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Published: August 8th 2012
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It's good to have a plan.
Especially when you want to cram a
lot of sight-seeing in.
Well, my plan was to use exhaustion, shock and awe as a means to kill jet-lag stone dead.
Of course, it was me that woke up 03:45, 04:45, then stayed awake until getting everyone up. Doh! We set off early to hike to Pier 84: the air much clearer than the muggy afternoon (& sudden thunder+lightning evening storm) on Sunday. Arrived early, and sat enjoying a bagel with eggs & cheese by the front in the sunshine. Signed on with our New York City Passes for the NY Water Taxi & "
Footsteps to Freedom" tour with Rob, a friendly local, and hopped on the boat. & yes, it was bright yellow, like a real NY cab!
A jolly Steve Jobs lookalike (before he died....) named JP gave very entertaining & amusing descriptions of all sorts of sights as we cruised down to Liberty Island, and they kindly took pictures of passengers. The music was all NY based, and it was a pleasure to do the high kicks with him to Frank Sinatra's most famous song 😊
From Battery Park, Rob
took us on his walk around Wall Street,
St Paul's church , and of course the 9/11 Memorial. A somber yet spectacular place amidst the rebuilding that continues, the tale of
The Survivor tree was a nice story.
The walk covered a lot of history: Rob was another good talker, and we ended exhausted at the foot of Brooklyn Bridge, a little on the tired side.
With the "traditional" handing over of a tip, we departed to seek fast food before the next agenda item....and Wendy's had their chance to prove to us their
commitment to quality is above all .....it met the mark, and the munchkins desire to try each fast food chain during the trip was underway,
Next up, a sailing trip on the
Clipper City off South Street Seaport. Now there's a lovely way to spend a sunny afternoon, very relaxing. & of course a second close-up of
La Liberté éclairant le monde. We then crammed a quick hike to the
NYPD museum and a rapid run around Dr Gunther von Hagens
Bodies exhibition....the former clearly dealing with more incidents and dead cadavers, the latter more clearly showing them in an utterly bizarre way.
A quick yellow cab (outside temp 90, inside 60....chillin'!)
uptown saw us score 4 free tickets using our City Pass for
Traces . Took a recommendation to try Coffee Restaurent & enjoyed a nice diner experience before heading back for the show.
And what a show! A
really talented troupe of acrobatic entertainers kept a packed house enthralled with a truly awesome performance! Highly recommended.
So another late night....
& a realisation there are some odd signs about the place....."curb your dog", idle threats about illegally feeding pigeons & a couple of nuclear fallout shelters dotted about.. Tuesday saw us head uptown for a
Central Park Bike tour . Sadly we were seconds late for the guided tour, so I took their tiny map and took us on a gentle 2 hour cycle right around the entire park: good fun, especially dodging the runners (& walkers!) who insisted on doing their thing in the cycle lane....usual array of nutters chattering to themselves, and a quick look at the
Imagine mosaic at Strawberry Fields We headed back downtown for a look around some shops, & en route found the
MoMA exhibitions very good, including the temporary one on "Childhood". Monet, Dali, Picasso, Braque, Warhol, Giacometti, Pollack and more were rapidly absorbed in
Clipper City
at South Street Seaport a cultural whirl...
A very nice lunch in Paley Park near 5 pieces of the Berlin Wall was followed by taking our children back to their childhood with a trip to Nintendo World.....& us to current day gadgetry at the 24-hour Apple Store....
We ended in Times Square for a cheeky dinner at the Hard Rock cafe, amongst the usual rock paraphernalia, then headed to the Rockerfeller Centre to visit the
Top of the Rock for sunset: what a spectacular view!
Another shattering day, and only one day left here.......will we complete our plan? Find out later (note more pics are below)
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Louise Barratt
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The Walters Tour
Impressed by the blog & all the links to interesting info. Where is the picture of Christine on her bike? I assume she survived biking in the park! Looks fantastic & I'm learning lots of new stuff!