Well after an eventful 5 or 6 days in NYC, I am home- only to find my website had been “brutally attacked”……so I have just enjoyed another eventful day figuring out (and still not done) on how to follow the directions given to me by my web hosting provider. Decided I would move on, and simply post some news on how my trip went. Many of you will remember my post (I ended up moving to a backed up copy so the previous post is no longer available) in which I highlighted the sights of NYC in which I was interested.
This is how our urban adventure went……arrived late afternoon to our hotel in Times Square where we walked around and had supper…….Next day, up bright and early and walked to the Frick Collection and then the Metropolitan Museum of Art along Fifth Avenue just on the East side of Central Park. After a wonderful lunch at the Met, we headed by bus (approx one hour away) to the Cloisters……what a wonderful location.
Back to the Met as it was a free Friday night and the museum was open late……after another couple of hours, we headed to the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station for some fabulous seafood.
The following day we were up bright and early to head by train from Grand Central again out to the New York Botanical Gardens, a wonderful get away from the city. After a few hours we headed to a Semi-Circle Cruise of the harbour in the late afternoon……what a wonderful way to relax!
We headed to Chinatown for a late supper, where we met a young traveller from Germany on her way home after being in South America for a number of weeks. Yes- we took advantage of the wide variety of cuisines and places to eat!
The following day was Father’s Day on Sunday, and we had booked ahead of time a Gospel Walking tour of Harlem with Heritage Harlem Tours. This was a major highlight of our trip- we attended a wonderful church service, and then strolled through the streets of Harlem while our guide Neal pointed out to us the landmarks and talked of the history. As someone that had grown up in Harlem in the projects, he was knowledgeable and passionate about Harlem’s past, present and future.
In the afternoon we headed to Wall Street area to the 9/11 Memorial, a time of contemplation and remembrance before heading to Lombardy’s in Little Italy for pizza.
9/11 Memorial- One of the Reflecting Pools
Monday we headed our separate ways as we all had different sights we wished to see. I headed to the New York Public Library- specifically the Stephen A. Schwarzman Bldg, where the cornerstone was laid in 1902. A beautiful architectural building, it houses some 15 million items and its remarkable collections are vast, diverse, and not easily characterized. They range from priceless ancient rarities in the Rare Books and the Manuscripts and Archives divisions to current newspapers from all over the world. More than 1,200 languages and dialects, ancient and modern, are represented in the collections. I then headed to MOMA for lunch and a few hours……before heading to Central Park where we after some discussion between biking or taking a pedi-cab decided on the pedi-cab.
After Central Park, we headed to the Madison Square/ Union Square area for supper at an outdoor cafe on a beautiful summer evening.
The following morning we took in one more museum, the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side, where we toured an apartment in a building at 97 Orchard Street. It is estimated that 7,000 people lived at this address between 1863 and 1935- and was quite an education on the various waves of immigrants to NYC. Our final meal was at a street cart at the corner of 47th and 6th Ave. before heading to the airport. What a wonderful trip!
