Monday 8 October
Today we have to get
up at 5am. Ouch! We have a quick shower and breakfast and are
ready for Eric to drop us off at the train station in Ronkonkoma.
It’s a bit further then the one in Bellport, where we are staying, but
the express train gets us to the city faster.
We buy our tickets, find the train and settle for the 1-1/2 hour ride to
Penn Station in Manhattan. As it is still dark we doze a bit until we
get closer to the city. By then it is
light and we can briefly see the New
York skyline before we go underground.
We get off at Penn
Station and after a bit of orientation find the way to 34th Street. From there we have to walk to 51st Street and the corner of Broadway
to board the tour shuttle. As we haven’t
had much time to check out the map of Manhattan
we need to ask which way is up or down and are pointed into the right
direction. The walk is manageable. We
have been told that each block takes about 2 minutes and since we have to walk
17 blocks we know we can do it in time to arrive before 8.30am, the tour
departure time.
It is a beautiful
morning with the sun coming out for most of the time. It’s cold though, so we are happy with our
jackets. The walk along 7th Avenue
is pleasant, but after a very early breakfast I am ready for a cup of coffee
and I also need a toilet stop, so we pop into a McDonalds along the way. And here we have a taste of what one can
expect in a big city like New York. There is only one toilet and another lady and
I are waiting forever and a day, until a person comes out of that toilet and it
is hard to describe what ‘it’ looks like….
We don’t know if it is a druggie
or a homeless person, but he carries a stack of belongings in a backpack and in a
plastic crate. The lady in front of me
walks up to a staff member and asks for the toilet to be disinfected before she
goes in. The staff member obliges and we
get to go to a clean rest room.
At 8.20am we find
the bus and our guide for the day, who ticks off our names and we get to
board. After a welcome the tour guide
explains that the tour will differ a bit from the usual as it is Columbus Day, a public holiday in the
States. Some streets will be closed off
for fairs and a big street parade and we may come across other little
obstacles. We do, because our first
stop, St Patrick’s is a ‘no go’
area. We were to visit the church and
walk around inside, but there is a Service and we are not allowed in. Next we drive past (the Radio City Music Hall which we know from Andre Rieu's concert, the Library)
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| Radio City Music Hall |
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| The city Library |
and visit various sites like
The Rockefeller Centre, where we also discover a Lego store
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| Rockefeller Center |
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| The Lego store |
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| Radio City of Lego |
and the Grand
Central Terminal near the beautiful Chrysler Building.
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| Grand Central and the yellow taxis |
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Grand Central Terminal (part of the exterior)
The clock is an original Tiffany stained glass model |
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The Chrysler Building behind the square glass buildings
(beautiful architecture) |
We get to walk through the Grand Central,
which is breathtakingly beautiful. I am
not going to talk in depth about all these places, because it would take me
month of Sundays, so if you want to know more, just google it! J
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| The hall leading to the various platforms |
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| The domed roof (restored) |
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| Stately stairs |
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The most famous opal clock at the information booth, made with Australian opal.
The clock appears in many movies, The Godfather being one of them. |
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The waiting hall for the well-to-do people who (in the distant past)
didn't want to be waiting out in the rain |
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| One of the chandeliers |
Next on the list is
a visit to the
Empire State Building,
where we get
express tickets. For us the
express tickets don’t work well enough to get up and down fast,
because we are too polite and not
pushy
enough, so we don’t get to use them properly.
It means we end up being 10 minutes late back at the bus. The visit is worth it though. The views from the 86
th floor are
magnificent and of course we have taken plenty of pictures.
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| On our way to the 9/11 Memorial information centre |
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| Areal photographs on the enclosure |
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| Steel, recovered from the site |
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| Explanation |
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| Building works on the site |
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| This tower has 20 floors to go before it is finished |
The site itself is
very impressive and the visit is a bit emotional too when you realise you are
standing in an area where so many people have perished, many of them doing
their duty to fellow citizens. The site is quite big and new buildings are
arising around the two ‘footprints’ of the original twin towers. What we have never realised is, that the
original
World Trade Centre consisted
of seven buildings. The twin towers were
only two of them, but the other five were demolished at the same time. So, the twin towers are not going to be
re-built, but the other buildings are. One of them is finished, another one has
nearly reached its peak and has only 10 floors to go and a third one is within
20 floors of finishing. The site also
contains a
9/11 Memorial museum which
is to open very soon. When the rubble
was being removed from the site, all those years ago, the workers discovered
the remnants of a tree, which was still alive.
They have recovered this tree, nursed it back to health and re-planted
it at the site of the memorial. It’s now
called the
Survival Tree.
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| The fountain where once a tower stood and where so many lost their lives |
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| Our 'photographer' next to the Survival Tree... |
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| The Survival Tree |
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| The new 9/11 Memorial Museum |
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| The 2nd tower: 20 floors to go |
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| The fountain of the other building |
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Peeking through the window of the museum -
one of the steel constructions left over from a demolished building |
Beside the tour
through the various parts of
Manhattan
the aim of the day is to visit three major landmarks and of course, the
Statue of Liberty is another one of
them. It is about 1pm when we catch the
ferry to
Liberty
Island, and not without going through heavy security again. It
is way past our usual lunch time, so first thing we do is getting something to
eat at a restaurant on the island. The
clouds have been closing in for a while, but it still is pleasant enough to sit
outside, where numerous birds fight over the crumbs at every table.
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The Statue of Liberty in the distance
(seen from Battery Park) |
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| Looking down onto Battery Park from the ferry |
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| The sky line fading away... |
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| Add caption |
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| Closer to the Statue now |
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| Frank wants to capture it too |
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| The Statue standing tall |
After lunch we pick
up our audio equipment and, while listening to the story and interesting
information about the Statue, we walk around the island and look at the various
items of interest that are pointed out to us.
Of course, pictures are a
must,
so plenty of those too!
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One of a number of smaller statues depicting important people
that had something to do with the creation of the Statue of Liberty.
Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi was the designer |
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Alexandre Gustave Eiffel was the structural engineer who based
the structure of the statue on the same metal frame work
which he used for La Tour Eiffel (the Eiffel Tower) |
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| Marion with audio and head phones |
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| In the gift shop |
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| A life-size part of the structure (the torch) |
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| Impressive as ever |
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| The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge connecting Long Island and Staten Island |
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| Frank on the ferry and Castle Clinton in the back ground (behind the trees) |
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| American Merchant Mariners’ Memorial |
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| Korean War Memorial |
We’ve been allotted
3-1/2 hours for this part of the tour, so we catch an early ferry back to make
sure we are on time at the bus. The rest
of the tour brings us to
China Town,
Little Italy, a view of the
Brooklyn Bridge,
Soho, Chelsea,
Wall Street, etc. and back to
Broadway where we take our leave and walk back to
Penn
Station.
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| Our tour guide |
A few impressions of
Little Italy and
China Town:
And bustling
Broadway and
Times Square, which you want to keep going back to:
The nine-hour tour has taken more than 10 hours, so we are pretty tired. There was not only a lot of walking to be done, but taking in all the information at every site takes its toll as well. But it was well worth it. Although we feel like real Americans, who 'do' a whole continent in a week, we are glad to have all these wonderful impressions of this marvellous city, that indeed never sleeps...
On our walk back to Penn Station we come across a few interesting figures that everyone seems to know about,
The Naked Cowboy and the
The Naked Indian. They are only two of many, mostly movie and Disney figures like
Mickey and Minney Mouse,
Puss 'n Boots, Bat Man and
Spider Man, which we'll see during the days that follow.
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| The Naked Cowboy (as written on the back of his undies...) |
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| The Naked Indian |
When finally we arrive at
Penn Station we need to ring Eric to let him know which train we are going to be on so that he can pick us up. Since we have had a very late lunch we're not hungry, so don't want to hang around a lot longer for dinner. When I want to ring Eric I discover that my
international roaming service has disappeared, so we'll have to find a pay phone. There are plenty around and they actually work! Try that in Australia! Eventually we catch the 7.30pm train to
Bellport instead of
Ronkonkoma. We only need to upgrade our tickets and change trains at
Babylon, but Eric doesn't need to drive as far to pick us up.
When we finally get home we vege out on the lounge with a nice cool glass of juice and Eric and Nancy want to hear all about our day. The great people they are they had offered us a bite to eat, but we told them we were happy with a cool drink. After that we discussed the train schedule for the next day, watched
The Voice and finally went to bed at 10.15pm. Tired, but more than happy about this memorable day.
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