, so we ended up getting the $19 worth of travel, plus it costs you $1 for the ticket. Apparently you can re-fill them, though they are just thin plastic with a mag stripe which you swipe each time, so I’m not sure how long it will actually last. With that done, we jumped on the subway and went to the Brooklyn Bridge stop, with the plan to walk across the bridge (it has a pedestrian section) and view the city from across the water. The bridge itself is a pretty impressive structure, and the view from it is pretty fantastic as well. I had expected lots of tall buildings here in the city, but I wasn’t prepared for how beautiful they are. Lots of very old Art Deco buildings too, not just the famous landmark ones you regularly see. It took us about an hour to walk across the bridge with about a thousand photo stops competing with about five thousand other tourists. We walked from there down to the Brooklyn Heights promenade which looks back over the water to the city and out to the Statue of Liberty in the distance. Snapped a few hundred pictures there, and headed back across the bridge for a few thousand more photos, stopping for a quick bite of lunch on the way. We were glad we started earlier in the day, as the tourist numbers had quadrupled since our first trip across. The bridge is shared between bikes and pedestrians and there are clearly marked definitions of space, but lots of the tourists and budding photographers did not realise this. So there was much frantic ringing of bells, whistling and shouting from the cyclists as they tried to negotiate the pedestrians stopped slap in the middle of the bike lane to get one more picture.

Next stop was the 9/11 memorial, which was within walking distance of the Brooklyn Bridge we had just crossed twice. Past the stunning Woolworth Building which I will attach a photograph of. We had to wind our way through yet more construction sites, it’s a mess. Eventually found the memorial, basically two big fountains set into the ground, in the shape of two big squares which represent the footprint of the original towers. Water pours into the fountains from all four sides and then out of a smaller square in the middle. Not easy to describe, refer to the photo. Around the edge is a bronze sheet with the names of the victims cut from the bronze. I commented that the use of water was a great idea, it is quite loud and manages to drown out the cacophony of the city, so at least the area feels a little more restful than the usual honking of horns and sirens.

After a quick sit down in a nearby park to rest our hot and tired feet, we took the subway again to South Ferry to catch the Stanten Island ferry past the old Statue of Lib. I made a dramatic entrance to Battery Park, wasn’t watching where I was going and tripped a beauty on the curb. Went sprawling on my hands and knees, and could barely get up for laughing so hard. Only damage was to my dignity, thankfully my camera was in my bag else that would have hit the deck too.

Queued up for the Ferry (it’s free) and herded on with the other couple of thousand tourists. It’s about a half hour trip past old Lady Lib, not great pics unfortunately as her arm cast a big shadow across her face. We might have to suss out what will be a better time and then actually make the trip to the Island that she’s on for a more close up look.

Had to wait for half an hour for the return ferry, and amused ourselves by watching the huge number of Jewish families that seem to be out and about here. Lots of big families, at least 5 kids in each, all the boys with Yarmulkes (little black round caps) and the adult men with the full on beards and ringlets, prayer shawls, long black coats and sometimes hats as well.

The trip back on the ferry was filled with tired and howling kids, little kids shoving past to get to the railings, and officious women ramming pushchair wheels into our feet while trying to squeeze past.

Another subway trip back to our temporary home, interrupted by some crazy guy who wouldn’t let the train car door closed until someone told him whether this train stopped at Penn Station. Joe made a foray to Toys R Us while I came home via the Pharmacy where I bought a big bowl of cut fresh fruit, which has been missing from our diet for the last week or so !

Laundry night tonight, so it was a quick dinner at a salad house called Chop’t near Times Square, very nice beef salad and home to round up a thousand quarters for the washing machine and dryer.