NYC - Tour Days 1 and 2 (9/5 and 9/6)

After our horrendous arrival here, I'm happy to report that we have had two really good days touring New York City.  Thank goodness for Barbara, she practically led us by the hand on Day 1, but today, Day 2, she left us on our own.

Our arrangement for Day 1, Saturday, was that we would take the PATH train from Jersey City to the World Trade Center (WTC) stop, and she would work her way from Connecticut, through Grand Central Terminal (I always thought it was called Grand Central Station, but that actually is the post office), down to meet us at the WTC.  We all had to get up early, but it all worked and we met about 9:00.  With her help, yesterday we bought tickets to take the ferry to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island for an 11:00 trip, and it was suggested that we get there an hour early for security check.  So we did all that.  At the WTC, we were able to see the Memorial as well as the new buildings.  We did not take time to go through the museum, but just the Memorial was pretty awesome.  From there we walked the streets down to Battery Park to catch the ferry, passing some NYC icons, such as the New York Stock Exchange and Wall Street, including the "bull" that everyone pets.

Watching the Statue of Liberty get larger as our ferry neared the island was pretty amazing.  That is a beautiful statue.  We walked the complete circle around her and listened to an audio tour.

Then we got back on the ferry for our Ellis Island stop.  That too was pretty amazing, just imagining all those immigrants, with their hopes and fears, and all their belongings, leaving family behind, to "find the dream."  Our tour here started with a 30-minute film that really brought it to life.  We walked through the exhibits and photos here, then took the ferry back to the mainland.

Next, Barbara introduced us to the subway, which is really the same as our PATH train.  We stopped at 3 places for lunch before we found the right one.  I felt like Goldilocks and the 3 bears (the first one was too expensive [$19 hamburgers at Fridays], the second one was too hot [no a/c], and the 3rd one, while not perfect, fit well enough.  Then we worked our way up Broadway, I think, again passing some well known buildings.  We saw Macys, including where the big parade goes, several famous churches, a glimpse of the Empire State Building, NY traffic.

Finally, she showed us where our subway connection would take us home, and she headed up to 42nd Street to catch her train back to Connecticut.  With trepidation we allowed her to leave us, and we went down into our subway station.  We had to ask questions on both ends, but we did manage to get ourselves back to the campground.  By then, it was about 6:45, and we were exhausted.  But we had seen a lot, and it was a really good day.  Helped erase some of yesterday's images of the overpass in front of the RV!

In the Train station -- first time!

New World Trade Center Building

Memorial at World Trade Center 

World Trade Center Memorial

Macy's

Day 2, we were on our own.  We didn't try for an early start, but our plan was to do a city bus tour.  We found our way back to the train station -- by today, Joe is instructing other people from the campground here on how to find the train station and the process of getting the metro card, where to board and what to look for on the return.  From student to teacher in just one day, no surprise there.

We were going to try to find breakfast from a street vendor, just for the NY experience, but we ended up at a Burger King right next to Macys. When we came out of the subway station, we saw the first of the bus-tour sellers on the street, so we just bought our tickets from him.    All of the Burger King storefront was the door, then we had to walk down to the basement to find the restaurant.  Street space is a premium here. So after we had our breakfast crouissant, we headed over to Macys to get on our Green Bus, where we spent the day.  We actually bought the combination tour -- Downtown and Uptown.  Although we didn't get off at any of the stops until we transferred from Downtown to Uptown, we passed a lot of very familiar buildings and areas -- DOWNTOWN:  Rockefeller Center, Central Park, Times Square (we saw the building where the ball drops on New Years Eve), Empire State Building, SoHo and NoHo (if you are SOuth of HOuston Street, you are in SoHo; if you are NOrth of HOuston Street, you are in NoHo), UPTOWN:  Dakota Hotel, Museum of Natural History, Theatre District, Guggenheim Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art -- just to name a few.  We saw the horse carriages at Central Park, and had a pretzel, a hot dog and a sausage from a street vendor.  We saw bands playing on street corners, panhandlers, some protest marchers, a group dancing or doing cheers to a high school-type band, knock-off designer items for sale on the street, pretty much everything you think of when you think of New York City.  We know we didn't see even a small portion of what there is to see here, but we got a good overall viewpoint, and that's all we really wanted.

We found our way back to the train, and back to the campground, I think it was about 6:00.  We turned on the generator to cool the RV down and relaxed for a while, then went out for White Castle hamburgers, which were only 2 miles away.  We have one more day here, then we will be moving on, somewhere.

We have had lovely weather here, we know we have been really lucky in that regard.  We got to sit on top on all the buses today, which was nice.  And we sure heard plenty of sirens and honking horns.  We have no desire to give up our Arizona lifestyle for this City-life!!!

We ran out of camera batteries on the last part of the bus ride, which was probably a good thing.  We have tons of pictures, but I'm just going to post a few.

Selfie on the bus

Bull outside New York Stock Exchange

Lots of Taxis!!

Iceberg Building (Unique Architecture)

Back of Javitz Center

N Y Skyscrapers -- what I came to see

Horse and carriage to go thru Central Park (we didn't)

Joe in front of Central Park

Building on Times Square where the New Years Eve ball drops (the one with all the colored signs)

And here's the ball

Sidewalk Band

Signs advertising Plays in Theatre District

Masses of people in theatre district

Time Warner Building

Trump International Hotel and Tower

We actually made it to all our stops today without Barbara, so she must have been a good teacher.  I found this to be all very interesting, and I'm glad to have finally gotten to see what New York City looks like.  I would say it lived up to expectations.