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Published: January 16th 2011
Main Reading Room
The vast and pretty main reading room of the NYC Public Library.We arrived in NYC okay on the night of Thanksgiving day and waited ages in the famously long airport customs lines, they fingerprint every passenger coming through! I was surprised they had a football game on TV in the customs area, usually airports treat these areas extremely seriously!
We had arranged a shared van transfer to our hostel in the Upper West side of Manhattan, it ended up being a frustrating, long transfer. Our driver was surly and uncommunicative and dropped off everyone before us. The company had advertised they only had you share a van with people going to the same part of Manhattan but this was totally false for us, we wanted to go to West 101st street but spent most of the transfer around East 33rd !
The hostel was a little dispiriting, we had a tiny cell like room with just a bunk bed and not enough room to swing a cat in, and the hostel 'kitchen' ended up being basically a microwave, they didn't even have any cups or mugs!
Despite our body clock telling us it was midnight at only 7pm we headed out to Times Square. We were rugged up in
Pride in the USA
Good to see a little iconic American flag waving in the city. the warm clothes we'd stored London and we needed them as it was very cold outdoors at night, especially in wind. Times Square was garishly brilliantly lit up and fun to see at night. There were billions of Tourists and lots of touts and everything was open, no sign it was a special day though (e.g. no giant Turkey floats!). We ate cheap and cheerful NY pizza slices for dinner and our bodies thought it was 3am by the time our head hit the pillow.
Next day we were both awoke at 5am basically unable to get back to sleep and enjoyed the first of our minor jet lag problems. It was a partially overcast day with a balmy 40F (about 4C) temperature and slight chilly wind; this was the kind of weather we got every day in NYC.
Hoping to avoid the punishing high costs of individual subway travel we bought two 7 day unlimited metro cards for a total of $54, this was an excellent investment we didn't regret as we ended up using the subway a lot.
The layout of new york is fabulous and the subways pretty good. I love NYC's grid of numbered
streets and North-South avenues it makes so much sense to do a city this way and Alicia laughingly said it must have been designed by Germans since it's so orderly. The uptown/downtime concept makes complete sense to us. The down side to the subways is they basically only run north south so if you have to get cross-town you've got to be lucky enough to be in the right part of town to have a cross-town subway line or catch a bus
Amazingly the subway stations have large metal rubbish bins in them, it's great to see that NYC of all cities is brave enough to allow rubbish disposal with the risk of bombs, places like Sydney Central last time we were there didn't have any bins at all!
We stopped in to see NYC public Library, the main reading rooms are vast with high ceiling rooms and decorative wooden panels and huge roof paintings. Within the reading rooms are long benches with shaded lamps, the whole room was very pleasant and good to see.
We walked further along 42nd street to New York's Grand Central station, this main street has a few American flags hanging and a
Nice Ride
We spotted this cool paint job wandering through the Lower East Side few nice facades or statues on public buildings, but I was a little surprised (given how jingoistic you hear the USA is) that they didn't have more. Over our time in NYC we formed the opinion that Turkey wins the award for most visible nationalism in a country, we certainly saw the most national flags on display per square kilometre there.
Entering Grand Central Station Alicia was ecstatic to spot a Neuhaus chocolate shop (her absolute favourites from Belgium), Alicia loaded up on a few pricey chocolates and was happy. We found the lobby of Grand Central was impressive and certainly worth a quick look with its vast size and nice decorations.
We lunched in Chinatown and got a taste of how tax and tips add a lot of unanticipated cost to one's bill. It's absolutely bloody stupid that in USA they are allowed to advertise product prices on menus and stickers that don't include the tax, it means you invariably get hit for slightly more than you thought at the point of sale, and then you get hit for tips too if you are paying for 'service' because they wretchedly underpay service staff. I could rant about the
Manhattan Skyline
We had plenty of good city views from the Circle Line cruise stupidity of the US wage and tipping, and tax on products systems for hours.
It turns out the people of NYC pronounce 'Houston' street as 'Howston' one of the stupidest things we came across during our stay in the city, it just makes NO sense. And I joked to Alicia: “Howston we have a problem, we can't pronounce things properly!”
Our next sight was 'Ground Zero' the building sight where the World Trade centres used to stand. As everyone says it's basically just a construction sight nowadays and there's little to see or appreciate however there was an excellent little free museum called something like 'Preview of the new Ground Zero sight' which had information on what they were building on the sight. It had models and pictures of what the sight will look like when complete. The museum had some moving displays about some survivors and some deceased of the September 11th terrorist attacks, I was surprised that none of the Americans in the museum with us were weeping. There was an astonishing story of a firefighter who'd been in one of the collapsed towers who managed to make it out, they had his helmet on display.
F-16 Fighting Falcon
The US knows how to make fighters, I was excited to see a Falcon up close. Heading home after a good first day of wandering the streets Nick was able to pursue the lollies and chocolates of the USA, I bought a couple of different types of Skittles, some Milk Duds, and some Jujyfruits (like Elaine eats in Seinfeld); it was fun to get my hands on junk food I've heard about for years through pop culture.
Determined to eat lots of Ribs in the USA (just Nick not Alicia) we headed to Brother Jimmys BBQ quite close to us in the Upper West side. I had a ribs combo plate with three kinds; North/ South/ Dry Rub. The dry rub was kind of sausage flavoured and tasty and the sweet potato fries were delicious it was a great Ribs experience.
Back home we needed ear plugs to sleep in our hostel, we're not overjoyed with our crappy 'Broadway Hostel & Hotel' at all.
Admission to attractions in NYC cost money so we decided to get an 'NYC Explorer card' which lets you get into a fixed number of attractions for a reduced price and you can use the card any time over thirty days this is MUCH better than any similar card
Downtown from Top of the Rock at Sunset
The view south (downtown) from Top of the Rock was pretty good we've seen in Europe, although it doesn't give you public transport, at least the Explorer card doesn't rush you.
After getting our cards we wandered around Rockefeller centre then, pushing through giant crowds, managed to see the Rockefeller Ice rink which is the size of postage stamp and the Christmas tree which was pretty big, but not as big as you'd think.... Nothing's quite as big in NYC as we imagined...
With clear weather today we decided to go on a three hour 'Circle line cruise' which takes you by boat around the entire island of Manhattan. We made our way to a bakery that had fine reviews online and bought two deli sandwiches and an M&M brownie for $18.50. Alicia almost collapsed at the price and swore viciously for the next five mins. She's struggling to come to terms with the fact that we're not in pounds and Euros anymore and everything 'sounds' expensive.
We got to our cruise okay and the guide who voiced over the trip could talk the legs off a horse and was fairly interesting, we cruised anti-clockwise around Manhattan and listened to the commentary with great views of the city skyline. Having
East River views from Roosevelt Cable
The views from the Cable car on 59th street are pretty good got a taste of the cold on the deck I got my thermal top on under my jumper and super thick puffy jacket, then with beanie, neck warmer, and gloves I once again braved the cold as we passed Ellis Island and came up on the Statue of Liberty and got some fine photos of the impressive statue. Nice photos all around Manhattan too.
I was amazed to hear a section of land called 'Governors Island' is basically abandoned and nothing much is going on there, it's staggering to me that usable land near Manhattan could still be underdeveloped in 2010. The cruise guide talked about the airplane flight that had to make the emergency landing on the Hudson after flying through a flock of Canadian Geese, it was really close to mid-town, about 42nd street where it landed. Amazing. The final views of Manhattan skyline on the way in were very good and we were overall very pleased with the cruise.
That night we were also able to wander into the Guggenheim lobby and see the famous spiral architecture (which was all we wanted to see) without paying a fee (yay).
We agreed on a local diner
breakfast of pancakes Sunday as I knew Alicia was keen. The diner was just like you see in TV/ movies; we were sat in a booth and the gruff and efficient waiters threw down some free iced water and demanded our order; our pancakes were very tasty, in particular Alicia's strawberries, and good maple syrup.
Today was our day to go see an NFL American Football game, on the bus there we watched some twenty somethings drinking vodka and orange; apparently getting drunk is an important part of attending football games. Next to me on the bus was a guy with a garbage bag full of brand new Giants beanies, throughout the bus ride he slowly stuffed his oversized jacket with new beanies, from the wrist of the arms of his coat up; presumably so he could smuggle them into the grounds and sell them?!
Upon arriving at the staadium we marveled at the tailgaters in the car park. There were loads of people who'd set up on the large concrete parking islands in the lot with bbqs, folding chairs, eskies, canopies, tvs, and thousands of beers. People were tossing footballs around, they were all dressed in blue
Chrysler Building
Finally got a shot of Chrysler glowing in the sun, it's surprisingly hard to get a really good view. Giants gear, and some had fairly serious charcoal bbq or fire pits going, cooking mainly steaks and ribs, plus salads and snacks spread out on big tables for grazing.
Alicia loved seeing this part of the culture and we were intrigued. A lot of the cars were huge vehicles; gas guzzling, oversized cars and 4wds that people set up out of the boot from for their tailgate. Hopefully everyone had a designated driver as there was a lot of drinking going on!
Entering the stadium they declared Alicia's small frilly umbrella dangerous and we had to either check it in or lose it, Alicia decided to throw it away. We also had to open each water bottle and throw away the lid (!) meaning we were then walking around holding three 750ml full water bottles like idiots, very annoying!
Food and drink in the stadium were all stupendously expensive and we were glad we'd bought all our own stuff. We were seated in section 313 of the New Meadowlands stadium and were lucky to find ourselves on the sunny side of the stadium. It was a decent blue sky day and being in the sun was pretty warm. My
Statue of Liberty
We got closer to the statue on our circle line cruise than from the free Staten Island Ferrry fears that our seats were too far away were invalid; even though we were probably only 20 rows from the very back of the whole stadium we had good views right about halfway, and could make out everything that was going on.
The stadium has just been completed for this season and cost between $1.6-$1.8 billion to build (!) the only particularly good thing I could say about the stadium was the quick escalators to get up and the replay screens in each corner of the stadium were pretty good. It is staggering they didn't choose to build a domed stadium though and any fans we spoke to on the subject agreed, I don't think anyone can understand to what end they spent so much to achieve such minimal improvement over the previous stadium they had down the road!
It was a decent football game we saw and stayed in the balance until the end when thankfully the Giants won.
Being at the football was a good day to soak in the culture another noticeable and sad thing in America is how EVERYTHING is sponsored, they don't have a half-time break, replay, competition, or discussion panel that isn't sponsored
by some major company, you get bombarded with big name businesses CONSTANTLY. One positive thing we did see them promoting was Play 60 which was basically the NFL encouraging kids and asking them to commit to playing (being active) for sixty minutes a day.
Getting home via bus was a disaster and involved a huge wait, we wish we'd caught the train home.
Our next day we set off to walk the Brooklyn Bridge, this was harder than you'd imagine as the signage around the foot of the bridge for pedestrians was pretty poor. I think we made the mistake of not starting right at the foot and walked up an obscure access flight of stairs to the pedestrian walkway after getting directions from a policeman.
Up on the bridge we found to my mild surprise the only walkway was in the centre of the bridge and you couldn't get to either side for a clear view past the railings and superstructure. Nonetheless the views walking the bridge were pretty good and we had beautiful blue sky weather and warming sunshine to do it in so it was a nice experience.
We headed down the short stroll to
Brooklyn Bridge Walk
It's not a bad view when you walk the Brooklyn bridge. the south point of Manhattan: Battery Park and had a street hot dog there for $2 which was bland but okay. We then had some decent views in the sunshine from this and the Robert F Wagner park a little uptown in the SW of the water and skyline. With a walking tour booked we headed uptown a bit and saw the Flatiron building that was an impressively sharp triangular shape and the commemorative arch for George Washington in Washington Park Square. We then grabbed some expensive pizza slices and a Gray's Papaya (famous hot dog vendor) NY style hot dog for lunch. I was very disappointed to find the 'top rated' Hot Dog in NYC was very uninspiring and not too tasty... the Icelandic and Russian hot dogs we've had this trip were at least twenty times better.
We made it to our Greenwich Village (GV) free walking tour, our guide, perhaps tapping into American obsession with celebrity spent a lot of the tour name dropping celebrities who'd lived in the village and which tv shows or movies had shot scenes there. Not caring that much for the cult of celebrity I didn't really enjoy this theme in
the tour. The Tour highlight stories including seeing the famous Stonewall Inn where the Gay Rights Movement came head to head with the police, did some rioting, and gained some solidarity and voice. The guide did a good job of setting context and telling the story of gay rights and how it related to that area of GV very well and it was terrible how few rights the gays had and all the bad things that could legally be done to them for so long e.g. fired, kicked out of apartments, etc just for being gay.
The second compelling tour story was of a garment factory fire that famously killed 146 young ladies working in draconian circumstances (doors were locked so they couldn't sneak out), the fireman's ladders were too short to get up to 8th floor and above where they were trapped. This terrible tragedy led to some dramatic legislative reforms to get better building codes and workers rights.
After the walking tour we headed to a Cupcake shop from our research and found to Alicia's delight that the thickly iced cupcakes were delicious.
We took the Staten Island Ferry (SIF) at sunset and had some nice views
Blurry Brooklyn Lights
Intentional arty blur on this night shot from the Staten Island Ferry of the Statue of Liberty on the way out of Manhattan. I was surprised the SIF didn't go a little closer to the Statue, the Circle line cruise we did definitely went a LOT closer and had better views.
On arrival in Staten Island deboarding was mandatory but you could simply walk around to the departure gate in two minutes and reboard which we did and took up prime viewing spot at the front left of the ferry for the ride back to Manhattan.
The views of the lit city skyline in the early, clear evening were excellent all the way back and we weren't too cold standing out in the wind as we'd rugged up well. Again the Statue views were only fair but the city views of the night skyline were well worth seeing and Nick took dozens of photos.
After a good hour spent on sight seeing on the free ferry we caught the subway home and that night more BBQ ribs were successfully pursued and eaten.
Our next day in town we decided to start with a Central Park visit, the statues and monuments around the subway and roundabout at Colombus avenue were very
Fine Sculpture at the Met
I loved this sculpture at the Met. It's 'Ugolino and his Sons' by Jean-Baptiste Carpeux impressive but the lousy grey overcast skies meant it was no point getting photos. We wandered about in Central Park based on notes Alicia made. The park had thick autumn leaves all over the ground under the trees, you walk about mostly on paths . We only saw a couple of squirrels in our whole time there, an obvious contrast to Washington Square the day before where there were at least a hundred thousand Squirrels. We found our park wander okay, not brilliant, but worth doing.
In the afternoon we headed downtown to the Lower East Side (LES) Tenement museum (2*) Our tour was 'Piecing it Together' a tour that looked at immigrants who'd come to America via New York and worked in the garment business at the end of the 19th century. Our tour was good, after the intro we were led into the old tenement building and got to appreciate the bad light, narrow stairs, lack of amenities (no lighting or water provided until 1901, and four outhouse toilets and one fountain for fresh water shared by the 120+ residents). We then saw the the inside of one unrestored and two restored apartments. The guide explained how being a new immigrant in the tenements was a vicious circle and the 'bottom of the ladder' and how tough finances made it hard to get ahead. It usually took a generation or two to get out of these new migrant neighbourhoods and move to a cheaper or at least more pleasant area. It was good to learn some history of the people and architecture of NYC and also of the immigration to America.
That night we headed to Madison Square Garden to see a New York Knicks basketball game against the hapless NJ Nets. I was amused as during the game they spot celebrities in the crowd and put their face on the big screen, the biggest cheer we heard ALL night (including in game big plays) was for a Jets football player, the Yanks REALLY love their football and I was amused to see it demonstrated so clearly by basketball fans.
Our next morning we found moderate rain falling and decided to make it a museum day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met). We cursed the city for not putting a tube stop near the 'museum mile' the Met is literally six blocks from either of it's nearest tubes!
Highlights of our day long Met visit included the excellent armour exhibition, we also enjoyed the sculpture in the museum they had a few pieces by European masters including a nice one by Rodin,
and some very fine pieces by American sculptors too.
We did enjoy some of the paintings but didn't see anything in The Met that can compare to the best of the best in Europe.
That night we enjoyed more Ribs then headed downtown to West Side Story. We rated the performance as 'fair' overall (disappointing as were hoping to see it done really well). The main 'When you're a jet' song wasn't terribly well done, the lead girl Maria wasn't terribly pretty, and they spoke way too much Spanish (trying to be original and true to form perhaps but totally lost me and hurt my enthusiasm).
Our next day in town with better weather we had our first day apart day in god knows how long, even Alicia was impatient to have some time to herself! Alicia enumerated big plans for a haircut and shopping and bidding farewell to her I set out to enjoy my freedom.
I headed to the Intrepid Museum (2*), a World War II USA Aircraft Carrier; I saw famous planes like F16 and F14 Tomcat fighters there, a Concorde, and a Cold War Era 'first strike' nuclear submarine. The museum had lots of reasonably well informed and helpful staff and I spoke to them for quite a while. Downstairs in the hanger deck I watched a sad presentation about the day the Intrepid carrier was hit by two Kamikaze planes within 90 seconds and lost 69 killed in one session during WWII. I also learned that after September 11th 2001 they'd setup the carrier to act as field headquarters for around 900 FBI agents who were in town to investigate the attacks.
After the museum and a quick lunch I walked through the SOHO and TRIBECA neighbourhoods of NYC, sadly the winter sun was not coming in at a good angle so it was shady and cold on the street. With the afternoon slipping away I headed to the Skyscraper museum (1*) which was small but interesting and fairly cheap. After a quick glance around town at sunset to try for some photos I headed home to meet Alicia who'd had a good day and had had so much hair trimmed off even I noticed the difference!
We had a fairly inexpensive Mexican dinner in the evening, the food wasn't brilliant, but not bad and we enjoyed the company of a local gay couple who were sat next to our table at dinner. They were friendly chaps and we talked to them about travel in the USA and around the world and enjoyed their company, I also enjoyed a reasonable lemon Margarita and we went home satisfied with a nice little dinner out.
The following day we prepared ourselves for another major museum the 'American Natural History Museum'. There we enjoyed the good Dinosaur exhibit, space section, and in the gems & minerals we saw the Wittelsbach-Graff diamond which is a very rare and impressive 36 carat blue diamond.
At lunch in the museum Alicia unfortunately fell for the old 'pay by the ounce' trick and we paid $13.71 for her large plate of salad!!
Zipping through one museum section we found an ENORMOUS section of Sequoia tree trunk that was just absolutely vast, it was staggering to think a tree could be that wide, it was about 1,300 years old when they cut it down! We also stumbled upon a section of the museum about Ice cores which had an actual ice core about 4 metres long. It was cool (hahaha) to see the layers in the ice core that represented the seasons and you can clearly see how these might provide a valuable climate record.
Lastly in the museum was an excellent section on human evolution; it covered how incredibly similar human DNA is to Chimps and Bonobos, then covered all the known ancestors of humanity from the fossil record. It also covered the use of tools; amazingly human ancestors have been creating and using tools for the last 2 million years!
We were dead tired by the end of the day when the museum closed and we headed home for Chinese takeaway and a restful night in.
Our tenth day in New York dawned with us still enthusiastic about the city and eager for more, it's a brilliant place with so much to do. Our plan today was to do the 'Food on Foot' walking tour (2*+). The tour premise is that a local who's passionate about food takes you around a selected neighborhood and brings you to the best places to eat, all the food is takeaway/ on the go type food and you can choose to buy what you want at each place. It was an excellent tour; we explored the Lower East Side and tried great dumplings, a Pastrami Sandwich that was the best sandwich I've ever had, funnel cakes, NYC Pizza slices, cupcakes and more. Even with the guide's excellent food sense I still found the NYC hot dog he recommended mediocre compared to mighty Iceland and Russia's hot dogs but all else was delicious.
With our tour finishing mid afternoon we scooted up town to get to the 'Top of the Rock' (1*) for sunset viewing of the city. This is to the 70th floor (approx) observation deck in the midtown city. We were very disappointed to spend 20 mins lining up despite having tickets to get into the express lifts to the top, it seemed that it wasn't the security slowing things down, it was just that the lifts weren't quick enough and this made us miss the best of the sunset light.
Based on what we saw of the city geography from the top choosing 'The Rock' over Empire State was probably the right choice as we had views of Central Park from their, but perhaps you wouldn't get them at all from Empire.
The views around the city at dusk and night were pretty good, not as stunning as hoped, but we were glad we did it, they have good shelter from the wind up there too so it wasn't as cold as feared.
That night we transferred downtown from our useless hostel to new apartment accommodation in Lower East Side for our last couple of nights in town. Lugging all our gear via subway was tough and we spent a weary night in with Subway sandwiches and football on TV.
Our next morning after a Maccas breakfast where we once again noted the ever present few bums that always seem to lurk around at the doors and inside McDonalds in the States we made our way up town to 59th street and 2nd Av for the Roosevelt overhead cable car (1*+) to Roosevelt Island. We took this ride purely for city views The views from the cable car from over the city midtown and over the East river were pretty good and it was a pretty quick and pleasant ride in the brand new renovated cars.
We then saw a bit more of Central Park and headed to the touring 'King Tutankamun exhibition' which was in town. To our frustration and disappointment the exhibition didn't have the famous Golden mask, apparently they never let that out of Egypt.
We had a very Nick friendly evening heading to a Ribs joint our 'food tour' guide had recommended that was quite good and cooked some amazing large chunks of sweet potato that were delicious. We then headed home to watch more American football.
Thus ended our excellent time in NYC, we really enjoyed the city and could easily live there, we were sad to leave on our 3+ hour train ride to Washington D.C. Our next travel destination.
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Peter Doyle
non-member comment
hi
Hi Alicia and Nick. glad to see you have enjoyed you world tour. Hope your both well back in OZ especially with the local trouble you have been having. its been great reading about your adventures. hope to hear from you soon.