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Published: June 12th 2010
It doesn't seem like a week since we arrived in New York after our 24 hour flight from Melbourne last Friday.
We have covered most of town since we arrived and after some days it felt like we walked half of Manhattan too! We won't quite have seen every museum or every tourist sight to see but hopefully one day there will be another trip here to see what we missed as well as the new sights that will spring up in the coming years.
Our hotel is in a great location and is so central to everything. We are about 10-15 minutes walk to
Times Square and out the hotel window we can almost see the flash of cameras from the Empire State Building. I was able to walk to the Empire State Building in about 15 or so minutes last Saturday night to get a great view of the lights across Manhattan and beyond.
But back to Times Square. In our travels we have passed though the square a number of times whether we were coming out of the subway(underground train station), browsing around the many square shops or the couple of times we were lucky
The Bright Lights of Times Square
The advertisting billboards in Times Square are the world's most expensive ad space...it would be no surprise that only the ads of huge multinational companies can be seen in the area. It all made for a very colorful spectacle thoughenough to see a Broadway show.
Times Square is an amazing spectacle both day and night. The colourful advertising, digital and still ads, that adourns the billboards surrounding the square, is a colorful and bright sight against the taller skyscrapers and more historic buildings in the area. Our guide on the hop on hop off bus said the worlds most expensive advertisting is here.. No surprise there but the advertising is either from well known multi national corporates or well known brands such as Swatch or M&Ms that have large stores in Times Square. The volume of business that these stores get from the human traffic that passes through the area each year would more than pay for the advertising, let alone the turnover of sales across the world. The other welll known site of Times Square, the New Years Eve ball, is sitting at the top of one of the square towers, ready and waiting to drop at the stroke of midnight NYE 2010.
I mentioned that we have been lucky to see a couple of Broadway shows while we have been here..more shows in one week than we would see in 2 years in Melbourne. We
King Kong - Eat your Heart Out!
The M&M ad being played over and over above the 3 level M&Ms store in Times Square chanced our luck at the half price tickets booth the other night and got to see the musical Memphsis. This show was great with catchy singing and dancing throughout . The storyline was about the struggle of the African American talent to be accepted into mainstream radio and entertainment back in the 50s and was a story well told. With the story being about a part of US history it may well not been seen in theatres outside America. Nonetheless it has been nominated for the best musical at the forthcoming Tony awards on Sunday night which we will miss by one night. Its a favourite to win the award so Mum and I will keep an eye on the news for the final awards outcome.
We also decided to go and see the Lion King as a treat. The hotel concierge organising the tickets for us on the same morning as the show and we were lucky to have seats with a good view of the stage. Some of you may have seen the Lion King when it was on in Melbourne so I don't need to say how good it was. The transformation of humans into animals
Imposter!
Part of the M&M ad above the Times Square Store, a Statue of Liberty wannabe! of the jungle and some of the special effects, did great justice to bringing film to the theatre. The show had some local humour thrown in as well and I'll long remember my favourite part of the show, where excellent effects and use of sets brought about the huge Lion face as the spirit of the lion father was speaking to his young son. I hope this show comes back to Australia one day and I have an opportunity to see this excellent production again.
Anyway, enough of Times Square and onto the rest of New York.
Mum and I have easily been able to get around on the public transport. The subway system and bus transport has got us to most of the places we wanted to go. We realised how big some of the underground stations were when we were trying to get out the closet exit to the hotel at one of the underground stations. We found ourselves walking 4 street blocks underground one way and almost 2 avenue blocks the other. It seemed a bit claustrophic underground with the number of people around but as Mum pointed out, it would be the preferred option
Chrysler Building
The Chrysler Building Shining Brightly on a Saturday night...as seen from the Empire State Building to stay underground as long as possible in the winter when there is snow around.
We were impressed with the Port of Authority bus station too which we encountered at the start of the week on our outlet shopping trip out of NY to Woodbury. This is a multi level bus station and although busy, seems to be the most practical way of keeping the major passenger pick ups to the one spot. With the volume of traffic around town, its hard enough for the public transport buses to move around as it is.
After a week, I finally have got the hang of how to navigate around the streets and avenues around the city. The street numbers increment from south to north and avenue numbers from East to West. Sometimes though at the start of the week, Mum and I had to think twice about whether we needed to head uptown(north) or downtown(south). With the streets moving (excluding the very lower part of Manhattan) from 1st street in the south to at least 165th street in the North, I am sure we were not the only ones of have lost our sense of direction navigating the streets
Apollo Theatre Harlem
The Apollo Theatre in Harlem where many stars including the Jackson 5 and Michael Jackson, started their careers or working out which way to go coming out of the subway.
We could have spent a whole week looking a the museums in town but in the end we covered three. Of the art museums the Museum of Modern Art was the most interesting with a good variety of painting art from well known artists such as Picasso and Cezzane to other forms of Modern art using digital technology. The Guggenheim museum was an unusual shape (and good for a photo) but we were a little disappointed with the variety on display. Some good paintings but mostly photography that we could not relate to.
The third museum we saw was the American Museum of Natural History. The museum was impressive but had so much on display our heads were spinning after 5 hours and we could not take in any more information. We really enjoyed the Space show, the display of the Inca road system in South America, the large displays on the forest of North America, American and African native animals and took in part of the exhibition of the world oceans. The exhibits of the American Indian past was excellent(I could relate to this after
Guggenheim Museum
The unique exterior of the Guggenheim Museum watching Dances with Wolves on the plane on the way to the US) and we had no regrets about looking at the special exhibitation of the Silk Road, an insightful display of product trading and way of life along the Silk Road through Asia and the Middle East hundreds of years ago. Having missed some of the displays, here is another reason to come back to New York one day.
We have managed to see New York from many different perpectives. First there was the Empire State Building at night (30 minutes of queueing for 15 minutes of viewing was still worth it). The Empire viewing deck is in mid town Manhattan, so I had excellent views down to the financial centre in lower Manhatten as well as the skyscrapers updown and to Queens and New Jersey across each side of the water that surrounds Manhattan island. The view from the bus coming back to town from Woodbury earlier in the week gave us the sense of perspective of the spread of the skyline across Manhatten. I could see that the middle part of the island(and that view confirmed today when I was down around the Union Square area)
seemed to be the most residential part with the lack of skyscapers about....more on that later though.
Heading up the Rockfellar centre (Top of the Rock) gave us clear day time views over the upper mid town and Central Park as well as the bays and districts beyond the Island. Then there was our cruise out to the Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island and the views of the skyline from the boat.
When we are back in New York one day, there will be one other view of the city. Construction has recently begun on the 1776 (year of US independance from Britain) feet high Freedom tower on the former World Trade centre site as well as a 9/11 memorial. No doubt there will be a viewing deck of sorts in this building when it is scheduled to be finished in 2011, the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy.
With the sadness of 9/11 going to the World Trade centre sight was not something I really wanted to do. But I have been around the area on the way to somewhere else a couple of times this week and today we passed by the neighbouring St Pauls church,
Out at Liberty Island
Mum and me out at Liberty Island with Manhattan in the background Mum pointed out the memorial inside the church (Mum had seen it last year) and I decided to go into the church. I am so glad i did now. Inside this historic church is a touching memorial to all assoicated with the tragedy - the victims, the families of the victims, the emergency services workers and volunteers. It is much a memorial to the tireless work done by many for the year after the tragedy as it is to the victims who lost their lives on 9/11. The stories from volunteers of how being involved with the relief efforts in the aftermath and how this has effected their lives was interesting to read.
New York has an interesting history. We have seen interesting snippets of this history on the local TV station in the hotel each morning(a welcome change from the constant news about the BP oil spill disaster in the Mexico Gulf) and the guide on the hop on hop off bus gave us more interesting snippets about preservation, the history real estate values and living for New York locals as we travelled about town.
It seems that NY went through some periods of ripping down historical
Walking through Central Park
Ambling across an historic bridge in Central Park structures to be replaced by archictural monstrosities in the 1950s like Melbourne did. But a landmark law introduced many years ago has seen the preservation of many beautiful buildings around town. That would explain the scaffolding in many parts of town at the moment but all worth it as walking through the historic library and Grand Central Station, a couple of the many buildings preserved due to the landmark law, was enjoyable. The city might have looked more like Paris had this law been introduced in NY 100 years earlier as it was in Paris.
But then again even if New York looked more like Paris, no other city in the world would have traffic like NY with the constanting heavy traffic tooting at each other, more taxis in the street than any other vehicle and the regular sirens of the NYPD (police) or the FDNY (Fire Department and ambulance) getting around the city. Thank goodness for the regularity and reliability of the subway...there is no way we would want to be driving in New York City!
The story of our visit to New York seems to be going on forever but I know this will be
Overlooking Central Park
View of Central Park from the top of the Rockafeller Centre a good reminder of my trip in a few years to come and I have forgotten some things or maybe a referance when I am lucky enough to be planning another visit here in the years to come! To finish off my travel blog i'll end with covering the shopping as well as eating in New York.
The shopping on offer in town is endless from the extreme pricetags in the Bergdorf Goodman and Saks 5th Avenue stores to the huge variety of local labels(at reasonable prices) in Macys (the worlds largest department store) and Bloomingdales (another store that takes up a whole city block). There is no shortage of anywhere to shop and I've found that many stores are in numerous locations around town so one doesn't need to rush down to the popular(and crowded) strip of 5th avenue to find what they want. Our shopping though started with a visit to Woodbury Common, a fanastic outlet shopping mall(leaves DFO for dead!) about an hours bus ride out of New York city. The outlets had been recommended to me and I am so glad we went there on the Monday , there was everything from house goods, perfums
and Toiletries, sports clothes, jeans, dresses, handbags, absolutely everything! We certainly did not come home empty handed - there were good quality goods on offer and at great discounts. Getting some good shopping at Woodbury on the Monday meant that we had our dose of retail therapy and we could spend most of the rest of the week sightseeing. Mind you we ventured back to the shops over the last day or so and its a good thing we are heading to Ireland to see Greg and his family tomorrow(sure we will see the shops in Ireland eventually though!).
I've been pleasantly surprised at the quality of food in the area(except for the self serve open salad and hot food trays in the convenience stores which look awful at the end of each day after being in the open and prodded by all and sundry).
Sure there is the diet of American burger and fries about, but our hotel is surrounded by healthy salad shops and the local chinese restaurant that serves great food. We have eaten out a couple of times but these local shops have been great to grab a decent bite to eat when
Girl in the Mirror
One of the numerous Picasso exhibits at the Museum of Modern Art we have just wanted to come home and rest or wanted some quick and healthy food before heading down to the theatre district. Its a pity we did not have near us the Wholefoods market that i saw down near Union square this afternoon. This serves everthing from healthy vegetarian dishes to stir fries, seafood and salads, meals that locals could just pick up and take home to cook quickly after being at work all day. This area was more in the residential area I mentioned earlier. Obviously there are more hotels in the area we are and there is not the market for such a store - can't complain we were in a great location in all other ways. Our hotel served a decent buffet breakfast each morning and during the day a pit stop at Starbucks or the nearest other cafe kept us going until we got home.
The end of our stay in New York is almost here. We have had an excellent week of sightseeing and covered much of the city. We are looking forward to a rest though and getting to Ireland to see our family and meet our 6 month old niece/granddaughter for
Digital Art at Museum of Modern Art
This display shows the digital mapping of flight paths across the US over a certain period of time... the first time.
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Maryanne
non-member comment
Amazing
Sounds like you're having a great time. Makes me wish I was there. I'm amazed at how much there is to see in just one city! Your commentary is fantastic. You should be a travel guide!! I'm sure Ireland will be just as much fun. I was there many years ago and loved it and the people!