Anyone for a walk?

So after 30 hours at sea we met the pilot at 6.30 am to take us into the Hudson river and to pier 90 of New York harbour, which is to be our home for the next two days of of our US trip. This week's itenary should have been the other way round and we should have gone New York and then the Bahamas, but because of the slight change in the route of the Gulf Stream we can spend less time at sea and more time in New York. By following the Gulf Stream the Captain explain that the ship could travel an extra 4 knots per hour, which doesn't sound a lot, but when you are only doing 22 knots its nearly 20% quicker and over 30 hours means an extra 120 knots in the same time, which in real terms means we have an extra 4 hours in New York.

            Before you get a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty and New York, the pilot has to negotiate ''the Narrows''which is spannd by the road bridge connecting Brooklyn, the most densely populated borough of New York to Staten Island which is the least densely populated borough, and believe me there wasn't much clearence between the top of the ship and the bottom of the bridge. Then it was off up upper New York Bay towards The Statue of Liberty and Manhattan. I have to say that from the ship both the staue and the New York skyline was rather underwhelming. The statue appeared a lot smaller than I had imagined, and I  thought the iconic best known skyscrappers of Manhattan would have stood way taller than their smaller Neighbours, but I guess thats down to perspective.

        We were allowed off the ship at 9 am, well everyone had to leave the ship and have there passports checked by imigration officers even if they hadn't intended to go on shore( all that work just because Mr Jones says the cruise has to leave the US).

         Perdita had decided she wanted to start at the furthest point and work our way back towards the ship, so when we disembarked we crossed the main road and headed 4 blocks up 50th Street until we hit 8th Avenue, turned left up the corner of 59th Street and 9th

          Avenue where the entrance to St Columbus Circle underground station is, and caught the blue line A train to Highstreet. The journey took us 30 minutes and took us to the 1st station past the Brooklyn Bridge, which was our 1st port of call.

            After a five minute walk we were at the southern end of the bridge and ready to walk the wooden walkway over the bridge back to Manhatten, the bridge has two Gothic towers to which the ballet of cables that support the bridge are attached. It took about 30 minutes to walk over the bridge, which is littered with popup souvenir stalls and peddlers selling refreshments from thier coolboxes.

           From there we headed left to the southern tip of Manhattan Island, aimimg for the Staten Island ferry terminal via the bottom end of Wall Street, to catch the free ferry to Staten Island, we had no plans to do anything on the island but as it was free and went pretty close to the Statue of Liberty, and was a pleasant way to spend an hour and get some good photos on the way.

              Next we carried on up the west side of Manhattan, up through Battery Park toward the Twin Towers memorials and the new trade centre, both of which were very humbling to visit. New yorkers if not Americans in general certainly know how to commemorate thier dead,we have already seen three area of remembrance, one for those lost in Vietnam, Korea and now the world trade centre terrorist acts. The last one being by farr the most spectacular. In a city with such a demand for building land it eould have been quite easy to build more skyscrapers rather than the gardens that were the option taken. We decided to leave the 9/11 museum till our next visit as the 4 hours it claimed it would take to do woud have missing quite a few of the thing we had set out to see (although when we got back on board everyone who had been that day said is was really good).

           We went back to West Avenue and carried on heading past Greenwich Village, to the Meatpacking District, on the way calling in at JP Clarke's, which by English terms is quite a large restaurant with a patio overlooking the Hudson River and adverising ''proper battered fish and chips'', a challenge Perdita couldnt resist, whilst I went for a burger which was excellent, though apparently the batter on the fish was too thick and soggy and the chips were French fried and not traditional chips.

          It felt like a long walk from Clarkes to the Meatpacking district,  it wasn't miles but we were walking along the Hudson River Park, which is a long narrow park, which has been created from former docklands, a lot of the old pier now just being wooden skeletons in the water, for the full lenght of the park it was dotted with tennis courts, skateparks and basketball courts. A few of the piers had been made into little sunbathing areas or cafés and one group of 3 or 4 piers had been made into an athletics field, with soccer pitches to boot.

           By the time we had reached the The Meatpacking district it was getting to the hittest park of the day the temperature reaching 38 degrees and Perdita was starting to feel the heat and getting a bit snappy ("fractious" as she calls it) so I bought her an ice cream from an ice cream cart that labelled it 'the best ice cream in the world". Obviousley they haven't tried Mr Whippy was Perdita's retort. The Meatpacking district is in an area called Downtown and its here that the street pattern really changes from a more traditional English system of named street to the block system better known in America.  From here there are 11 Avenues running North/South(1st Avenue being in the East)and Streets running East/West(rising in number from the south) and the corner of one to the next corner being called a block. The blocks are rectangular taking two minutes or so to walk from one street to the next and maybe 5 minutes to walk from one Avenue to the next.

           

          So the reason we had decided to go to the Meatpacking District was a friend(thanks Maddie) had told us about ''the highline'' which is a section of disused elevated railway track, that the town planners had decided was too expensive to demolish and wouldn't yield enough redevelopable land, and so just left it to rot, but the local community took it on and have developed it into a 45 minute walk and conservation areas through one of the most cramped areas of New York and brings you out right next to Hudson's Yard, which is a large shopping complex on the Downtown/Midtown border. It is also the location of ''The Edge'' which is one of the newest skyscrapers to be built. It may not be as tall as some of the other more famous ones, but it does have a large glass floored overhanging viewing platform which I fancied.

             We decided against doing the Edge, we were running short of time, and had lots of other thing to see, and had planned to visit the Rockerfeller Centre tomorrow anyway, so headed off down 33rd Street to find Madison Square Garden and The Empire State Building (via Macey's on 34th Street), which were the next 2 places to visit. From there we went up 4th(Park)Avenue to the junction with 42nd Street and Grand Central Station which is huge and such a beautifull place, I wouldn't like to guess how many tons of marble, are in there.

           From there we dropped back down 40th Street, past  the New York Public Library and Bryant Park until we hit Broadway. Broadway is the one exception to the block system it starts right at the bottom  of lower Manhattan and travels straight up to between 4th and 5th Avenue and doglegs left  crossing 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th Avenues on route. Where it crosses 7th Avenue is Times square which is probably the most recognisable landmark in New York. It is where you will find most of the big name stores (Perdita found the Disney store, luckily there was no Dalmatians) and also a lot of the the largest theatres which Broadway is famous for. We arrived there just as it was starting to go dark, and Times Square was beginning to get lit up, which looked amazing. From there we carried on up Broadway until we hit 50th Street, turned left and followed it for 5 blocks until we reached the ship. 41,000 steps and 13 miles later we finally clambered aboard the ship and collapsed in the Atrium Bar for a couple of well earned drinks, before bed and another busy day tomorrow in "The Big Apple".

Day 2

           We had an easier day planned for today, which was probably a good thing a) because today we only had until 3.30pm to be back on board and b) the temperature was supposed to be even hotter than yesterday and a lot more sultry.

          So fueled up by an early breakfast we set off across the road and went right 2 blocks to 48th Street which took us right to our next stop The Rockerfeller Centre which takes up the whole block between 5th and 6th Avenues and 48th and 49th Streets, and is a shopping/leisure complex probably as big as the Middlebrook back home with shops facing both outwards onto the streets and inwards onto the plaza in the center. There were no Poundlands and KFC's here they were all worked renowned retailers and expensive restaurants with small office blocks above them, maybe 20 floors except for the one we had come to see. The Rockerfeller Tower more often called "The Rock". As you can imagine being one of the tallest buildings in New York, the queue to go up it were quite large, and it took us probably took us the best part of an hour of foot shuffling from one queue to the next before we got the the 2 elevators which held 10 people each and made the 69 floor ascent in less than 1 minute. The elevaters had glass roofs and the shafts where lit up with bue lights all the way up in intervals of maybe 5 floors, which was amazing to see as we where going up. Unfortunately I  didn't know about this so we were nearly at the top before I had chance to get my phone out to take any pictures. From the 69th floor we queued to climb the stairs to get on the lower roof viewing area and then again to get the the Highests point on the 71st floor to get some photos and have a look around. After 30 minutes or so we wend back down to the 68th floor and again joined the queue to get back down.

            From there we headed straight up 5th Avenue to 59th Street to get to our next and last destination for our trip to New York which was Central Park. The park is huge  being 2 miles wide and 6 miles long and covering the space of 50 blocks according to the guys who would pedal your carriage around it for an hour for the bargain price of $150. We had arrived at the bottom right hand corner of the park, and the main thing Perdita wanted to see was on the left hand side if the park about a third of the way up and was an area renamed "Strawberry Fields" to comemerate the death of John Lennon, who was shot outside his home, a building just outside the park around that area. Realistically we could have spent all day in Central Park but the ship waits for no man or woman, so we had to leave it at that and head West down 77th Street past the The American Museum of Natural History to Riverside Park, turn left and follow the Hudson River  back down to our ship.

              The thing that amazed me most about New York the most was the amount of green space it had and how highly the locals value it, there was hardly any litter and I dont remember ever seeing a single dog turd, its a shame the British don't value there green space as highly. For a counry with such a short history there is also lots of museums, non of which we have had time to visit,which means only one thing, we will have to come back!!!!!

Pongo and Perdita signing off.