Day 2 in New York, New York. And part of me wishes I had
taken a pedometer with me! The day started by ambling down to Grand Central
Station to see the native New Yorkers scurrying around, making their
connections and grabbing a cup of cawfee. An amazing sight no less, and puts
Kings Cross to shame! A short metro ride later and we are at the fringe of
Central Park, south-west corner. After noticing a small and decent-looking food
stand (not like the guys selling hot dogs and pretzels from their wheelie-bins)
me and James decide to try and blend in with the crowd by ordering a cup of hot
cawfee and a ‘dawg. And boy did we need the food as the next 4 hours took us
all the way through Central Park and up to the top, emerging into
Harlem.....albeit briefly. It felt safe enough, but one look at a liquor store made
us divert round and back towards uptown, and yet another metro station.
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| Hot Dawg! |
A quick stop-off at the Vanderbilt to charge relevant
gadgets and grab a generous slice of pizza (for a buck) for lunch and we were
on our way again.
Our way, was to the World Trade Center area to see what the
place looked like and to see the new Freedom Towers going up. Pretty impressive
and pretty sombre moment, but definitely worth checking it out. From the WTC we
headed onto the legendary Staten Island Ferry, heading across the Hudson
to.....Staten Island. There’s nowt there really, but it’s free to cross the
river and you get a good view of the Statue of Liberty. You have to pay to get
on to see the actual statue, and you can’t go up it or anything, so the free
ferry trip was just right.
Got off the ferry and back onto Manhattan and set about
searching for the Brooklyn bridge. It’s clearly visible so we could just follow
our eyes and get on it, yes? No. It seems like you can’t just get on it, and it
levels out to ground level some way inland, but we found a shortcut to get up
there between a number of roadwork signs, of which there are many in New York!
A decent hike across the bridge was very enjoyable, but my feet didn’t seem to
think so. They had had enough by that point and were in urgent need of a rest
as the gel-heels I had purchased in readiness for plenty of walking, had
slipped into the middle of my foot and were giving me right jip! So we had a
quick nosey round Brooklyn, saw some guys playing football and headed towards
the metro to get back to the shack.
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| The Statue of Liberty, standing proud |
To keep the costs to a minimum ($6.75 or a pint of Harp on
our first night!) we decided to grab some sushi from the Korean shop round the
corner. Good idea? Yes. Any sushi left at half 8? No. So we headed to the local
Duane Reade to get a large Russian (!) salad and a mammoth 24oz can of
Corona......mmmmmm! All in all, a massive trek round NYC and much more subway
action is gonna come into play tomorrow I think, and first stop is the Empire
State Building in the early morn.......
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