We started off the day by taking the circle line ferry on the Hudson River from Manhattan to the Statue of Liberty, passing many landmarks along the way including the area where the passenger plane emergency landed on the river and all onboard survived (miracle on the Hudson) and also the area where the Twin Towers once stood. The cruise is a fantastic way to see New York and also New Jersey which is on the opposite side of the Hudson River. The guide was actually a very informative old bloke with a dry New York wit, which made the experience even better. Highly recommend the tour, if nothing else but to get up close to the Statue of Liberty without having to join the throngs of people on the actual island.
Us on the Hudson River, NYC in the background!
The building being constructed in the middle is One World Trade Centre (formerly Freedom Tower),
being built to replace the fallen Twin Towers.
being built to replace the fallen Twin Towers.
Lady Liberty
Once we hopped off the circle line we decided to hop on the subway, go down to World Trade Centre and then wind our way back up to midtown by foot, walking to different destinations on the way. Clearly looking confused and foreign, a young guy asked us if we needed help with where we were going. He was a nice guy, studying ballet at the nearby University and gave us tips on how the subway worked and places we should visit. He even went so far as to walk us off the subway, to the main strip in Chelsey. Then he turned around, wished us well on our trip and headed back to where he was originally going. We also had two other people give us some handy tips on the subway, one lady telling us to "make sure you drink plenty of water" and another guy (apparently off TV but we didn't recognise him) telling us to go to the Empire State Building at night rather than day as the crowds are ridiculous. I always got the impression that New Yorkers were stiff, unfriendly types of people that ignore each other let alone tourists but that's certainly not what we've experienced.
Anyway, despite the young guy's best intentions, we actually got off at the wrong spot (I think he was intent on introducing us to the Chelsea area which is the gay area of NY). So we hopped back on the subway and headed to the World Trade Centre.
Subway takes you right to World Trade Centre
Visiting the World Trade Centre area (ground zero) is a very humbling experience. It was already very difficult to fathom what happened there, but to see the construction area, hear people talk about their experiences of 9/11 at the tourist information centre and who and how many died - was a very sobering experience. Even on the cruise we were on in the morning, we couldn't help but see that NY looked like it was missing something without the two towers, so how hard it must be then for the locals.
But, construction of One World Trade Centre is powering along, they are at the half way point now and the building will become the tallest building in America. The designs for it, the memorial areas and the 7-8 other buildings being built around it are stunning. At the moment the buildings at the site are very grey and traditional. The tower and the other buildings will completely stand out from this and will make the NY skyline very modern and unique.
One World Trade Centre (formerly Freedom Tower) currently half built.
For more information about the rebuild and designs you can CLICK HERE. It's actually very interesting to see what they are doing. Terry and I have promised that we'll come back again to NY one day once World Trade Centre has been rebuilt.
From WTC we slowly started to wind our way back uptown, trying to stop off at some places we'd marked off on our to-do list. We have a pocket map of Manhattan to work off, but unfortunately it doesn't contain street numbers on it, so finding the exact location of some of the things we wanted proved to be very difficult - so we missed a few! But here's some of the ones we did find:
* Bouley restaurant - this one was a surprise for Tez. I'd read in a magazine that Cyndi Lauper's favourite restaurant in NY was a french restaurant called Bouley. This is him standing out the front! We we're hoping to be able to stop in for lunch, but it was closed. We also learnt later that it's very tres chic and we'd probably have buckley's of getting a table. We considered calling up and name dropping her name, but the results could be disastrous!
"I walked all daaaay, to get to you... is that alright? "
Next stop off was a NY fire brigade station. Why? Because it's the headquarters of the Ghostbusters!!
Who ya gonna call?
GHOSTBUSTERS!
From there we has some misses looking for other spots on our list - the original soup Nazi (from Seinfeld), the restaurant from Seinfeld where the gang usually hang out, the Daily Planet, some cool comic shops etc. BUT we won't be beaten and this morning we are going to google map everything to the exact location and make sure we tick these off our list.
After 7 hours of walking we headed back to our apartment to take 5 and get ready for the Alicia Keys concert! Heading down in the elevator, dressed up and raring to go, Tez realised from the tickets that the concert wasn't actually until THURSDAY night. Ooops! Lucky we checked before getting into a cab and heading for uptown to the Beacon Theatre!
Given that we now had a clear night ahead, we decided to have dinner at a French restaurant just up the road from us called Chez Josephine. From the website it looked very very quirky, a lot of fun and then menu sounded delish. We weren't disappointed - the owner, Jean-Claude Baker was a kooky French guy and was a great host, very happy to have two guys from Sydney, Australia dining at his restaurant, and the restaurant itself was a really kitsch French scene. Loved the piano and the live crooning.
The food was fantastic. I had a lobster bisque to start (divine) and Tez decided to have crab cakes, which were similarly as nice. Good to have tried crab cakes actually as it seems like one of those staple foods that Americans like and we'd never tried one. Then for mains I had a lobster cassoulet which had shrimp (prawns), lobster, scallops and a homemade seafood sausage. Was lush! And Terry had a fillet Mignon with pommes frits (french fries) which he was extremely happy with. Despite being as full as bulls, we couldn't go past the creme brulee (me) and the Josephine chocolate delight (Tez). Tres bloody bein indeed!
Just desserts ...
By that time we were both about to explode so decided to leave our French friends and go for a stroll. Both Terry's brother and the apparent celeb guy on the subway both gave us the same tip - if you're going to go up the Empire State Building, wait until about 11pm and then go up. It's bedlam during the day and you're going to line up for hours and be packed in like sardines. So we headed to the Empire State and sure enough, going up in the lift you can see room after room and level after level of cordoned off areas ready for people to line up. On a busy Saturday day you could expect to line up here for literally hours and hours!!
So we lined up for about 2 minutes and were warned that the view at that point wasn't the best due to cloud. In fact, lots of people in front of us bought tickets and then decided to come back another time (tickets valid for 14 days) because of the obstructed view. We decided to go ahead and go up because we knew we'd be busy tonight and on Thursday night. I was also not convinced that it was that cloudy. We're both really glad we went up - the cloud (I call it fog more than cloud) made the experience even more special and the photos we took (we think) look better for the fact that the fog's there.
View of the Empire State Building from the ground up.
View of Times Square from the Empire State Building
View of the top of the Empire State Building from the Observation Deck.
Tez takes on King Kong!
Today we head out as mentioned to tick a few more spots of our list. We'll also visit Central Park, try to find the Korilla food truck, visit Rockefeller Plaza, home of Liz Lemon and 30 Rock and perhaps take the tour and go up to the Rockefeller Observation Deck to see the NY skyline in the daytime.
Expecting more sore feet by the end of the day!
MB
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