Sunday June 26, 2011

Self portrait

Today we went over for our first visit to New York (which really is Manhattan Island) by catching the ferry from Liberty Landing in New Jersey to New York. As fortune would have it, it dropped us off at ground zero. We took a walk inside the building overlooking the construction work on one of the new towers and a part of the memorial. To say the least it is something that brings sad thoughts to your mind.






We then figured out how to catch the subway up to Times Square and then walked around a bit. Subway was easy to figure out since most lines run north/south with the a few lines running east to Brooklyn. Most of them will take you close to the key tourist sites. They are very clean and very little graffiti. Some of the stations are older but it appears they are gradually repairing them. Never felt any problem on the subway as there are a lot of people traveling the subway. The fare collection is easy and done by buying a fare card with a number of trips included. Toronto should catch on to this idea but that might put few of the sleeping fare collectors out of work.


We went on a hop on/hop off bus tour around the downtown area of Manhattan which took us through Greenwich Village, Little Italy, Chinatown, Soho, Noho etc and down to the battery and back. Got a real feel for the structure of the downtown part of the City. Passed by a vegetable gardening area in the battery with the owners tending their vegetable gardens. A lot of the buildings in New York have interesting ginger bread carvings on them and a look to the sky shows a lot of unique artwork on the buildings.



Obviously, a lot of people rent apartments in Manhattan, and they try to individualize there balconies if they have one.





After lunch we took the uptown tour past the museums, central park, through Harlem, past Columbia University, Grant’s Tomb etc. Both tours were quite interesting and they had very good conductors knowledgeable about the City. Of course some of it was memorized script but quite often they threw a little personal knowledge in. Took a walk around Central Park and was amazed by its size and that the City managed to preserve it. As this was Sunday the place was filled with parents and their kids. I think living in a city like New York, forces people to use the facilities available in the city to the maximum extent possible, as it is more difficult to leave the city, few roads lead off the island and because it is so expensive in New York, a lot of people don’t have cars.


Central Park


We were quite tired from the bus trip and the walking so we caught the subway back to the ferry terminal and went back to the boat and had dinner in the local restaurant. Very Expensive! Brenda is still amazed at what we paid for her one little lamb chop. But that is New York. The marina is the most expensive we have encountered along the route - $4/foot and we are not even in New York. However if we didn’t want to stay here we could have moved on.