Barb and Baden’s Excellent New York City Adventure – Part 2
There's something about the big city that really appeals to me. Paris, London, Berlin, Madrid and New York, I love them all. All of them have their own particular feel and getting to know each one is an interesting process of discovery that Barb and I have done many times and each one brings it's own types of rewards.
Red Eye
We flew into New York City on a "red-eye" flight directly from Vancouver. Flying overnight has it's advantages – the biggest is that your make efficient use of time and you arrive in your destination early the next morning and the number of days that you are travelling are maximized. The big downside of course is that we almost always never get much sleep on the plane and we arrive at our destination pretty much still falling asleep.
However, the thing that usually helps counter all of this tiredness is the adrenalin of being is a new place. Similar to the wow factor, I call it the wow, we're here factor. Getting out and exploring a new city is what it's all about. There'll be plenty of time to catch up on sleep later on.
Our hotel in New York City is the New Yorker Hotel which is an art-deco style building that has been around since the 1930's but fully renovated (at least once). Our room is small but we've gotten used to that over many of the years but the main thing is that we're centrally located in mid-town Manhattan close to everything.
Within two blocks from our hotel is the Empire State Building, Madison Square Garden, and Macy's big department store. The biggest feature that we always look for in any big city is to be close to a subway station as we regularly use that mode of transit to get around and NYC has an extensive subway system that allows us to quickly get around anywhere in the city.
The weather was sunny and warm the whole day on Saturday and in the low 20's so it was perfect weather for walking around to explore a new city. The weather forecast for the rest of the week looked like a mix of sun and some rain so we're making the most of the good weather to get out and see things. We've already planned to be inside places like Macy's and stores along 5th Avenue when the weather starts to change. From what Barb has told me, a lot of time on this trip will be spent inside stores regardless of the weather.
Parks in the City
We spent most of our day today walking around Central Park. Walking around in the parks inside of cities is something that we have done in almost every place we have been to. Whether it's the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris, La Villa Borghese in Rome or the Tiergarten in Berlin, walking through these parks (especially on a weekend day) when local people are out is one of the best ways to connect with a real part of a city's culture.
Central Park is so big that it's impossible to see even a large part of it in one day. Barb and I spent about 3 hours walking though it and when we looked on the map later on we may have walked through less than a quarter of the park. The park has many lakes where kids are sailing boats or people in row-boats but everyone just seems to be enjoying the good weather. A variety of different musicians or performers are seen as you walk through the park that draw one's interest as you stop and rest to just soak up the atmosphere.
Buying a small lunch from a store and spending a few hours in a city park is one of the best ways that we can recommend that you get to know a city. There'll be plenty of time for department stores later on but today it was all about Central Park.
We ended our first day in NYC going to Times Square and walking around. It was Saturday night and there seemed to be millions of people out tonight. While Times Square is somewhat touristy, it's a must-see place to go for no other reason that it's quite a spectacle to see all of the light displays that are around you in 360 degrees.
Just off of Times Square we found a restaurant called Tony's di Napoli that we stopped for dinner. They serve food in a "family style" which meant that one dish was going to server about 2-3 people so we only ended up ordering a single (very tasty) dish of spinach and lobster ravioli. In general we have found that portion sizes for meals in the states to be considerably larger than what we would normally see at restaurants, well, pretty much everywhere else in the world. It's something that we always thing about when we're eating out as the last thing that we want to get is a huge platter of food when we're just looking to get something small.
I'm writing most of this in our room on Sunday morning. we'll be up an about in a few hours and as of yet don't have specific plans for what we will be doing today. Over breakfast we'll know more and I'll check back in a few days.
Baden

2 Comments
gerri
Hey Baden, what a lovely shot. Is that the Plaza Hotel? Looks like you guys had a fab time. G xx
Baden
Gerri,
If you mean the shot from the bridge with the two towers in the background then yes, that’s the Plaza Hotel.
Baden