A familiar site
Trip Start
Sep 18, 2011
1
14
25
Trip End
Oct 31, 2011
New York, New York
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Fortunately for us this is our second visit to NYC so we took a walk to Madison Square Gardens & Penn Station while the rest of the group go up the Empire State Building. The few familiar faces we know on the bus were very disappointed by the experience as of course all they could see from the observation deck was misty rain.
Next we visited Wall St where the New York Stock Exchange is located. The Charging Bull statue is fenced off now which is different from last year. We got a photo together since we never stopped there last year.
We continued to the wharf for the rest of the group to catch a ferry ride to get a closer look at the Statue of Liberty. Instead of getting on the ferry Don & I walked to Battery Park where I bought Don a pretzel to make up for taking the first bite out of his pretzel when he wasn’t looking last year.
The new tower at the World Trade Centre site is due for completion in 2012 and is called the Freedom Tower.
It was a lovely walk through the park and along the river bank.
Once the rest of our group returned we headed to the USS Intrepid Aircraft Carrier which is now a museum. It was very interesting to see how everything worked. The flight deck had many different planes and helicopters including an F-14 as seen in the movie Top Gun.
In the hangar deck we were able to sit in a medical helicopter, Don also had a sit in a jet cockpit.
There was a 4D rollercoaster ride inside which we went on & quite enjoyed the adventure ride. We were the only ones on the ride and squealed and screamed and laughed our way through it all.
Before heading back to the bus we decided to buy a Snickers from the vending machine The machine spat our money out and in several times until finally accepting our crinkly 1 dollar notes. We made our selection for a Snickers and two bars dropped down – awesome 2 for the price of 1. Don noticed we still had credit so hastily tried the code again and we got a third Snickers. All for the price of $1.50 – We were pretty pleased with the result.
Following on from the Intrepid we headed up town to the MET –Metropolitan Museums of Art. This is the largest Museum in America. You would need several days if not weeks to look at everything properly. We hastily scampered through the Egyptian, American, British, French and Roman artefacts. There were whole rooms with every sort of detail authentic and perfectly restored. There were also many sculptures and a complete temple from Egypt.
Once we were able to find our way to the exit we decided to go outside in case we got lost back in the museum and risk missing the bus.
With the 20 minutes we had to spare we walked to Central Park for a quick photo before getting back on the bus and heading to the Rockefeller Center.
The summer cafe area is beginning to be transformed into the winter ice skating rink which is a wonderful contrast from the last time we visited. Next we went to Times Square and we were again amazed by all the dazzling lights & bill board displays and the crowds of people gathered to see them.
Back on the bus we headed to our hotel in New Jersey which will be only an hours drive from Philadelphia in the morning.
Comments
I would love to go to the Natural History Museum in NY one day...