Sunday, September 6th - Day 2

Holy what the...? Where am I?

Takes me a minute to figure out that I'm in NYC. Oh ya, it's all coming back to me ... the fantastic party, no sleep, the flights, the taxi, checking-in, walking and walking, eating, sleeping. Now I'm sort of up to speed and I remember. We're in NYC.

Never a good thing when you don't have a hairbrush so first thing after a shower is to run to the corner store and pick up a brush so my hair doesn't dry looking like a rat's nest. Not that I have anyone to impress but you know... grooming is always a good thing. Or so I've heard.

On the way to the store I meet the local street cat named Maya - there are some little notes posted on the brick walls explaining that Maya is meant to live on the street and not to worry - she's not lost. I say hello to her. She looks non-plussed. Just another walker-by. She shoots me a look that says "do something about your hair for god's sake!!" I assure her a hairbrush is on the shopping list.

Get back to the room and we get ready for our first full day here. Angie bought a city tour for us so we set out to meet the bus. We walk to Times Square - holy crap - what a lot of busy crazy energy and lights. You can't really get a sense of the energy - the bustle - on film or tv. It's pretty nuts. Looking forward to seeing it at night but I suspect after we see it once that'll be enough - one of those things you only need to take in once. The New Year's Eve ball is way smaller than you think it's going to be.

We pass the TKTS outlet - good to know for a later date. Tim had mentioned it as a must-know in our travel journal. Thanks Tim.

I brought along the Emily the Strange bag that Emily lent me - very smart thing to do and I've only panicked a few times about "where's my wallet???" since I'm so used to carrying it. I can sort of see the value of having a purse - you can carry a lot of stuff in it - I have maps, books, camera, tons of stuff. Who knew?

The bus tour is fantastic - the PERFECT thing to do on our first full day. Here's what we learn:

• Barney's has a great warehouse sale this week at 17th Street between 7 & 8 Ave
• Times Square is named after the Times
• There's lots of empty office space in times Square = super expensive
• Hell's Kitchen isn't just a Gordon Ramsay television show - it's an area of New York near the theatre district that has been cleaned up since its early days and has been re-named "Clinton" but is still referred to as Hell's Kitchen
• John's Pizza has fantastic pizza (or so says our tour guide)
• A Broadway theatre has to have at least 500 seats
• The soup kitchen from Seinfeld is on 55th Street
• Manhattan means Many Hills
• Uptown is up hill, downtown is down hill (handy)
• NYC is an expensive place to live
  
• The revival of South Pacific at Lincoln Centre is supposed to be very good
• First stop - we get off the bus - at the Dakota on West Central Park - where John Lennon was killed and Yoko Ono still lives, we walk over to Central Park and see the Imagine mosaic. This section is called Strawberry Fields - very cool. Bruce is a huge Beatles fan so this is amazing for him. I take his picture in Strawberry Fields.
  
• High Tea at the Plaza Hotel is fancy. And expensive. And worth it if you have the money.
• You can get a roast beef lunch at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for $10
• You can get a carriage ride in Central Park for $35 per carriage. Brenda and Rose both wrote in our book to be sure to do a carriage ride in Central Park so we'll have to make sure to do that!
  
• St. Patrick's Cathedral is an important landmark - we walked by it yesterday and Bruce had some stories he knew about it - he's a news nut so he knows many things.
  
• We get off the bus again at Rockefeller Centre - tee hee, Bruce and I were already here last night - tour guide tells us that Rockefeller believed in Art and Architecture - statue of Atlas shows importance of Art, as does the statue of Prometheus. Cool.
  
• 5th Avenue separates East and West Manhattan
• Public Library has 6 million books and has free tours at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. That's a lot of books.
  
• The Lions in front of the library have names: Patience and Fortitude.
• We get off the bus at Madison Square Park, which we are told used to be the cultural and social capital of NY.
• Madison Square Gardens has had 4 iterations - it's on our list to see - Bruce is a big fan.
  
• The rules of baseball were created in Madison Square Park.
• We can see the Fuller Building (Flat Iron building) from where we are standing - even I recognize it, and I haven't even seen the Spiderman movies! I take some pictures.
  
• The further downtown you go, the further you go back in history - that's cool!
• Greenwich Village is a fantastic place to live. It was the first place to have electric street lights and the first place ladies could shop without a man. It's super expensive to live there.
• Washington Square Park has appeared in many movies.
• Knickerbockers is a steakhouse with good food and good value.
• Soho means South of Houston. Noho means North of Houston. Brenda wrote in our book to be sure to check out Soho and Noho - we'll be coming back here for sure!
  
• Soho used to be called Hell's Half Acre because it burnt down so many times. Artists reclaimed it and now it's the commercial art capital of the U.S. (yay artists!)
• NYC is an expensive place to live.
  
• There's lots of great food near Grand and Broadway.
• Canal Street - check out Chinatown - Patti wrote in our book to check out all the neighbourhoods, Chinatown, East Village, Chelsea, Little Italy, Harlem, etc. - we plan on it!
• We pass by Little Italy, near Mullberry and Grand - tour guide says check out Angelo's Restaurant.
• Nolita - North of Little Italy is very exclusive now - didn't used to be.
• NYC was built on the backs of many immigrants who worked 14 hours a day to feed their families
• We stop at Fulton Market for a 30 minute break, walk along the pier, get some shots of the river and try to imagine the planes coming in on 9/11 and what that must have been like. Also tried to imagine those many immigrants landing in America for a better life, what they saw when they arrived, what their lives must have been like. I thought about reading Angela's Ashes, and the squalor that family lived in before they came to America and how that was their way to a better life. Wonder how much better it was for them once they got here - I' better read the sequel to find out!
• We see Brooklyn across the river - Patti, Rose, and Brenda all said be sure to go to Brooklyn so we plan on it. Might not walk across the bridge though.
• We take the Staten Island Ferry across - I get a photo of the LED moving sign because when I look up at it, it says 1:11 - HAHA! That's a very special time for me (long story)
• Hear more history about the importance of Ellis Island, how 40% of Americans can trace their lineage back to Ellis Island. Wow.
  
• We see a golf course on a little island built by The Donald (Trump)
• There's the Statue of Liberty. Cool.
• Staten Island Ferry runs 24 hours per day and is totally free.
  
• We missed the Ferry coming back - our whole group did, not just Bruce and I - so we had to wait 30 minutes. I decided to write in my book. My pen is leaking so I'm covered in blue ink. Attractive.
• On the ferry before we leave I get a couple of photos of some seagulls who are perched on the front of the ferry. They look like stowaways.
• I get the money shot of the Statue of Liberty. Tour guide tells us the story of getting the statue from the French and how it was shipped over in a bunch of crates and the American gov't had to build the foundation which was going to be super expensive so they didn't really want it. Some creative fundraising campaigns, particularly the one by Pulitzer, finally raised enough dough to get the job done.
  
• We see the skyline full on - amazing! He tells us why the island doesn't sink with the weight of all those buildings on it - very hard rock it's built on called shist. Cool.
• We get back to the bus and I'm happy to sit down. We drive past Battery Park and we learn that it wasn't originally part of the island but was built later using what was dug up to put in subway lines 1,2,3 & 9.
  
• We get off the bus at Trinity Church - was the centrepiece of 17th Century America. Some very old grave sites there.
• Walk to the NY Stock Exchange and learn a bit about the birth of America and the inauguration of George Washington. Really interesting.
• Drive past the Merril Lynch bull.
• Last stop is at Ground Zero - very moving, especially as the anniversary is approaching this week. Hard to imagine there were two towers in that space that fell into themselves without destroying the entire surrounding area, even though we saw it on TV. We look at the surrounding buildings that are still standing and try to imagine the Towers which were much taller. Impossible.
  
• We drive up the West Side Highway along the Hudson River and see the NY State Trapeze School - someone is getting strapped in for a lesson - cool.
• Lots of bike paths and parks along the river.
  
• Go past the meat packing district - used to be where the slaughter houses were, now it's full of night clubs for the bridge and tunnel crowd. The double entendre of meat market makes me smile.
  
• Drive past Chelsey Piers, where Law & Order is taped. Excellent! Emily, you would like this. I take a picture.
  
• We see where the Circle Line Cruise is - right beside the aircraft carrier "Intrepid" museum at Pier 83 (around 46th).
  

That's what we learned - holy smokes, what a lot of information!!

Angie - thank you so much for booking that tour for us. It was fantastic - and the best thing we could have done on our first full day in New York. I would recommend it to anyone coming here. I feel like I know something about the city now and it really gave us our bearings. Bruce also loved it - he's an information junkie and it was full of information. THANK YOU!!

Now it's time for dinner and we are hungry. We take the tour guide's advice and walk down to 9th Avenue to get some dinner. The place we choose looks promising. And cheap. And it feels good to sit down again. When my food comes, I'm thinking it's probably good to get the bad meal out of the way. Holy watery mess - my fish is coated in stringy eggy stuff and is floating beside frozen corn in something resembling murky yellowish water, with some overly smooth (read "artificial") potatoes plopped alongside. Gross! Oh well, best to get the one bad meal we're going to have out of the way early.

We end the evening on a very pleasant note by going to the Top of the Rock (Rockefeller Centre). It's a gorgeous breezy night and the open air view of the city just after sunset is fantastic. I take lots of pictures and we breathe in the cool air. The lights of the city go as far as the eye can see in all directions - and you get a panoramic view from up there. What a fantastic way to end the evening - I'm already laughing about the crappy dinner. Who cares - we're in NYC!

Great second day. G'night.