NYC Tales

It's been an intense week, but one in which we managed to achieve most of what we set out to see. NYC is a crazy city.  On the one hand, it's quite easy going and relaxed, especially with regard to dress codes, but on the other hand, everyone moves around quickly and at a brisk no nonsense pace, so you need to go with the flow. Despite us living and working in London, we found it quite exhausting.

We spent our first day here just exploring the local area, the Lower East Side, traditionally an area that contained lots of clothing factories and whose residential population was historically made up immigrants, many of whom migrated here in the late 19th/early 20th century and worked in the clothing industry, either from home or in the large factories that grew up, once industrialisation on a grand scale started to occur.

The housing was mainly made up of tenement buildings, with multiple occupancy apartments, outside fire escapes and families housed and often working in three small rooms. We know this because we went on a tour at the nearby Tenement Museum, which gives you an idea of the lives of the inhabitants of the area around this time.

We were told that the neighbourhood was virtually a no go area in the 60's and 70's after a major exodus of residents to areas further out of town, leaving it decaying, crime ridden and with many social problems. Fast forward to now and the area is gentrifying rapidly with lots of galleries, restaurants. shops and young people moving in. It made an interesting base for us on our holiday and in many ways resembled our East End of London home turf.

I didn't taken any photos of our accommodation, as it also served as a business premises/office and thus for privacy reasons, it wasn't a good idea, but it was a good sized apartment by NY standards, with one big open plan loft type room and one bedroom and bathroom and had all of the amenities we needed. Here's a view from the window (we were on the third floor) on our last day there, when it had just started snowing:

We did need to vacate the apartment between 10am and 6pm on weekdays, but this didn't cause us too much of a problem and served to encourage us to make the most of our time here.

On Day Two of our stay here, we ventured to the Uptown and Midtown parts of Manhattan.  It took a while to get to grips with the Uptown/Downtown system on the subway, but Billy Joel's 'Uptown Girl' helped to cement the difference in our minds. Cheesy but true.

Uptown is the area north of 59th street, Midtown is the central business area south of here down to between 34th Street or even 13th Street (opinions differ on this) and Downtown is the lower part of Manhattan below 13th Street where we were based.

Anyway, on Day Two we visited the High Line.  A public garden space that has been built along an old aerial railway track up the western side of NYC. It begins next to the Whitney Art Gallery in the Meat Packing district. It takes around half an hour to walk the length of it, but you get good views of some of the NY skyline and it ends near the Hudson River in West Chelsea. It was a lovely peaceful walk, a little oasis in a crazy busy city and we stopped off for hot chocolate and some NY cheesecake on the way, which helped to warm us up on what was a bitterly cold day. It probably didn't look it's absolute best in the winter, but we enjoyed it all the same.

After catching a bus from the end of the High Line, we paid a visit to our first Good Will (Non Profit) thrift store (the first of quite a few might I add), Marshalls (TKMaxx) and also to a great little independent pet shop, where I ended up buying a couple of gifts for the dog. (More in another post)

From here we walked to and through Central Park, on to Times Square, turned onto 42nd Street to take in the beautiful Chrysler building lit up at dusk, (probably my favourite building in the whole of NYC)

and then arrived at our last stop of the day, which was a visit to the fabulous Grand Central Station.

This station is so worth a visit. It has been beautifully restored and it is a pleasure to just hang out there and watch the world go by.  There is even a small patch on the ceiling left uncleaned, for you to compare how dirty it was before the restoration. From here we limped home for supper, after having taken more than 25,000 steps in one intense exhausting day. But it was all definitely worth it.

Day Three, was the day we tried to keep LB happy and spent the morning thrift shopping in the East Village. We started off at a Good Will store near Washington Square and then headed into the East Village proper, where there were a number of great thrift shops. One in particular, L Train/No Relation Vintage, was particularly good for classic vintage wear. Even OH bought some items here.

We had lovely cream cheese bagels at a great bagel shop called Tompkins Square Bagels, which had this fabulous mural painted on one of it's walls.

Later, we ventured down into the Financial District for  a late lunch in a bar, explored Wall Street and the surrounding area, before visiting Ground Zero and the 9/11 Memorials. Two very solemn but beautiful memorials to a terrible event that changed the world forever. (OH and I had visited the Twin Towers on a previous visit to New York 20 years ago and taken the high speed elevator up to the viewing platform.  It felt strange and slightly haunting, to return and see the area as it is now).

Day Four and we were on the tourist trail taking a ferry over to Liberty Island to visit the Statue of Liberty.  Security is strict, to almost the same degree as airport security, with all bags and persons being scanned before boarding the ferry. The ferry does get very crowded, but we treated ourselves to hot dogs and hot chocolate whilst on board, which were very tasty. We had picked a day which had clear blue skies to visit, which was perfect, as the views of Manhattan from Liberty Island were fantastic, although my camera phone didn't really do them justice.

We had booked our tickets on line before arriving at the ferry terminal and had booked to go up to the pedestal for views out from the statue.  To go right up to Liberty's crown, you had to book months in advance and there was no availability until May.  Bear this in mind if this is something you ever wish to do (and that it is 182 steps to the pedestal, where you can see people in this photo, so there will be many more steps up to her crown - not sure how many more).

With our tickets, we also got entry to the Statue of Liberty Museum, which was one of the highlights of the day, as it gave you the background to the conception, funding, design and building of the statue. Very interesting and informative. I didn't know that she was a gift from France to the US. She is a very beautiful statue that extends a welcoming hand to all those entering the US through NYC and I can completely understand why Americans and others treasure her so much.

From Liberty Island, a ferry then took us to Ellis Island, the place where immigrants to the US through NYC were processed during the period of peak immigration from 1892 until the 1920's. This was another really interesting museum showing how the many incoming migrants came to form a significant part of the population and workforce of the US at this time and subsequently. At $28 or so each, this particular day out was really good value, although the ferries do get very full.

On Day Five of our NYC holiday, we decided to do something a bit different and ventured off Manhattan.  We walked over Brooklyn Bridge and explored this part of New York instead. The walk over Brooklyn Bridge itself wasn't very long, but the pathway is quite crowded and is one that is shared with cyclists, so you have to be a little careful.

As we reached the other side, we saw a cavalcade of police/army/emergency service vehicles heading over the bridge from the Brooklyn side.  We thought it might be the President's cavalcade, but it turns out it was for a very high profile prisoner who had been attending a court hearing on the other side of the bridge. (We found this out from the TV crews filming outside the courthouse)

Once in Brooklyn, we made our way up to Prospect Park and the Brooklyn Museum (via another couple of thrift shops) and had lunch in the Museum Café. OH and I had a very tasty Beef and vegetable soup. We all then explored the museum, which had an amazing Jean Michel Basquiat painting on show, in addition to other interesting items. It was definitely worth a visit for this alone and as it was a slightly less expensive museum to visit than some of the more prominent ones, we decided to give it a go. (More about museum entry in another post)

On Day Six, we split our time between exploring the area close to our accommodation again and then later going back uptown. We spent the morning on one of several tours at the aforementioned Tenement Museum, which showed you the accommodation of garment workers in the late 19th/early 20th century. 

In the afternoon, we headed uptown and got free entry into MOMA (Museum of Modern Art), as they had a Free Friday after 4pm and we took the chance to visit then. It is, however, incredibly busy at this time, as you might imagine, which can diminish the experience a little, but it did save us $50 and there were some fabulous paintings in there including Monet's Waterlillies and Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night which is a favourite of LB. (She was even wearing socks with this design on them).

Our final day, Saturday, we spend relaxing in the apartment for once, packing, chilling and getting ready to go home early on Sunday morning. OH did hire a city bike and cycle to and around Central Park, which he really enjoyed, but LB and I mostly stayed home in the apartment.

We had a great week in NYC. We ate lots of traditional American fare; hot dogs, bagels, cheesecakes, doughnuts, burgers.  Way too many in fact, but we enjoyed them all, although our waistlines have probably expanded a little. (I did put on a few pounds, but am hoping to lose it fairly quickly once I get back to work)

With regard to shopping, we didn't really do a lot, save for exploring the thrift shops.  I did buy a few natural cosmetics at good prices to bring back home with me for future use and a few items of clothing from the thrift stores we visited. I'll do a separate thrift haul and other shopping post. (It won't be a long one!)

I hope I've not bored you too much with our adventures. We had a great trip and if you are thinking of visiting New York, I hope that some of what is written here is useful to you. I will be writing another post about some of the practicalities and realities of visiting and getting around NY and some honest thoughts on our experiences there.