Advertisement
Published: April 29th 2013
New York April 2013
Joanne at Herald Square 34th Street (Macy's)!Board the Amtrak train in Albany and you're in New York City in approximately 3 hours. Pick up a bagel and coffee at the terminal in Rensselaer as you won't find a food car on most of these short hops.
On a recent Sunday; a sunny one with spring oozing out its pores we "Amtraked" (snagged seats on the Hudson River side) to New York City and arrived Penn Station with a few hours to kill. Kill them we did; first with a walk up to Herald Square where we caught some sun amid a collection of tables and chairs on the corner of Broadway and 34th Street in front of Macy's. Check out the pic of the urban park at Herald Square. Such little urban landscapes are abloom all over the city. On to Bryant Square Park where the landscape has changed drastically - a green as green can be lawn has replaced the skating rink - it was "keep off the grass" on this mid-April visit; but we're sure there are plans for the turf! Meanwhile popular bocce courts rim the lawn! "Buche Ball" anyone?
We met up with our son and grand
New York April 2013
Herald Square Mini Park daughter who trained in from Long Island. The choice of a taxi to take us to Eataly at 200 Fifth was a consideration to me who already had pounded miles (or so it seemed) of pavement. Eataly is a delightful Italian Market Place (a la Mario Batali of Food Network fame) with a half dozen restaurants amid the seafood, gelato, meat, pasta, cheese, fresh produce, pastry and kitchen ware among other designated retail food and food related self sustaining "counters" or marts! There's even a cooking school and a very cool roof garden restaurant with a glass retractable roof - open to the blue sky on this elegant spring day. We chose the Pizza / Pasta restaurant set amid cans and cans of various Italian tomatoes, jars of prepared sauces and pasta in every shape imaginable.
We had a 45 minute wait for our table; and we used our time wisely. We hied ourselves to the Gelato line; placed our orders and crossed Fifth Avenue to devour the yummy cold stuff in Madison Square Park. Dessert first was especially fun for our granddaughter. The reservation desk at the pasta/pizza restaurant summoned us back with a text message - a
New York April 2013
Bryant Park Children's Reading Room - located near the Carousel. BIG improvement over the flying saucers that beckon at other fooderies.
A cab back to Madison Square Garden and amazing seats in a private box topped the day. All the accoutrements of professional basketball were new to me and tons of fun! There was also a nice spread and beverages of choice in the box AND, best of all, a private rest room. Face book came in handy when I posted a photo of our "view." Our niece and her friend had seats right above us (she recognized the position of my photo). So we met up with them briefly at halftime.
When the game was over, we realized an additional bonus, both the Long Island Train terminal and the Amtrak Train terminal are right down the stairs from Madison Square Garden in Penn Station. We chose "river side" seating and got treated to a sun set as we clickity clacked back to Albany and were in the house before 11pm; exhausted and happy. Oh yes, and the NY Knicks won!
There was another odd highlight of the day - when we were strolling in Bryant Park; a very well put together woman
New York April 2013
Bryant Park Carousel of "certain" age approached me because she wanted to know where I got my "stunning" raincoat. Wow - so I told her I had picked it up at a flea market on 23rd Street about a year ago! Just love when stuff like that happens.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.093s; Tpl: 0.017s; cc: 10; qc: 23; dbt: 0.0668s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb
D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
I love train travel
Looks like you did a lot while you were there.