NYC Day 3, Part 2: NY Public Library and Grand Central

After the Brooklyn Bridge, we continued on our way through Chinatown toward the Tenement Museum. But first we had planned for ice cream. In one of the many NYC travel videos I had watched, someone had pointed out that there’s a “Little Tokyo” in Chinatown. And one of the shops sold Taiyaki.

Taiyaki is a Japanese sweet cake filled with red bean paste…and is shaped like a fish. It’s so cute! We didn’t end up going to that exact shop, because it was a little out of the way. But we found another one called Taiyaki NYC that also used them as ice cream cones.

I thought A might want chocolate ice cream, but he loves all things Japanese, so we both ended up getting the matcha and hojicha swirl (both are green teas). And it was so good! They each came with a rolled chocolate wafer and a stick of rainbow-colored mochi cubes that looked like gum drops.

Mural inside Taiyaki NYC.

Storefront and taiyaki ice cream. Yum!

Next, we were supposed to go to the Tenement Museum, which is housed in what was once an actual tenement building in the Lower East Side. But I’d completely forgotten that you couldn’t just walk around. It was tour based with timed entry.

By the time we arrived, most of the themed tours that I would’ve wanted to go on were sold out and the next random one wasn’t for an hour. So we abandoned the Tenement Museum. However, we did see a squashed rat in the road out front, which felt very authentic.

Right around that time, I got a message from my friend saying that she had an ear infection and wasn’t going to make dinner. It was only 1pm, so our whole afternoon suddenly opened up from there. Happily, I had brought the correct cable this time, so I had lots of juice in my phone.

What else did we want to see and do? A didn’t care and was more than happy to skip the museum. It’s funny, he doesn’t mind me dragging him all around, but he gets bored if we stay in one place for any length of time. Kind of sounds familiar.

I had very much wanted to see the flagship branch of the NY Public Library and Grand Central Terminal, and both were free. As I mentioned in my first post on New York, I love me some architecture. So I very much enjoyed the videos below on YouTube from Architectural Digest. There was even a fun one about the old vs new subway stations.

We hopped back on the subway and cruised up town. Before entering the library, we took a moment to relax at one of the outdoor tables in Bryant Park. It is nice how there are so many public spaces to rest tired legs in the city.

Architecturally, both the library and Grand Central are from the Golden Age of architecture, when very rich men spent a lot of money to make things look amazing. The library was funded over the years by people like John Jacob Astor and Andrew Carnegie, and Grand Central was paid for by Cornelius Vanderbilt.

Sadly, the Rose Reading Room was closed. But I was thrilled just to hang out in the 5^th Avenue entrance lobby, aka Astor Hall…and the stunning stone staircase at the end of the building by the bathrooms. The lines were much shorter than for the public bathroom outside.

Fifth Avenue entrance to NY Public Library.

Astor Hall.

The McGraw Rotunda.

The amazing staircase by the bathroom.

Once we had finished roaming the library, we sat on the terrace and soaked up some sun while A munched on snacks from my purse. Then for our final destination, we walked five minutes down the street and around the corner to Grand Central Terminal.

I loved a lot of things about Grand Central. I, of course, loved the gorgeous main concourse with the backward map of the constellations in gold and cerulean blue on the ceiling. I loved the four-sided brass clock above the information booth. I loved the Guastavino tiles in Whispering Gallery in front of the Oyster Bar. I loved the chandeliers with exposed bulbs to show off the fact that they had electricity in 1913.

I also loved the fact that Grand Central was one of the filming locations for the major battle at the end of the first Avengers movie. I loved that the tall Met Life building attached to it used to be the Pan Am building…and was CGI’d to be Stark Tower.

Front of Grand Central Terminal with the Met Life and Chrystler buildings in the background.

The main concourse and the Whispering Gallery.

The four-sided clock and the exposed-bulb chandeliers.

Side note: If you are also a fan of filming locations, I highly recommend the site On The Set of New York. It has links to the filming locations for over 1,000 films. I decided to make a list of all my favorite NY movies and and take note of ones that I’d like watch in the future. I made it through the Cs before giving up, but I got to rewatch a few favorites along the way, like City Slickers. I was also reminded how much I loathe Sleepless in Seattle…at least the half with Meg Ryan’s character, and I usually adore Meg Ryan.

But the final thing that I loved about Grand Central was that there were two trains that would take us all the way down to the Staten Island Ferry…and the playground at the corner of Battery Park.

Thus ended the 12-Year-Old-Boy’s Tour of New York City. We had a relaxing evening back in the hotel, then left late the next morning. Stopped at the Joe Biden Welcome Center again in Delaware. Picked up the dog at boarding. And made it safely home.

NYC Day 3, Part 1: 9/11 Memorial and Brooklyn Bridge

Day three was our last full day in New York. Since we no longer had a bus tour for transportation, I had tried to cluster all of our sights toward the south end of Manhattan near the ferry terminal. But we threw that plan out the window and just jumped on the subway.

Today’s highlights were supposed to be the 9/11 Memorial Fountains, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Tenement Museum, and then dinner in Little Italy with a friend that I used to work with in Florida in the late 1990s.

The first part went smoothly enough. We took the ferry over in the morning and then went a couple stops on the subway over to World Trade Center-Cortland Street station. A actually knew quite a bit about the events of that day, so I didn’t spend much time explaining things to him.

Instead, we just walked around quietly and respectfully and took in the space and the names carved along the edges. The fountains were built where the bases of both buildings used to be. And there were 2,983 names.

The memorial of the South Tower.

The memorial of the North Tower with the Oculus in the background.

There is also a museum with various prices for admission and tours. But the fountains are free. The pedestrian entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge is about half a mile away, so we walked through the Financial District afterward on our way to the bridge and stopped at a hot dog cart to grab a snack.

The Brooklyn Bridge is pretty awesome. I had watched a 45-minute episode of Modern Marvels on YouTube about it before our visit, and the history of it is truly amazing. It took 14 years to build and was completed in 1883. At the time, it was the first ever suspension bridge to use steel cables.

Colorful hot dog cart.

One of the craziest facts was that at least half a dozen workers died of the bends. That’s decompression sickness. They had put a pressurized bell at the bottom of the river so they could construct the support towers. But they didn’t know about decompression in the late 1800s, so they would ride a little elevator back up to the surface and fill their bodies with nitrogen bubbles. Not a fun way to go.

But it sure is pretty to look at! The bridge itself is 5,989 feet long, and there’s a special pedestrian level so that you can walk across the bridge above the cars. The first part of the bridge is super crowded, and there are tables set up for surprisingly cheap street vendors.

Pedestrian ramp to Brooklyn Bridge.

The arches were designed to look like the windows in a cathedral.

A was very excited to buy a Brooklyn hat for $5. And I picked up a fun framed print of Audrey Hepburn blowing a bubble with blue gum for $8. It was probably pirated off the internet and printed at home since the original piece seems to have been done by German artist Michael Moebius. I doubt he was getting any royalties.

But the police didn’t seem to mind, so I bought one…and then promptly dropped it on the ground about half an hour later and broke off a chunk of the plastic “glass”. It was mostly intact though, so I still put it up on the wall when we got home. The embodiment of a New York story.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of Day 3!

NYC Day 2: Big Bus Tour, Intrepid, and Central Park

As the title suggests, our next day in NYC was our first full day and had three things on the itinerary: the Big Bus Hop-On-Hop-Off Tour; the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum; and Central Park.

Since we were on vacation, I didn’t want to wake us up too early. But I also didn’t want to sleep the day away in a hotel room. So I set an alarm for 8am. We caught the 9:30 ferry, and were on our way to Times Square on the subway at 10am to trade in our vouchers for bus tickets.

Another great thing about the Staten Island Ferry, other than it being free, is that it sails right past the Statue of Liberty. So we didn’t pay extra to stop on Liberty Island and climb around. But we did get a great view of it twice a day.

On the way to Manhattan aboard the Staten Island Ferry.

The Statue of Liberty from the ferry.

As I mentioned previously, I love a double decker bus. And I think a tour is a great way to get your bearings in a new city. I had actually been to New York for a random weekend with a boyfriend back in the ‘90s. We flew from Florida around Christmastime and stayed at the Intercontinental Hotel for a couple days. But I didn’t really remember much of the layout, so the tour was perfect.

Visiting New York circa 1996.

We hopped on the bus near Times Square and spent a good hour just riding around and staring up at the buildings. If I had millions of dollars to spend, I would love to move to New York and go back to school just to study architecture. But I digress…

One thing I had remembered is that the buildings are so tall that the streets are quite shadowy unless the sun is directly overhead. It also happened to be about 45F and breezy, so any time we pulled into a patch of sunlight we would lean our faces toward the warmth like desperate spring flowers. I had been watching the weather closely and was so happy that it wasn’t scheduled to rain that I forgot to bring a hat and gloves. But we survived.

Boarding the bus at M&M World near Times Square. View of the Flatiron Building from a sunny spot on the top of the bus.

A wonderful variety of architectural styles.

There were 10 stops along the route, and the final stop was the only one where we actually left the bus: the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum. If you’re thinking all museums in New York are land based, think again. The Intrepid is a freaking aircraft carrier, 872-feet long, and moored at Pier 86 on the Hell’s Kitchen side of the Hudson River.

The USS Intrepid is “one of 24 Essex-class aircraft carriers built during World War II for the United States Navy. She is the fourth US Navy ship to bear the name. Commissioned in August 1943, Intrepid participated in several campaigns in the Pacific Theater of Operations, including the Battle of Leyte Gulf.” (Wikipedia)

She’s also home to a dozen display aircraft, a reproduction of a World War I biplane, a Concorde SST, a Lockheed A-12 supersonic reconnaissance plane, the Space Shuttle Enterprise, and a cruise missile submarine docked next door. We clambered all over the ship, sat in helicopters, marveled at the lack of view from the captain’s chair, and took many pictures of A commanding large naval artillery.

The Intrepid towering above the pier.

A photographing the planes on the flight deck.

Checking out the artillery.

Admiring the Enterprise.

The only thing that pissed me off was the long line to see the Enterprise…created for the sole purpose of photographing each individual or group walking through to hopefully sell them their photos at the end of the exhibit. So annoying! Why not have two lines? One of them for people that don’t give a crap about an overpriced fake photo in space, perhaps?

Right around this time I also realized that my phone was dying, and I’d brought the wrong cable for the portable charger. We were also starting to get tired. I had originally worried that we might not have enough to do, but these two things stretched to around 2:30pm, and we still had to see Central Park.

If you don’t know much about Central Park, know this…it’s MASSIVE. From top to bottom it is 51 blocks long (about 2.5 miles) and twice the size of Hyde Park in London. And there’s a ton of cool stuff to see in it! There were at least a dozen things that I wanted to look at…sculptures, fountains, gardens…but imagined the 12-year-old might be less motivated.

So I created our own personal scavenger hunt. There were 10 items on the list. If he checked them all off, I would buy him $50 worth of (small, portable) toys at FAO Schwarz. Happily, this worked, and he was very motivated.

Back at Times Square, we swapped buses from the Downtown route to the Uptown route. The day had warmed up, and as we gently rocked from stop light to stop light for a full 45 minutes on our way to 66^th street, he completely fell asleep. And honestly, I was beat too. The idea of walking all over Central Park suddenly sounded exhausting. So I did a quick calculation and decided that the things that I most wanted to see with him were in the southernmost section of the park.

So we skipped Belvedere Castle, the Alice in Wonderland statue, the cherry blossoms on Pilgrim Hill, Bethesda Terrace, the Bow Bridge, and the Women’s Rights Monument. But we did ride the Victorian carousel, pet the Balto statue, and climb a pile of Manhattan schist. And I did get to see some cherry blossoms.

The single thing that A wanted to do was play chess in the park, and I had even carried a set of chess pieces in my purse the entire day…only to find all the chess tables roped off and the area under construction. But it was still a lovely afternoon in the park. And I still gave him his reward.

View of the Manhattan skyline above The Pond in Central Park.

Never too old to ride a carousel.

The Dairy in Central Park, built in 1871.

Balto atop a pile of Manhattan schist.

Blossoms in the park.

With the last bar of battery, I plotted our route to FAO Schwartz, and we proceeded to walk 10 blocks to the toy store. Surprisingly, A actually had a hard time finding anything that he really wanted. Most of the stuff was geared toward a younger age group. But he finally found a LeBron James bobblehead and was content. He spent the remainder of the money on a Biggie Smalls t-shirt the next day.

Since the phone was now officially dead, I had no idea how to get back to the Staten Island Ferry terminal. I was so tired, I hadn’t even noticed the fact that FAO Schwartz was only a five-minute walk from where we’d gotten off the subway that morning to catch the bus tour. So we spent about 20 minutes wandering around below Rockefeller Center, trying to decipher the subway map, until I finally asked the attendant the best way to get back downtown.

But we made it there eventually. Boarded the ferry back over to Staten Island. Climbed into the car in the mall parking garage. And drove back to the hotel where we slept very, very well that night.

NYC Day 1: Staten Island

Our first day in NYC was pretty relaxed. We left DC around 10am after dropping the dog off for boarding. Then we drove for four hours, stopping at the Joe Biden Welcome Center, which is a large travel plaza in Delaware, about halfway through for lunch and bathroom breaks. Then we continued along the New Jersey Turnpike on to Staten Island. Conveniently, the same EZ Pass that we use for tolls in the DMV works all the way to New York.

The large travel plaza in Delaware.

Once we arrived, we checked into our hotel and then drove over to the north side of Staten Island to the Snug Harbor Cultural Center. A wasn’t particularly impressed and apparently thinks my love of “old rundown” buildings is weird…lol. Snug Harbor was originally a retirement home for sailors in the mid-1800s and is now a large park with other historic buildings and a botanical garden.

The Snug Harbor Cultural Center.

Walking the paths right before the cherries bloomed.

I was hoping to be able to see the Chinese Scholar’s Garden, which is based on the gardens in Suzhou. The bamboo path is supposed to be particularly lovely. I’d read that the garden closed at 5pm, but those turned out to be their summer hours, and they had already closed by the time we arrived. So we wandered around for a little while then decamped for dinner.

Several travel videos on YouTube recommended Denino’s Pizzeria & Tavern as one of the best places to get authentic New York-style pizza. The Denino family emigrated to New York from Italy in the late 1800s and opened a tavern in the 1930s. In the 1960s it was a popular local family restaurant and has been in the same location for almost 100 years.

I do have to confess that I’m not really a fan of thin-crust pizza, so I thought it was good but not amazing. They only sell one size of pizza…a whole “pie”. And you get paper plates with metal utensils. But the service was very friendly, and the food was fairly quick.

Exterior of Denino’s with cool old-fashioned FDNY fire alarm.

Our half clam, half pepperoni and mushroom pie.

Trying to be adventurous, I ordered half clam for me and half pepperoni and mushroom for my kiddo. But even though I love seafood, I don’t really like clams. So I’d kind of set myself up for failure. It tasted like tuna. But A’s half was nice.

After that we returned to the hotel and just relaxed for the rest of the evening. The next day was going to be much more exciting!

Spring Break in New York City!

…aka The 12-Year-Old Boy’s Tour of NYC, aka The Budget Tour of NYC. I’ve been wanting to take A to New York for years but have never sat down and figured out the logistics.

Transportation: Should we drive or fly? Take the train or bus? It’s only four hours by car, so once you arrive at the airport early to check in and wait for your bags on the other end, it’s about the same time commitment, and obviously cheaper. But driving in Manhattan is a nightmare. The train is more expensive than I thought it would be, if you want any kind of flexibility. And I’ve never been a huge fan of buses in the US.

Accommodation: I wasn’t in a hurry to repeat the issues we had with non-traditional accommodation in Boston last year. So I wanted to stick to a regular hotel. But hotels in Manhattan are super tiny and expensive. I had trouble finding anything with two beds at a reasonable price. Even mixed dorm beds in a hostel started at around $75/night per bed. Like every major city, things do get larger and more affordable the farther out you go.

In the end, I decided to drive. I liked the idea of being able to come and go when we pleased. I then booked us into a perfectly respectable Fairfield Inn and Suites on Staten Island with two queen beds and complimentary breakfast and parking for a very reasonable $160/night. While researching the area around the hotel, I discovered that it was right next to a massive 2,200-acre park…that was once the largest landfill in America. Welcome to Staten Island…lol!!

Continuing the budget theme, the iconic Staten Island Ferry is also free and runs 24 hours a day. The hotel was about 25 minutes from the ferry terminal. I’d read that the parking garage often fills up and there are long lines to get out. But I am an investigating fiend, so I also discovered that a new outlet mall opened up in 2019 and their parking garage was a five-minute walk from the terminal. So we successfully parked there every day for $15-25/day, depending on how long we were gone, and never had to wait in line.

The Staten Island Ferry…obviously. 🙂

Getting around in NYC was fairly easy, if you don’t mind lots of walking. The first day, I booked us on a Big Bus Hop-On-Hop-Off tour thinking that it would cover a lot of ground and let us see the city, which it did. Plus, I love a double decker bus. It even had a stop right next to the Staten Island Ferry terminal. Un/fortunately, I got us a nice, discounted rate on the bus tour through the Sightseeing Flex Pass. So instead of hopping on the bus at the ferry, we first had to schlep all the way to Times Square to exchange our vouchers for tickets.

The rest of the time, we used the subway, which was much cleaner than I thought it would be. I enjoyed the historic mosaic tiles in the older stations as well as the art installations in the newer ones. Everyone that we ran into was super friendly. When my phone died around 3pm the first day, because I brought the wrong cable for my fancy new portable charger, we probably asked half a dozen people for directions, and they were all genuinely helpful.

Cool art in the subway.

And paying for the subway was very convenient. They had a new contactless payment system called OMNY that you can download onto your phone…or you can just tap your credit card. So easy!! A single ride was $2.75 from point A to point B anywhere on the map. So you could go from Harlem to Brighton Beach for less than $3, and they capped your weekly fees at $33 if you use the same payment method. A and I were just a few rides away from riding free for the rest of the week.

Our last logistical item was food! You can easily spend hundreds of dollars eating out in fancy restaurants in the city. But since we were on the 12-Year-Old-Boy’s plan, we dined on hot dogs from street vendors and New York style pizza by the slice. I also brought lots of snacks for the hotel room and munching throughout the day. Our most expensive meals were a whole pizza “pie” at Denino’s for $24 and burgers and fries at the Intrepid Museum café for $28.

A whole pizza “pie” at Denino’s in Staten Island. Half pepperoni and mushroom, half clams.

So now that we’ve covered the logistics, stay tuned for the next post to read about our actual adventure!