At the end of my last post I said that we were taking the Amtrak to New York. On the morning of the 26th we did just that, travelling north from Washington DC’s Union Station to New York’s Penn Station. The entire trip was decently comfortable and there weren’t many people on the train so we got as much space as we needed. We also ate on the trip, courtesy of the food car.
After leaving the station we hop in to one of many of New York’s famous yellow taxi’s to get to our hotel. Our hotel is a few blocks south of Central Park, in a nice area close to just about everything, or at least the means to get just about anywhere. With the desire to just get out and wander strong, we head outwards into the unknown.
After walking around for a while, we stop for drinks in Rockerfeller Plaza. They were advertising spiked lemonades as a good way of cooling down, so we took them for their word and tried it out. It ended well.
As usual the point was just to get a sense of where we were in our new home away from home. While we were walking around, I turned a corner only to find I had utterly blundered my way into Times Square. I had no idea we were that close to this odd location. It resembles the worlds largest ADD soothing animated billboard.
Virtually every sign is an animated billboard of some kind. The photo above only shows one direction of the street, facing the other way around looks quite similar.
There are so many people swarming around here, definitely a place you’d want to avoid in the event of a zombie apocalypse. Actually, scratch that, avoid New York in general in the event of a zombie apocalypse.
After walking around we found ourselves at the famous 5th Avenue Apple store which appears, from ground level, like a glass cube. From a distance you can’t see the underground complex at all. Once you get closer, though, you can make out the glass stairs and lift which move people down one level to the shop floor.
Ricci was in need of a new iPod, so she bought herself a new iPod Touch. Even with the exchange rate and such she still saved at least 50 dollars over the Australia price.
After more walking around, we started to get pretty hungry. We found a small fast food place and proceeded in for delicious foods. As it turns out this place has won lots of awards for their food, chief among which are their chips (er, fries) which are really quite good. Not as crispy as I’d like, they probably need to give them a better second fry or something, but full of delicious potato flavour including tasty bits of potato skin. I’m only including the photo below because it’s symmetry and composition were a complete fluke, I just had the camera on the table and randomly pressed the shutter.
On our second day we started out with more purpose, to travel to the south end of the city in Battery Park and see both the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. With our trusty unlimited ride passes, we took the subway down from 59th street all the way to Battery Park.
Arriving at Battery park, I started having flashbacks to playing Deus Ex. In particular seeing the memorial and Castle Clinton in their expected places caused me to start looking around for things like the vending machine that lets you sneak past the NSF. Even the inside of Castle Clinton isn’t too far off the in-game representation. Clearly the people who made that game did their research.
The ferry takes 10 minutes (perceptual time only, real time may vary) or so to reach it’s first destination – Liberty Island. Because of the timing of our outing all the tickets to the Liberty itself were sold out, but we could get a walking tour of the island which had interesting stories about the history of the island and, more importantly, the Statue herself.
After a while we headed back to the ferry for the second part of this trip, Ellis island. This island was where the vast numbers of immigrants coming in to the US via New York were processed.
Ellis island was closed in the 1950′s, and has since been turned over to become a museum piece. We arrived here fairly late, around 5:30pm and had to abbreviate our tour around this place. Much like Liberty Island, there is an audio tour of the place which tells you much of it’s history and some of the stories of people who have been through here.
Fourty minutes later and we found ourselves having to head out, as the place was closing. That was too bad, at least we got to see a fair bit first. Another quick ferry ride an we were back at Battery Park.
We then decided to take advantage of our southerly location on the island and take a walk to the site of the former World Trade Center, also known as Ground Zero. Regardless of your thoughts on America and it’s politics, you have to admit that in recent history few other events have managed to directly and indirectly affect so many people. The site, now, is a massive construction zone where workers are busily working on the new One World Trade Plaza building as well as the memorial site and some mass transit complex.
You also can’t help but feel saddened by the memorial wall dedicated to the rescue services personnel, in particular the fire services who were lost that day saving others. We ate at a nearby pizza place opposite the site with an upstairs eating area which overlooks a small plaza around the corner from the WTC site. I couldn’t help but think about the reactions people must have had, being that close, to the whole event as it unfolded.
Night time is strange, it stays light for quite a while and then becomes quite dark quickly. After dinner we took a walk around the area a bit more and then decided to take the subway back to our hotel.
Tomorrow we will be scaling the heights of the city as we visit one of the cities most famous buildings, the Empire State Building.