Day Two in New York

I was too exhausted to post much last night about our first few hours in NYC, and today was a long one: left the hotel about 10 am and got back just before 10 pm, with visits to the Empire State Building (didn't go up though, just looked at it), Fifth Avenue, Central Park, Columbus Circle, the Battery, the Staten Island Ferry, Wall Street, Trinity Church, Ground Zero, Chinatown, Little Italy, and Greenwich Village. So we're a bit tired once again. Not to mention going through the Port Authority both coming from and returning to Jersey. I'll add some tonight and more as I can. Just uploading to Flickr is taking a while so I won't try any YouTube uploads, possibly till we get home.

Anyway: For now let me summarize what I can. On Friday, May 22, we drove up from DC, arriving in Secaucus, NJ before 4 pm. There's a bus from in front of our hotel that runs in to the Port Authority and, most times of the day, only takes about 20 minutes to get there; the hotel costs a third of what one in Manhattan would. And as northern New Jersey goes, it's a pretty modern, mall area. (I know: as northern New Jersey goes, a toxic waste dump is pretty nice, but make your own jokes. This isn't bad at all.) So we decided to go into Manhattan for Sarah's first look.

Note above that I say the bus "at most times of the day, only takes about 20 minutes to get there." A little before five pm is not most times of the day, even though we were inbound rather than outbound. Every bus in the Western Hemisphere and some that must have been imported from Tokyo or other crowded cities for the occasion was lined up for the Lincoln Tunnel and again for the Port Authority terminal. We got there in less than an hour I think, but when the return trip was 20 minutes (as was the Saturday morning trip) we realized we were better located than we initially feared.

So landing at the Port Authority I simply walked Sarah east on 42nd Street, told her she was at Broadway and 42nd Street, two of the most famous streets in the world, then turned her to the left and voila, Times Square.

It's quite true that Times Square has been much cleaned up since Giuliani and Bloomberg arrived, but we also discovered, later, where the sleezy "gentlemen's clubs" had gone: mostly to Eighth Avenue. Fortunately the sheer sensory input is so great that I don't think Sarah registered what we were passing.

We got her a snow globe in a junky souvenir store, showed her the huge Times Square Toys R Us with a big ferris wheel inside (she declined to ride, thinking the cartoon characters on the gondolas were too juvenile for her, If I properly understood her objection), but then spotted "M&M World" with its "Now Open" sign. M&M World is a three story building devoted entirely to M&M products. I see from its Wikipedia page that there are actually now three of them: in Times Square, Las Vegas, and Orlando. Of course. The three most excessive places around. She loved it and bought a bunch of M&Ms: you can pick your colors, including some exclusive to M&M World colors apparently, and your plain or peanut.

Across Broadway from M&M World is a Hershey store, which we only stepped in the door of as her chocolate acquisitions were already quite adequate. She wants to go back. In fact as of this morning Sarah was content to spend her whole stay in Times Square, but after showing her a lot more of Manhattan I think she's gotten a bit more broad-minded.

Giuliani may have gotten the strip joints and peepshows out of Times Square, but it is still not what you'd call a genteel and restrained place: it's just the flashing lights and giant jumbotrons are for M&Ms and Hershey, new movies and, as always, Broadway shows, rather than sleezier stuff. The sheer sensory input is beyond what I'm accustomed to at age 61, and wore me out fast. Sarah, of course, was jumped up on adrenalin. She was already psyched for her first trip to New York, and we dropped her in the center of the maelstrom on the first afternoon.

I'll cut Friday short so as to get at least today's basics down before sleep overtakes me. Tam and Sarah are out cold already; only blogging duty drives me on.

We ate at a very elegant Italian restaurant in the theater district that was labeled in one of our "New York For Kids" books (either Frommer's or Fodor's, both of which we bought): it was kid friendly enough, but no restaurant in the theater district is cheap, but then we're in New York.

And so back to Jersey and to bed.

Today we started with what at first looked like a plan: the Empire State Building, walk up Fifth Avenue, stop at Rockefeller Center, perhaps spend some time in Central Park, and then go to the American Museum of Natural History for most of the afternoon.

This spun out of control early on. Moltke said no war plan survives contact with the enemy; I sometimes feel our travel plans don't survive contact with actually seeing what's available.

We started, as planned, with the Empire State Building. Sarah, who has decided for now that she doesn't like heights, declined to go to the top of it or any other skyscraper, so we just walked by the facade and looked up. Then we turned up Fifth Avenue intending to walk to the Park and stop at Rockefeller Center and perhaps Saint Patrick's.

But we had used the word "park," and by the time we came up to the New York Public Library, Sarah was agitating to do the park first. Tam was pushing for Rockefeller Center. I tried to compromise by jumping to the Park and then coming back, but then we had some problems with a Metrocard machine at the Bryant Park subway station, and the usual other frustrations. We finally got to the park and Sarah declared she wanted to go to the Central Park Zoo, but en route there sidetracked to rock climbing just inside the south entrance. By this time it was noon and our planned day was rapidly spinning out of control so I laid down the law: we've got to decide what we're going to do and do it. Today was a beautiful day; tomorrow is chancier on weather, so I said, instead of our prearranged plan, would you like to go on a boat ride?

We were getting hungry so we did the New York thing and walked west to Columbus circle, got hot dogs from a cart, and then took the subway from Columbus Circle to South Ferry. Tam says in her single days she always used cabs, but I learned long ago that despite its crowds and chaos, the subway gets you just about anywhere faster and cheaper.

So we next took the Staten Island Ferry. There's a new, very clean and modern terminal on the Battery end (and a mostly new one on the Staten Island end too), and the ferry, which for years cost all of a nickel, is now free. (I think it cost more to collect the nickels than to let people ride free.) It's still one of the best ways to get a great look at the harbor, that great natural seaport up there with Hong Kong and Kuwait and Singapore and San Francisco that has stunned people from Verrazano to Hendrik Hudson to the rather large number of sailors here for "Fleet Week" which is on right now. (Lots of US Navy and Marines, but also quite a few Canadian Navy as well.) And you still get a good closeup view of Lady Liberty without having to invest the time to actually go there.

After that, which ate up about an hour and a half including a snack while waiting for the return ferry, we walked from the Battery up to Wall Street. Sarah didn't know what Wall Street or the New York Stock Exchange were, so we did our best to explain (it was Saturday, but lots of tourists in Wall Street anyway). Photo above of Tam and Sarah in front of NYSE; Sarah has her head turned so it meets my blog requirement not to show her face on the open site. Then we visited Trinity Church. Sarah is a fan of the movie National Treasure (I'll come back and link to some of these references at some point: too late right now) in which the conclusion is set deep under Trinity Church where the enormous treasure of the Knights Templars has been buried (if you haven't seen it, don't think about it too much; if you have you'll know what I'm talking about). So it, unlike the NYSE, was a known quantity to her. Two observations in the Financial District: tourists in front of Federal Hall asking to have their pictures taken with the NYPD (and souvenir stores have lots of NYPD and FDNY souvenirs now), obviously a legacy of 9/11. And large numbers of tourists climbing on the famous Bull statue on lower Broadway and having their pictures taken: nostalgia for the days of Bull markets, I guess.

Tam and I were last in lower Manhattan in 1998. Before Sarah, and before 9/11. I had already had the nagging feeling from the Staten Island Ferry that it just looks wrong: although my first trip to New York in the 1960s was pre-World Trade Center, it has been a long time since I got used to seeing those twin towers in the skyline. And they're just not there anymore. I know New Yorkers have had almost eight years to get used to it, but this is my first visit to Manhattan since.

So of course we went to Ground Zero. Sarah knew all about that: it's something they learn in school. I won't try to reflect right now: too much good stuff to tell to mar it with the maudlin. Nor will I rant about the people selling souvenir picture books or hawking fake Rolexes. You'll get that wherever tourists congregate, for whatever reason. One guy selling souvenir photos approached us and Tam and I both said that we had lived through it and didn't need pictures. My mental picture is still the plume of smoke over the Pentagon. It is, however, sad that the reconstruction/memorial is still little more than a foundation, whereas the Pentagon was fully repaired before the one year anniversary. A picture of the site today at left.

We then took the subway to Chinatown to give Sarah a glimpse while we walked to where she really wanted to go, Little Italy. In so doing we passed a shelter dog rescue center where Sarah petted the dogs: we're in high dog alert as I think I've explained. Then we crossed over to Mulberry Street where a street fair and parade were under way, with a bunch of groups dedicated to Saint Anthony marching carrying statues (including one with dollar bills attached) and with a bunch of beefy guys in black suits (on a hot day) and sunglasses. A tip, fellas: if you want to avoid stereotypes about "the mob," don't dress like a cheap mafia flick. Tam and I were both reminded, though, of the Saint's Day parade in Godfather 2 when De Niro is starting out.

We then ate at a place called Da Nico on Mulberry Street. Good food, too much to finish. Maybe pricey for Little Italy but not for New York as a whole.

Then a cab to Greenwich Village. Got out at Washington Square. Break dancers, bands, many dogs to pet. Walked around the Village a bit, stopped for a beer in a combination Irish pub/Mexican restaurant (it's the Village, remember?), walked to the West Fourth Street station, subwayed back to the Port Authority, then back to our basecamp in Secaucus. Day two complete. Started out rough, ended with Sarah getting a real sampling of not just Times Square and Midtown but New York as she is lived: Chinatown, Little Italy, Greenwich Village. And Wall Street,where the money used to be; Ground Zero, for obvious reasons, and samples of other places.

Tomorrow I am determined to get us to Katz's delicatessen (Send a Salami to Your Boy in the Army; I don't think I'm going to explain the When Harry Met Sally scene to Sarah just yet); Tam and Sarah can pick everything else. I think we've tentatively decided to put the Natural History Museum off till next time: it's wonderful, but overlaps the Smithsonian in enough areas that seeing more parts of New York might be more educational at this point.