Our weekend in New York City
Door: Linda Damhuis
Blijf op de hoogte en volg Linda
04 Mei 2017 | Verenigde Staten, New York
Our weekend in New York!!
Last Friday we went to New York by bus!!
We had booked a ticket through Megabus, the same company we used for our trip to Washington. We thought they were pretty good, so we booked with them again.
This time we had put all of our stuff into one bag, so we wouldn’t have to drag our bags down the streets like we had done in Washington. It was really hot in Philadelphia and it was going to be hot in NYC as well, so we didn’t need all that many clothes. Ok, they did say Sunday was going to be cooler, but we thought a vest and a scarf would be enough for that. It was just too hot to be carrying our jackets that day.
We were at the busstop on time again. There was a large group of teenagers standing in line, but they all went upstairs in the bus, so that didn’t bother us. This time we had seats on the other side of the bus near the door.
We only had one other stop in Philadelphia, before we got onto the turnpike to go to NYC. Which didn’t take us all that long really. It wasn’t until we got to the Lincoln Tunnel that it got really busy. Four lanes became two to go through the tunnel, so that took a while. And the tunnel as long too, or maybe that was because it took so long for us to drive through it!
We were dropped off on 7th avenue, between 27th and 28t street. We took the subway on 28th street to go to Wall street, where we had to walk a little ways to get to the hotel in Front street, but it turned out to be closer than we thought, because all of a sudden we were standing right in front of it!
I had booked a room with a Queen size bed in it, but to our surprise we did get a room with 2 twin beds!!! We don’t know why that happened, but we didn’t complain about it, this was great! We were on the 8th floor, which was the attic (kind of small building compared to the office buildings around us!) and the room was big!
We dumped our stuff and went out for a walk. The weather was nice, although I thought it would be warmer since it’s such a big city. And of course it’s windy, since it’s technically an island.
Our first stop was Trinity Church, one of the oldest churches in the city. It was huge and very nice, plain, but nice. We walked around and lit a candle there.
After that we tried to find the Fraunces Tavern, which I had seen on the map was in the area. I had read about this before we came to Philadelphia. This is the place where George Washington made an emotional farewell speech to his troops after the American Revolution. So now it has a historical value. We really liked it, but the prices they asked for the food were a little beyond our means.
But that was ok, because there were plenty of other places to get something to eat. We found this sort of supermarket / food court where Caroline got some sushi, I had a ceasar salad and we had NY cheesecake for desert!
When you look at the map of Manhattan you will find Front street on the right, near the Brooklyn Bridge and the Staten Island Ferry port.
This ferry takes people to and from Staten Island for free and is a great tourist attraction, because it goes right by the statue of Liberty!! Ok, so you don’t get to see her up close, but it’s free and you can’t go into it anymore either, so why bother spending money on an expensive ticket?? Plus it had been a nice sunny day, so we thought it would be great to see the statue at sunset.
And boy did we get our “money’s worth”!!!!
We took the 7pm ferry to Staten Island and the sun was just about to set, we took some awesome pictures!
The ride takes about 25 minutes, on Staten Island we all had to get off of the ferry and we could board her again around 7:30pm. This time we knew which side gave us the best view of the statue, so we went straight for it! This time the sun was bright red, really cool!!!
We were back in Manhattan around 8pm and thought it would be nice to get some tea and a cappuccino to take with us to the hotel. We had seen some coffee places near the hotel, but it was 8pm they had just closed. Then next to the hotel we saw some people standing in line in front of a window, so we went over there to see what it was. Turned out they sold ice cream, but also coffee and tea, so we got in line too!! We had asked for tea with the bag out, which I think is a pretty clear question, but they didn’t really get it, because they asked me if I wanted them to leave the bag in the cup….Caroline’s cappuccino didn’t turn out the way they usually are, but it was nice all the same.
Before we went to sleep we turned down the thermostat in the fridge, it was noisy and since there was a lot of ice in the freezer we were afraid to turn it off completely, lest we would have the same experience we had had in the Best Western in Frederick MD! But it wasn’t all that hot in the room, so it would be alright.
The room didn’t come with breakfast, we could buy it at the hotel, but we thought there would be plenty of places to find breakfast around here. So since we didn’t have to be downstairs for breakfast before a certain time, we could sleep in and that is what we did! We didn’t get up until 9am, wonderful!
We wanted to see if it was possible to get a cheaper ticket for a Broadway show. There are ticket booths that sell same-day tickets for less than the actual price and there was supposed to be one of these booths near the hotel. Turned out to be really close by!
At 10am there were already people standing in line, but it didn’t even open until 11am. We didn’t feel like getting in line already, so we went to look for breakfast first. We found it pretty quickly, it was also a sort of supermarket / food court. Caroline was brave and tried a peanut butter and jelly bagel...which she said was a very special experience, which didn’t need to be repeated!! Haha
After breakfast we decided to go back to the lobby of the hotel, to use the wifi to check actual ticket prices. And we saw that even with the discount that booth gives, they are still pretty expensive and we really didn’t feel like spending that kind of money. So we had to look and see what we were going to do that day.
In the end we decided to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. But first we went to the 9/11 memorial, which was really impressive!
There is now a taller building than the Twin Towers called One World Trade Center and the memorial is in the places where the Twin Towers had stood. It looked like they had used the basements for it, to turn them into a sort of waterfall / pool, with water running down continuously. The edge is made of a metal, in which the names of all of the people that have died there that day were engraved. Some names had roses or small American flags in them. This was really…beautifully done..
Between the two pools stands the Survivor Tree, which was discovered underneath the rubble (sp?) of the towers. It was still alive, so they re-planted it in a park. Then there was a hurricane and it got blown over, but it was still alive. So now they have planted it back in the place it has always been. I thought it was amazing!
The idea that we knew what had happened here, that we still remembered where we were when it happened, gave it all a surreal feeling. It was so unlike the Gettysburg battlefields, where it was hard to imagine what kind of hell that must have been like.
Next to this memorial was St. Paul’s Chapel, which had been standing there for 250 years and came out of this ordeal without any damage! We saw a headstone with a date in 1769…which was kind of strange to see with all of the sights and sounds of modern day New York.
There are no rows of wooden benches in this chapel, instead there are chairs standing in half circles.
There was also a memorial for 9/11. In the aftermath of 9/11 this chapel helped the men and women that tried to find the bodies of people that had died and they helped clear out the debris. In the chapel they were offered food and a couple of minutes rest on one of their benches. I saw one at the memorial that was scratched up from the people that caught a few minutes of sleep in their uniforms, with their buckles and heavy boots…that left their marks on the bench, which is now kept as a reminder of those days. Not sure if this is why there are no more benches in the chapel, I thought I had read somewhere that with these chairs they could accommodate a lot more people. But we didn’t see that many chairs.
The memorial was beautiful too in its own way. There was a ‘tree’ of patches from different divisions of police forces and fire fighters from all over the world, there were origami paper cranes send from Japan, the utensils they used to hand out food and teddy bears that were collected and given to the people that helped out to offer some comfort… it was moving really.
On our map we could also see that there was an Amish Market in the area. Since we had just spend a weekend in Amish Country, we wanted to see what they did here in New York…but it turned out to be an ordinary supermarket. So not sure what it was.
Then we walked over to the Brooklyn Bridge and we were not the only people that had this bright idea!!! It was Saturday, it was hot and there were lots of people on that bridge!!
At first I thought there was a lane for people going to Brooklyn and people coming from Brooklyn. But that was not the case. One lane was for pedestrians and the other for cyclists…but they were both the same size in width!! While there were a lot more pedestrians than cyclists out there!! And the pedestrians stopped every now and then to take a picture, which meant you had to walk around them and walk on the bike path, with the danger of getting run over!!! I couldn’t figure out why they didn’t make the paths wider…until I thought about the time when the bridge was build. There were not that many people that lived there in that time and not a lot of people had the money to travel, so that made more sense…cars were below us, so they didn’t bother us, which was really nice.
It was really hot when we started walking, but as we got to the middle, there was a nice breeze.
At the other end of the bridge, in Brooklyn, there is a park on the water’s edge and I saw an old fashioned carrousel…which I really love, so I wanted to go there.
But the bridge doesn’t just stop when you get there, you have to walk down it a little bit more to be able to take the stairs down onto the street. But then you have to walk all the way back and that was not what I had in mind when I suggested to do this. I thought we could walk over, rest in the park and go back to Manhattan…but the further we would walk, the more we had to walk back! So we sat down in a coffee place to have something to drink. Only thing was they didn’t have air conditioning, they kept the doors open for fresh air, but we didn’t really feel any.
As we sat there, we took another look at the map and saw that you could also walk across the other bridge, the Manhattan Bridge, which would take us right into Chinatown, which is next to Little Italy, where we wanted to have dinner.
So that is what we did! This bridge is a lot less crowded, but then also a lot less beautiful as the Brooklyn Bridge. There is a foot- and a bike path, next to that is the train tracks and on top of that is a road for cars. So yes there are a lot less people, but there is a lot more noise!!
But it did give us a good view of the Brooklyn Bridge, which meant we were able to take good pictures! I have one where it looks like the Statue of Liberty is standing on it!
When we were in Chinatown, we walked through a Chinese market. I always like the way they display things and how they have all kinds of food, from vegetables to fruits you have never heard of, from herbs to all kinds of dried fish.
Caroline didn’t like it very much, especially the fish and crab that were still alive in there…for me it was more the smell of the fish that put me off, so we didn’t stay in there for too long.
And all of a sudden we were in Little Italy, which has a different smell, one of garlic and lots of it!! It was funny at one point we saw a sign that said Welcome to Little Italy and above the street that was in an angle from this one, it said Welcome to Chinatown!
It was too early for us to eat, so we walked around a little more.
When we did finally decide to sit down somewhere, it took a while for someone to take our order for drinks. Then there was another waiter who wanted to take our dinner order, but we thought it would be more polite to wait for the first waiter to come back with our drinks…which took him a while, so we ordered with the other waiter.
Meanwhile more people were coming in, we got some bread (without the olive oil all of the other tables got) and for some reason the people that came in after us, got their orders before we did…and I got a little deja-vu feeling…remember Washington????
Really for every Saturday that we went out to eat in an Italian restaurant, we got this weird treatment!! First it was in Washington, then the next Saturday it was at a Pizza Hut (which technically isn’t an Italian restaurant, but it’s still pizza!) and now this!! One of the waiters checked a couple of times and then we got our lasagna and penne pasta with salmon. Turned out the be really good food. We didn’t have any space left for desert, so we got the bill, paid and left.
I don’t know what happened, I understand it was busy and I totally agree that it takes a little longer when it is busy, but then why did the people that came in after us got their food before we did?? But you can be proud of me when I tell you that this time I did not complain as much in and about the restaurant as I did in Washington!! Haha
After dinner we took our time in walking back to the hotel.Along the way we came across Columbus Park, where we saw old Chinese ladies play cards and talk to each other, there were soccer fields and a playground for little kids. It was a pretty big park for a city!
Around 8pm we were back at the hotel and got some tea and cheese cake at the place we got breakfast this morning.
We went up to our rooms and the keys don’t work, of course you are standing there with hot tea in your hands when this happens!
So I went back downstairs, got it fixed and this time they worked!
It was really hot in the room this time, which was understandable, because it had been hot outside all day and we are directly underneath the roof.
We watched the last minutes of the sinking Titanic and when the whole movie was done, it started all over again. But we had seen it before, so we didn’t need a re-run.
Sunday morning we were up around 9am again, but we had a terrible night!! Around 2am I could hear water dripping in the fridge. We had turned it off and put towels in it, but of course the water was dripping next to it…then at 3am I had to go to the bathroom again and at 4am I heard this noise that I thought was ice falling down from the freezer at first, but turned out to be someone slamming the door, because I heard someone walk by our room right after that.
What is it with people in hotels??? Why do they think they are the only ones there and talk loud, especially at 4am???
Anyway, we got up and had breakfast first before checking out of the hotel. Around 11am we got our stuff, checked out of the hotel and took the subway to Times Square.
O did I mention today’s weather yet??? It was COLD!!!! After the hot day we had had yesterday, today was freezing!! The wind was really, really cold!! And here I thought the hot air would linger in a city with these big buildings, but I guess I was wrong!!
Times Square is the part of town where all of the theaters are, where the neon lights are and where the ball drops to bring in the New Year!! This is always a very busy day, from what I’ve seen on tv. But trust me even without that ball dropping it is still a busy part of town! There are all kinds of sights and sounds coming at you and from all sides too! Music, conversations from people, neon lights, car’s, taxi’s, people, smells of food, an attack on all of you senses!!!!
Caroline was amazed by all of it and loved it, this is what she had come to see!! We found a Disney store, where of course the prices were double from what we’ve seen last weekend. And there was an M&M store, where they had M&Ms in all kinds of colors and flavors and of course a lot of merchandise!!
We stopped at a coffee place to warm up, where a small cappuccino was $4,- and the cup was smaller than my ‘small’ tea!!!
Which wasn’t all that hot, so we didn’t really get warm. We ate our lunch there and then walked over to Central Park.
We walked through it for a while to get to 5th Avenue.
This is the street with all of the expensive brands stores, Cartier, Chanel, Gucci and so on.
We also came upon St. Patrick’s Cathedral, where we stopped to take a look. Here was also a baggage check, like in the Washington museum…never saw that one coming!
We sat down for a while and as we sat there, I was thinking that the very first time I set foot in that Cathedral was 19 years ago…and the world had changed a lot since then…and not all for the better!!!
From that first experience it was the absolute peace and quiet that impressed me the most and now that was gone…
All of the doors of the Cathedral were open and with the baggage check came a line of people at the door, so that peace and quiet were really gone…
While we were there, a little girl got baptized. We were wondering why you would want to do that with all of those strangers walking around, but then the cathedral is not going to close its doors just of a baptism. The little girl was all dressed up and had a bunch of feathers on her head, she was a baby and probably won’t remember it, but we felt sorry for her!
Through Rockefeller Centre we walked to 6th and 8th avenue where we had something to eat at a McDonalds.
The bus stop to go back to Philadelphia would be on 34th street, between 11th and 12th avenue. The McDonalds was already on 34th so all we had to do was keep walking.
The bus stop was of course closer than we thought. We got there too early, which was good, because we were the first in line and could get good seats that way. Bad news was that it was really cold and there was no place to hide from the wind!!!
We started boarding around 6pm and left 20 minutes later. Getting into the Lincoln Tunnel again took a bit of time, but it wasn’t as bad as on our way in. And then we were in a traffic jam, which I thought had something to do with the turnpike, but we were already on the turnpike.
No there had been an accident and we had to go from 4 lanes to 2 lanes again….and some of those drivers are insane!!
We were in a pretty large bus, but some of them still managed to drive along the right hand side of the bus and cut in front of him at the last minute!!! Bunch of idiots!!!
It took us an hour and 15 minutes to get past the accident point. We were in Philadelphia about half an hour later than was planned, so we still did pretty good.
As soon as we stopped we ran down to the 30th street station to get the train, but also because it was FREEZING!!!!
We thought it would be warmer here, since it had been warmer during the day, but we didn’t feel that now!
Wow, we almost ran back to the house!!!
We were soo happy when we were inside.
This was a great last weekend together!!
Love
Linda and Caroline
Last Friday we went to New York by bus!!
We had booked a ticket through Megabus, the same company we used for our trip to Washington. We thought they were pretty good, so we booked with them again.
This time we had put all of our stuff into one bag, so we wouldn’t have to drag our bags down the streets like we had done in Washington. It was really hot in Philadelphia and it was going to be hot in NYC as well, so we didn’t need all that many clothes. Ok, they did say Sunday was going to be cooler, but we thought a vest and a scarf would be enough for that. It was just too hot to be carrying our jackets that day.
We were at the busstop on time again. There was a large group of teenagers standing in line, but they all went upstairs in the bus, so that didn’t bother us. This time we had seats on the other side of the bus near the door.
We only had one other stop in Philadelphia, before we got onto the turnpike to go to NYC. Which didn’t take us all that long really. It wasn’t until we got to the Lincoln Tunnel that it got really busy. Four lanes became two to go through the tunnel, so that took a while. And the tunnel as long too, or maybe that was because it took so long for us to drive through it!
We were dropped off on 7th avenue, between 27th and 28t street. We took the subway on 28th street to go to Wall street, where we had to walk a little ways to get to the hotel in Front street, but it turned out to be closer than we thought, because all of a sudden we were standing right in front of it!
I had booked a room with a Queen size bed in it, but to our surprise we did get a room with 2 twin beds!!! We don’t know why that happened, but we didn’t complain about it, this was great! We were on the 8th floor, which was the attic (kind of small building compared to the office buildings around us!) and the room was big!
We dumped our stuff and went out for a walk. The weather was nice, although I thought it would be warmer since it’s such a big city. And of course it’s windy, since it’s technically an island.
Our first stop was Trinity Church, one of the oldest churches in the city. It was huge and very nice, plain, but nice. We walked around and lit a candle there.
After that we tried to find the Fraunces Tavern, which I had seen on the map was in the area. I had read about this before we came to Philadelphia. This is the place where George Washington made an emotional farewell speech to his troops after the American Revolution. So now it has a historical value. We really liked it, but the prices they asked for the food were a little beyond our means.
But that was ok, because there were plenty of other places to get something to eat. We found this sort of supermarket / food court where Caroline got some sushi, I had a ceasar salad and we had NY cheesecake for desert!
When you look at the map of Manhattan you will find Front street on the right, near the Brooklyn Bridge and the Staten Island Ferry port.
This ferry takes people to and from Staten Island for free and is a great tourist attraction, because it goes right by the statue of Liberty!! Ok, so you don’t get to see her up close, but it’s free and you can’t go into it anymore either, so why bother spending money on an expensive ticket?? Plus it had been a nice sunny day, so we thought it would be great to see the statue at sunset.
And boy did we get our “money’s worth”!!!!
We took the 7pm ferry to Staten Island and the sun was just about to set, we took some awesome pictures!
The ride takes about 25 minutes, on Staten Island we all had to get off of the ferry and we could board her again around 7:30pm. This time we knew which side gave us the best view of the statue, so we went straight for it! This time the sun was bright red, really cool!!!
We were back in Manhattan around 8pm and thought it would be nice to get some tea and a cappuccino to take with us to the hotel. We had seen some coffee places near the hotel, but it was 8pm they had just closed. Then next to the hotel we saw some people standing in line in front of a window, so we went over there to see what it was. Turned out they sold ice cream, but also coffee and tea, so we got in line too!! We had asked for tea with the bag out, which I think is a pretty clear question, but they didn’t really get it, because they asked me if I wanted them to leave the bag in the cup….Caroline’s cappuccino didn’t turn out the way they usually are, but it was nice all the same.
Before we went to sleep we turned down the thermostat in the fridge, it was noisy and since there was a lot of ice in the freezer we were afraid to turn it off completely, lest we would have the same experience we had had in the Best Western in Frederick MD! But it wasn’t all that hot in the room, so it would be alright.
The room didn’t come with breakfast, we could buy it at the hotel, but we thought there would be plenty of places to find breakfast around here. So since we didn’t have to be downstairs for breakfast before a certain time, we could sleep in and that is what we did! We didn’t get up until 9am, wonderful!
We wanted to see if it was possible to get a cheaper ticket for a Broadway show. There are ticket booths that sell same-day tickets for less than the actual price and there was supposed to be one of these booths near the hotel. Turned out to be really close by!
At 10am there were already people standing in line, but it didn’t even open until 11am. We didn’t feel like getting in line already, so we went to look for breakfast first. We found it pretty quickly, it was also a sort of supermarket / food court. Caroline was brave and tried a peanut butter and jelly bagel...which she said was a very special experience, which didn’t need to be repeated!! Haha
After breakfast we decided to go back to the lobby of the hotel, to use the wifi to check actual ticket prices. And we saw that even with the discount that booth gives, they are still pretty expensive and we really didn’t feel like spending that kind of money. So we had to look and see what we were going to do that day.
In the end we decided to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. But first we went to the 9/11 memorial, which was really impressive!
There is now a taller building than the Twin Towers called One World Trade Center and the memorial is in the places where the Twin Towers had stood. It looked like they had used the basements for it, to turn them into a sort of waterfall / pool, with water running down continuously. The edge is made of a metal, in which the names of all of the people that have died there that day were engraved. Some names had roses or small American flags in them. This was really…beautifully done..
Between the two pools stands the Survivor Tree, which was discovered underneath the rubble (sp?) of the towers. It was still alive, so they re-planted it in a park. Then there was a hurricane and it got blown over, but it was still alive. So now they have planted it back in the place it has always been. I thought it was amazing!
The idea that we knew what had happened here, that we still remembered where we were when it happened, gave it all a surreal feeling. It was so unlike the Gettysburg battlefields, where it was hard to imagine what kind of hell that must have been like.
Next to this memorial was St. Paul’s Chapel, which had been standing there for 250 years and came out of this ordeal without any damage! We saw a headstone with a date in 1769…which was kind of strange to see with all of the sights and sounds of modern day New York.
There are no rows of wooden benches in this chapel, instead there are chairs standing in half circles.
There was also a memorial for 9/11. In the aftermath of 9/11 this chapel helped the men and women that tried to find the bodies of people that had died and they helped clear out the debris. In the chapel they were offered food and a couple of minutes rest on one of their benches. I saw one at the memorial that was scratched up from the people that caught a few minutes of sleep in their uniforms, with their buckles and heavy boots…that left their marks on the bench, which is now kept as a reminder of those days. Not sure if this is why there are no more benches in the chapel, I thought I had read somewhere that with these chairs they could accommodate a lot more people. But we didn’t see that many chairs.
The memorial was beautiful too in its own way. There was a ‘tree’ of patches from different divisions of police forces and fire fighters from all over the world, there were origami paper cranes send from Japan, the utensils they used to hand out food and teddy bears that were collected and given to the people that helped out to offer some comfort… it was moving really.
On our map we could also see that there was an Amish Market in the area. Since we had just spend a weekend in Amish Country, we wanted to see what they did here in New York…but it turned out to be an ordinary supermarket. So not sure what it was.
Then we walked over to the Brooklyn Bridge and we were not the only people that had this bright idea!!! It was Saturday, it was hot and there were lots of people on that bridge!!
At first I thought there was a lane for people going to Brooklyn and people coming from Brooklyn. But that was not the case. One lane was for pedestrians and the other for cyclists…but they were both the same size in width!! While there were a lot more pedestrians than cyclists out there!! And the pedestrians stopped every now and then to take a picture, which meant you had to walk around them and walk on the bike path, with the danger of getting run over!!! I couldn’t figure out why they didn’t make the paths wider…until I thought about the time when the bridge was build. There were not that many people that lived there in that time and not a lot of people had the money to travel, so that made more sense…cars were below us, so they didn’t bother us, which was really nice.
It was really hot when we started walking, but as we got to the middle, there was a nice breeze.
At the other end of the bridge, in Brooklyn, there is a park on the water’s edge and I saw an old fashioned carrousel…which I really love, so I wanted to go there.
But the bridge doesn’t just stop when you get there, you have to walk down it a little bit more to be able to take the stairs down onto the street. But then you have to walk all the way back and that was not what I had in mind when I suggested to do this. I thought we could walk over, rest in the park and go back to Manhattan…but the further we would walk, the more we had to walk back! So we sat down in a coffee place to have something to drink. Only thing was they didn’t have air conditioning, they kept the doors open for fresh air, but we didn’t really feel any.
As we sat there, we took another look at the map and saw that you could also walk across the other bridge, the Manhattan Bridge, which would take us right into Chinatown, which is next to Little Italy, where we wanted to have dinner.
So that is what we did! This bridge is a lot less crowded, but then also a lot less beautiful as the Brooklyn Bridge. There is a foot- and a bike path, next to that is the train tracks and on top of that is a road for cars. So yes there are a lot less people, but there is a lot more noise!!
But it did give us a good view of the Brooklyn Bridge, which meant we were able to take good pictures! I have one where it looks like the Statue of Liberty is standing on it!
When we were in Chinatown, we walked through a Chinese market. I always like the way they display things and how they have all kinds of food, from vegetables to fruits you have never heard of, from herbs to all kinds of dried fish.
Caroline didn’t like it very much, especially the fish and crab that were still alive in there…for me it was more the smell of the fish that put me off, so we didn’t stay in there for too long.
And all of a sudden we were in Little Italy, which has a different smell, one of garlic and lots of it!! It was funny at one point we saw a sign that said Welcome to Little Italy and above the street that was in an angle from this one, it said Welcome to Chinatown!
It was too early for us to eat, so we walked around a little more.
When we did finally decide to sit down somewhere, it took a while for someone to take our order for drinks. Then there was another waiter who wanted to take our dinner order, but we thought it would be more polite to wait for the first waiter to come back with our drinks…which took him a while, so we ordered with the other waiter.
Meanwhile more people were coming in, we got some bread (without the olive oil all of the other tables got) and for some reason the people that came in after us, got their orders before we did…and I got a little deja-vu feeling…remember Washington????
Really for every Saturday that we went out to eat in an Italian restaurant, we got this weird treatment!! First it was in Washington, then the next Saturday it was at a Pizza Hut (which technically isn’t an Italian restaurant, but it’s still pizza!) and now this!! One of the waiters checked a couple of times and then we got our lasagna and penne pasta with salmon. Turned out the be really good food. We didn’t have any space left for desert, so we got the bill, paid and left.
I don’t know what happened, I understand it was busy and I totally agree that it takes a little longer when it is busy, but then why did the people that came in after us got their food before we did?? But you can be proud of me when I tell you that this time I did not complain as much in and about the restaurant as I did in Washington!! Haha
After dinner we took our time in walking back to the hotel.Along the way we came across Columbus Park, where we saw old Chinese ladies play cards and talk to each other, there were soccer fields and a playground for little kids. It was a pretty big park for a city!
Around 8pm we were back at the hotel and got some tea and cheese cake at the place we got breakfast this morning.
We went up to our rooms and the keys don’t work, of course you are standing there with hot tea in your hands when this happens!
So I went back downstairs, got it fixed and this time they worked!
It was really hot in the room this time, which was understandable, because it had been hot outside all day and we are directly underneath the roof.
We watched the last minutes of the sinking Titanic and when the whole movie was done, it started all over again. But we had seen it before, so we didn’t need a re-run.
Sunday morning we were up around 9am again, but we had a terrible night!! Around 2am I could hear water dripping in the fridge. We had turned it off and put towels in it, but of course the water was dripping next to it…then at 3am I had to go to the bathroom again and at 4am I heard this noise that I thought was ice falling down from the freezer at first, but turned out to be someone slamming the door, because I heard someone walk by our room right after that.
What is it with people in hotels??? Why do they think they are the only ones there and talk loud, especially at 4am???
Anyway, we got up and had breakfast first before checking out of the hotel. Around 11am we got our stuff, checked out of the hotel and took the subway to Times Square.
O did I mention today’s weather yet??? It was COLD!!!! After the hot day we had had yesterday, today was freezing!! The wind was really, really cold!! And here I thought the hot air would linger in a city with these big buildings, but I guess I was wrong!!
Times Square is the part of town where all of the theaters are, where the neon lights are and where the ball drops to bring in the New Year!! This is always a very busy day, from what I’ve seen on tv. But trust me even without that ball dropping it is still a busy part of town! There are all kinds of sights and sounds coming at you and from all sides too! Music, conversations from people, neon lights, car’s, taxi’s, people, smells of food, an attack on all of you senses!!!!
Caroline was amazed by all of it and loved it, this is what she had come to see!! We found a Disney store, where of course the prices were double from what we’ve seen last weekend. And there was an M&M store, where they had M&Ms in all kinds of colors and flavors and of course a lot of merchandise!!
We stopped at a coffee place to warm up, where a small cappuccino was $4,- and the cup was smaller than my ‘small’ tea!!!
Which wasn’t all that hot, so we didn’t really get warm. We ate our lunch there and then walked over to Central Park.
We walked through it for a while to get to 5th Avenue.
This is the street with all of the expensive brands stores, Cartier, Chanel, Gucci and so on.
We also came upon St. Patrick’s Cathedral, where we stopped to take a look. Here was also a baggage check, like in the Washington museum…never saw that one coming!
We sat down for a while and as we sat there, I was thinking that the very first time I set foot in that Cathedral was 19 years ago…and the world had changed a lot since then…and not all for the better!!!
From that first experience it was the absolute peace and quiet that impressed me the most and now that was gone…
All of the doors of the Cathedral were open and with the baggage check came a line of people at the door, so that peace and quiet were really gone…
While we were there, a little girl got baptized. We were wondering why you would want to do that with all of those strangers walking around, but then the cathedral is not going to close its doors just of a baptism. The little girl was all dressed up and had a bunch of feathers on her head, she was a baby and probably won’t remember it, but we felt sorry for her!
Through Rockefeller Centre we walked to 6th and 8th avenue where we had something to eat at a McDonalds.
The bus stop to go back to Philadelphia would be on 34th street, between 11th and 12th avenue. The McDonalds was already on 34th so all we had to do was keep walking.
The bus stop was of course closer than we thought. We got there too early, which was good, because we were the first in line and could get good seats that way. Bad news was that it was really cold and there was no place to hide from the wind!!!
We started boarding around 6pm and left 20 minutes later. Getting into the Lincoln Tunnel again took a bit of time, but it wasn’t as bad as on our way in. And then we were in a traffic jam, which I thought had something to do with the turnpike, but we were already on the turnpike.
No there had been an accident and we had to go from 4 lanes to 2 lanes again….and some of those drivers are insane!!
We were in a pretty large bus, but some of them still managed to drive along the right hand side of the bus and cut in front of him at the last minute!!! Bunch of idiots!!!
It took us an hour and 15 minutes to get past the accident point. We were in Philadelphia about half an hour later than was planned, so we still did pretty good.
As soon as we stopped we ran down to the 30th street station to get the train, but also because it was FREEZING!!!!
We thought it would be warmer here, since it had been warmer during the day, but we didn’t feel that now!
Wow, we almost ran back to the house!!!
We were soo happy when we were inside.
This was a great last weekend together!!
Love
Linda and Caroline
Reageer op dit reisverslag
Je kunt nu ook Smileys gebruiken. Via de toolbar, toetsenbord of door eerst : te typen en dan een woord bijvoorbeeld :smiley
