New York, New York – Part II

Back in New York again for a few more days and a few more sights…..

We started this time in the Greenwich Village, where we quite soon found the building that’s used in the show “Friends”. Soon afterwards we found the “Magnolia Bakery”, from “Sex and the City” (yes, we are doing Suz’s TV sightseeing tour), where we had some great cupcakes. From here we made our way across Manhattan to the East Village, passing St. Mark’s Place on our way where we tried to find a “Vote for Pedro” t-shirt….unfortunately we couldn’t find one in the right size (they are just too damn popular).

From here we found our way to the subway and went all the way to 86th street and then walked over to the Guggenheim museum just to have a look at it from the outside….and wouldn’t you know it, the outside of the museum was under restoration just at the time so we couldn’t see it from the outside…..so we entered it just to have a quick look inside and all the spirals…we didn’t pay to see any exhibitions though.

We moved on towards the Metropolitan Museum of Art, also called “The Met”. Here we saw that they had a “recommended” fee for entry. The recommended fee was $15, so we were wondering what would happen if we just offered them $1 each and asked for two tickets. Since we weren’t in a museum “looking-at-mouldy-old-things” mood we just left the place and entered Central Park.

Next was Central Park, which as you might know is enormous…..when you are inside it’s difficult to tell that you are in one of the busiest and largest city’s in the world (and if it wasn’t for the sirens, honkings and loud cars the image could actually be achieved).

At Bethesda Terrace we saw a some girl with a guitar getting her photo by a whole crew….We’ve never seen her so we don’t know who it is but if we see the album cover we let you know….

Strawberry fields….that the name of a section of the park that was named after the Beatles song “Strawberry Fields” in honor of John Lennon who was shot entering the Dakota Building (just about 100m from here). We also saw the memorial in his honor there, and as always it’s decorated with flowers.

We kept walking through the park and eventually made it to Central Park Zoo, which unfortunately was closed at that time of the day….

We were exiting the park and one of the first things that Suz notices is “Tiffany & Co down on 5th Avenue”….yeah, right… well we entered the gound floor level, just so that she could say that she’s now been there – but the contents of the store didn’t really fit our travellers budget!!

Anyway…..we made it on to the subway (the Q express) and ride it all the way down to Canal Street….Chinatown! Here we walked around looking for an Asian Grocery store…..we find one eventually (actually harder than you might think) and bought some supplies for a dinner party we’d planned for one of these days. After that we found a Vietnamese restaurant and had dinner before heading back home.

A few days later we were back in the city, this time for a Broadway show. We’d purchased tickets to the show “Avenue Q” which is a show with both humans and puppets. It’s kind of like Sesame St, but for adults since it contains songs like “The Internet is for Porn”, “Everyone’s A Little Bit Racist ” and “If You Were Gay”. It was hillarious and the whole theater was roaring with laughter!!

After the show we exited onto Times Square and Suz now got to see what it’s like at night….it’s so different from what you see during the day, even though it’s almost bright enough to be daylight. As we did last time we search to see if we can find the “Naked Cowboy” anywhere. We couldn’t see anything at first and then we spotted a crowd of people and presume it could be him. We walked up there and realize that it’s the “Naked Cowgirl” instead. Well, I’m not complaining and Suz asked me if I wanted my photo taken with her…..but as she was charging $5 per photo, I decided to pass….

There was still one big touristic thing that we hadn’t yet done in New York……the Statue of Liberty!

So Suz, Denis, Freddie, Kira and I went into the city together to do some sightseeing. We went down to Battery Park and passed “The Sphere” which is a sphere that was picked up from the rubbles after the Twin Towers were demolished and put in Battery Park as a Memorial to all of those that died that day. We moved on to Castle Clinton, an old fort that now is the ticket office for “Circle Line”, the ferry that takes you to the Statue of Liberty.

After purchasing tickets we found the queue…..and it was enourmous. We told the girls to wait on a bench in the shade while we stood in line (it was a hot, hot day). We finally made it into the security building (yes, A/C!!), passed the metal detectors and boarded the ferry.

It only takes around 10 min to reach the Statue of Liberty so we were there soon enough, disembarked, had a snack and a cool drink and then we walked around the small island looking up at the statue. It’s quite impressive but it’s a shame that you can’t enter it all the way to the top anymore…..and if you want to enter the building at all you need to phone ahead before you buy your tickets…. or be there really early in the mornings (yeah right!)

Well, after looking at the statue for a while we made it back to the pier to catch the next ferry over to Ellis Island (they leave every 25min). And here we had to wait in line some more….of course.

From here the ferry next dropped us off at Ellis Island, an Immigration Museum. We walked around, looked at the photos of immigrants from the 20th century and other memoriabilia that’s collected there. When we were ready to go home we saw that the queue to the ferry was very, very long. In fact, it was so long that after the first ferry arrived and left we were still in the queue. Luckily we managed to get on the next ferry (the thing is that it was getting late and this ferry comes loaded with people from the Statue, nobody disembarks and that’s the reason you might be waiting for a while).

We finished up our day in Little India, found a restaurant and had a decent meal….

So, New York…We had now seen what we’d set out to see on this trip…..we both love the city and it’s people and we will definately look forward to our next visit here. Suz is now leaving the States to head back home to Sydney (she arrives on the 3rd August) whilst I’m staying on for a few weeks longer.