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Published: June 14th 2009
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Empire State Building West
NYC from the west side of the Empire State Building observation deck. Saturday, 13 June (Empire State Building): We left the KOA today basically just to go up the Empire State Building and jog in Central Park. After driving the 15 or 20 miles to Beacon to catch the train to NYC, we parked and ran for the train, that left just seconds before we reached the platform. The next train wasn’t due for about an hour, so we headed back to the car. On the way, a guy stopped us to ask if we had tickets. Being stupid tourists, we thought the two tickets marked $15.50 each that he’d sell us for $22.00 total was a good deal, so we bought them. We later found out we could buy round trip tickets in any machine at the stations for only $15.75 as seniors, and even use a credit card. So, instead of paying $31.50, we paid $22.00 for his and another $15.50 for the return pair. Oh well, it could have been worse. We caught the 10am train and arrived at Grand Central Station about an hour and 15 minutes later. We walked to the Empire, and since the lines weren’t that long, we started thinking we hadn’t saved much waiting time
Empire State Building West Closeup
A closeup view of NYC from the west side of the Empire State Building observation deck. by buying our tickets in advance and online, until we reached the ticket counter area and were able to bypass the 2 or 3 hundred people waiting to buy tickets! After the security checkpoint line, the elevator to the 80th floor line, and the elevator to the 86th floor line, we went out to the observation deck. Manoli did real well in the elevators, considering she avoids them as much as possible. The view from the four sides of the observation deck was awesome! With 10X magnification, you can barely see the types of cars below. After some looking and photos, we took the stairs down to the 80th floor, then the elevator the rest of the way. One word of advice, besides buying tickets online, if you want to visit the gift shop or café, do so on the way up, since you bypass it on the way down. After leaving, we’d already decided we wanted to each hot dogs with sauerkraut from a street vendor, so off we went. We finally found one and wolfed down a couple as we headed towards Central Park to jog. We had read on the internet that you could use lockers at
Empire State Building SouthWest
NYC from the southwest side of the Empire State Building observation deck. You can see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. the New York Runners Club near Central Park, so we’d put our jogging stuff in the ever-present backpack. After walking from 35th Street to 89th Street (Phew!), we located the club, changed clothes and stored our stuff. The lockers are free, but small and you need your own lock. We stepped outside to head to the park and discovered it had started sprinkling again. Oh well, we were committed, and probably should have been committed after jogging 4 miles in what turned into a downpour not long after we started. When we thought we’d exited back near the club on 89thStreet, I took off my to cool down and feel more comfortable (getting a lot of weird looks), and discovered we were on WEST 89th and had to jog across the park! We dried off some with paper towels in the restroom and changed our clothes (but not our wet shoes and socks!), and headed back to Grand Central Station for some food before catching our train back to Beacon, our car, and the KOA. We each had a bowl of soup at “Dishes”. Manoli had Pumpkin Corn Soup and I had Brazilian Chicken Stew. They were both quite good.
Empire State Building South
NYC from the south side of the Empire State Building observation deck. Tomorrow, we head to the Boston/Cape Cod KOA, with a stop in Mystic Seaport, Connecticut.
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tanyason
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nyc
pretty good shots dad! Mom, how'd you like new york? running in central park - who can say they've done that? :o) love you guys