Advertisement
Published: November 1st 2009
Edit Blog Post
Since our first blog documenting our Egypt/Italy trip was an overwhelming success by all critics, we thought we'd continue on and do one for our trip to NY and Washington, DC with Melissa's mom and dad.
The trip got off to a bit of a slow start with a combination of an early snow storm and Air Canada computer problems, delaying our original flight to Ottawa by about 5 hours. On the plus side it did allow us time to have our first, and unfortunately only celebrity sightings of the trip, Doc Walker and liberal leader Jon Gerrard, very exciting... After an itinerary switch to fly through Toronto, and landing at Newark instead of LaGuardia, we arrived in NY about 6 hours later than scheduled. I had arranged a shuttle service to take us into Manhattan to our hotel, the Belvedere. Our first night there set a record for me as the most I've ever spent on a hotel room at $264 US/night, plus taxes and fees of course. Great location right in the theatre district being about a 5 minute walk to Times Square, a 20 minute walk to central park and a block from the Hell's Kitchen area.
After a long day of hanging around the airport, we only managed the energy to hit Hurley's Irish pub for a bite, then walked over to see Times Square. Its quite the sight with all the lights and hoards of people, I couldn't even imagine being there for New Year's Eve.
Oct. 11 Sunday we had tickets for the matinee showing of Jersey Boys, so we didn't plan to go too far away from the theatre disctrict. We got up fairly lesiurely (average by Melissa and Al's sightseeing standards, possibly a bit early for the elder Whitesides), and walked up 7th street towards central park. After a quick stop for breakfast ($3.50 for a small OJ, but freshly sqeezed...), we passed by Carnegie Hall, Trump tower and the Plaza on our way to the west side of the park to the Dakota Apartments. With Doug being a huge Beatles fan, this was a must see attraction as it is the site where John Lennon was shot. Yoko Ono still keeps an apartment here on the top floor.
From there we went over to the Strawberry Fields memorial and then wandered throughout the park for
Central park
From Belvedere Castle, overlooking the Turtle Pond a couple hours, checking out the lake, Belvedere Castle and the Great Lawn. After that, it was time to fulfill a poorly made promise I made to Melissa a while ago. I don't remember exactly where (maybe Montreal), but Melissa wanted to go on a carriage ride, I got out of it by saying that the iconic place to do that is in central park. I used the same rational to get out of the gondola ride at the Venetian in Vegas, saying we'd do that in Venice. Unfortunately, our trip to NYC came too soon and the promise had not been forgotten. So we hired our driver Ian with his horse Joey, and took a 20 minute loop through the southern half of central park. Ian pointed out a few buildings along the way, but for the most part spent it taking calls on his cell phone. A magical experience....
After our ride was finished, we made our way back to the hotel to get ready for Jersey Boys. We stopped along the way for lunch at the Halal stand at 53rd and 6th, rated #2 restaurant on tripadvisor. A little adventurous for the parents, but very good
Top of the Rock observatory
Central park view from TOTR food.
The show Jersey Boys is the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. Excellent show, we highly recommend it. After the show we walked over to Hell's Kitchen and ate at a french restaurant called Marseilles, possibly one of the best (and longest at 3 hours) meals I've ever had, and not too bad of a price for NY. The goat cheese tartiflette appetizer and creme brulee dessert were fantastic. The waiter had overheard us toasting to Melissa's recent birthday, so they put a candle in her creme brulee, but unfortunately no funny hat or singing.
Oct. 12 First stop of the day was the Top of the Rock observatory deck at Rockefeller Centre, home of the NBC studios. We had prebooked reserved entry for 9:10am, and it was only about a 10 minute walk from the hotel. Everything I had read said TOTR was better than the Empire State building because you get a great view of central park, and a view of the Empire State building itself. There are a few videos to watch about the history of Rockefeller centre and the Rockettes, then 67 stories up to the observation deck.
Top of the Rock observatory
Empire State building, looking towards lower Manhattan Fortunately we had a fairly clear day and were able to get a great view of Manhattan.
We left Rockefeller Centre and continued along 50th across 5th avenue where they were getting ready for the Columbus day parade. We slipped through the crowds and went into St. Patrick's Cathedral. Its a neo-gothic style catholic church dating back to around 1860. Worth a look, but quite busy as a number of the clergy were taking part in the parade, with Columbus being of Italian, and thus Roman Catholic descent.
We continued our walking tour (with me being the guide, so it wasn't very well done), and walking down Park ave to take a peek at Grand Central Terminal. According to good old wikipedia, it is the worlds largest train station, when measured by number of tracks.
From Grand Central it was a straight shot over to the UN building, where we bought tickets for one of the tours. A somewhat interesting tour showing the goals and mandates of the UN, particularly relating to human rights issues and peacekeeping. But the highlight is definitely getting to go into the General Assembly Hall. The general meeting was actually just a
Harbour Lights Cruise
This is the location of where the twin towers stood. One was dead centre of the picture couple weeks before we were there, where the place was completely locked down with heavy hitters like Obama, Gordon Brown, and the popular Muammar Gaddafi.
After the UN, we walked back to the hotel, stopping along the way at an Irish pub, the Perfect Pint, for happy hour and a bite to eat. Melissa's dad says they serve the best steak sandwich he's ever had. After eating, we picked up some warmer clothes and made our way to Pier 42 to catch the Harbour Lights Cruise on Circle Line tours. It was a bit chilly but certainly worth it to get a great view of the Manhattan skyline at night.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.13s; Tpl: 0.016s; cc: 8; qc: 50; dbt: 0.0791s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb