Hello from New York City (2) - Exploring Mid-Town Manhattan
Since our plane landed nice and early we had virtually a whole
day left to explore yesterday. The weather was pretty nice,
quite sunny when we started, although it clouded over a little
and was a little on the cool side, it never got much above 15
degrees Celsius.
Around noon time we hopped on the Q subway line, which is
literally 5 minutes from our bed and breakfast, and we made our
way into Manhattan. The subway actually emerges at the Manhattan
Bridge and we got a good look at the Brooklyn Bridge and the
south-eastern tip of Manhattan.
We decided to get off on Times Square, figuring that this would
be pretty good place to start exploring NYC. Times Square, with
all its neon advertising signs, and promotional displays is
something else. The sidewalks were totally full of people
strolling and tons of promoters were handing out flyers for
broadway shows, comedy shows and other entertainment events.
There is so much advertising in the Times Square area with
lights and displays blinking everywhere, that the individual
advertisements actually started to run into one another in my
mind, probably not the effect the advertisers tried to achieve.
Indeed, the hustle and bustle in this area is huge and can get a
little overwhelming.
We strolled around that area for a while, and walked by
Rockefeller Center, although we did not get to explore the whole
complex. Then we tracked down Grand Central Terminal and walked
through this grandiose historic train station which opened in
1913. There are over 100 commuter train platforms at Grand
central and they all run off a glorious central concourse.
The east side of Grand Central opens out almost straight onto
the Chrysler Building, and considering that I am a huge fan of
Art Deco skyscrapers, I had to go inside this 1929 masterpiece.
As a tourist you can only access the lobby, but the central area
with its ceiling mural and the authentic Art Deco elevators (and
their doors covered in wood marquetry) are definitely worth a
little detour.
Then we snaked our way up towards Central Park, mostly on
Lexington and Fifth Avenues. We walked by the (apparently just
closed) famous Plaza Hotel and into the south end of Central
Park, a masterpiece of landscape design and 850 acres of
much-needed recreational space by the famous landscape designer
Frederick Law Olmstead. We only explored the south end,
including the Dairy and Sheep Meadow and headed out onto Central
Park West with all its stately apartment buildings, including
the Dakota Building, in front of which John Lennon was shot in
1980. The Strawberry Fields hillside garden was dedicated to his
memory.
Everything is blooming here right now, and New York City is
definitely a few weeks ahead of Toronto in terms of the
horticultural cycle. Something was in the air, and I had to
sneeze about a hundred times, and by the end of the day we both
had to pick up some allergy medication since we were both
battling major hayfever symptoms.
Then a brief hop on the subway later, we popped up again in
Greenwich Village, a beautiful neighbourhood of brownstone
townhouses and took in the ambience. We ended up at a nice
little restaurant on 7th Avenue, called "Pennyfeathers" where we
had a beautiful dinner in an enclosed porch so we could take in
the street life.
A couple of subway rides later we came back to our temporary
home in Brooklyn where we dropped into bed exhausted from all
the walking, trying to catch up on a bit of rest for the next
day.