Day 2.5 In New York 2012
Oct. 24th, 2021 12:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
waitingmanOur first day 'not' on the road for quite a while!!
Oct 13. Saturday – New York
Luxury! A sleep & lie-in until about 10am, then off to a local cafe for breakfast. Mac’s Landing not only do good breakfasts, but good espresso coffees as well. We’ll be going there a few times this week I’d imagine... they’re only two blocks away
Down to the ‘C’ train subway station & a rattling trip across into Manhattan, to Central Park & a little more fact-finding about open-top bus tours – we plan to do one on Monday & Tuesday. Then, into the Park itself. Then, straight back out of it for a bit of shopping first. A couple of blocks down from the Park we went broke fast at Tiffany’s, where Julia found the matching necklace for the bracelet she’s had for a while. It needed to be lengthened, so we’ll pick it up on Monday... after I arrange to sell one of my kidneys on the Black Market... Plans to visit Bloomingdales were postponed until Monday as well. I wonder how I’d go with only one lung too??
Time Warner's twin sky mirrors
Not far from Tiffany’s we found (L.M) F.A.O. Schwartz, another large toy store, but with a better & older reputation than Toys’R’Us. It’s also the home of the giant piano that you can dance on if you’re co-ordinated enough & know some tunes, or you can just run up & down randomly on it if you’re not. Julia did a bit of both...
G, A, C... some kind of jazzy passing chord, I think...
... then we found the Hello Kitty section & I began to calculate how many fingers & toes I can afford to sell & still be able to stand & play guitar effectively
Back to the Park... this time for sure. With cameras at the ready, we plunged in at the ‘bottom’ right corner to see what we could find. Plenty of touts for bike taxis & horse-drawn carriages were the first things we found, along with a few portrait & caricature artists plying their trade on the walkways. As we went further into the Park, there were fewer of them, apart from one guy advertising handwriting analysis, but he was packing up as we walked past. I was a little bit tempted... but only a little bit. After a while of wandering, we came to the Carousel & because it’s the USA & because it’s Central Park & because we’re on holiday, we had to have a ride... & a photo of us having a ride... & then buy the photo... Nice one of Julia, terrible one of me. Further on & in, we came to Bethesda terrace & its synonymous fountain at the end of ‘The Lake’
Here was another hive of activity – giant bubble makers, musicians, more portrait sketchers, a few food carts & a man in black who seemed to be doing some sort of cross between Tai Chi & Flamenco dancing (Taichenco? Flamenchi??). As we sat with others on the steps & watched, he became more animated than any Tai Chi practitioner I’ve seen, so we decided it must be Flamenco. No olives were squashed however & not a single “Ole” was heard... As we were taking photos of the fountain & lake, a troupe of hip-hop dancers arrived to shake things up a bit. They shook, we moved on
Past the Lake, we found the going a bit more serene, with the Fall season’s changing colours photogenically evident
We were aiming vaguely for Belvedere Castle &/or the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) & managed to find a path that went straight between both without going to either. Deciding to save MoMA for another time, we angled across to the Castle & its pond full of ducks & turtles. The afternoon light was perfect for Nature photography, but then we realised that the shadows were lengthening & were surprised to find it was nearly 5pm. At the same time we began to feel a bit footsore, having been on the go since about 11.30am. So we headed for the 5th Ave side of the Park, then walked down a few blocks to Lexington Ave & the ‘6’ subway which would take us down to Greenwich Village, where we planned to have dinner at the Tapas Bar we’d visited last night while waiting for our table at Momofuku. The menu had almost been tempting enough to change our plans then, so it was an easy decision for dinner tonight
Getting off at a different station to last night, we walked a few blocks back to the Bar, which looked to have only just opened, as we were the only customers & had our choice of tables. A couple of drinks were quick to arrive & our Tapas choices followed not long after. Cod chunks, chorizo & potato, potatoes in aioli, a selection of meat cuts & cheeses, bread & oil & calamari in its own ink were all eaten with gusto... then we tried to get up & leave. That’s when the food resettled & we had to remember how to walk properly. Eventually we waddled out & began the four block walk to the ‘C’ subway station. Fortunately, or unfortunately, this turned out to be an eight block walk, so we were feeling a bit less full by the time we boarded the train back to Brooklyn. Still very tired though... & the walk from the station back to our lodging seemed to be a lot longer than it had been last night
Oct 13. Saturday – New York
Luxury! A sleep & lie-in until about 10am, then off to a local cafe for breakfast. Mac’s Landing not only do good breakfasts, but good espresso coffees as well. We’ll be going there a few times this week I’d imagine... they’re only two blocks away
Down to the ‘C’ train subway station & a rattling trip across into Manhattan, to Central Park & a little more fact-finding about open-top bus tours – we plan to do one on Monday & Tuesday. Then, into the Park itself. Then, straight back out of it for a bit of shopping first. A couple of blocks down from the Park we went broke fast at Tiffany’s, where Julia found the matching necklace for the bracelet she’s had for a while. It needed to be lengthened, so we’ll pick it up on Monday... after I arrange to sell one of my kidneys on the Black Market... Plans to visit Bloomingdales were postponed until Monday as well. I wonder how I’d go with only one lung too??
Time Warner's twin sky mirrors
Not far from Tiffany’s we found (L.M) F.A.O. Schwartz, another large toy store, but with a better & older reputation than Toys’R’Us. It’s also the home of the giant piano that you can dance on if you’re co-ordinated enough & know some tunes, or you can just run up & down randomly on it if you’re not. Julia did a bit of both...
G, A, C... some kind of jazzy passing chord, I think...
... then we found the Hello Kitty section & I began to calculate how many fingers & toes I can afford to sell & still be able to stand & play guitar effectively
Back to the Park... this time for sure. With cameras at the ready, we plunged in at the ‘bottom’ right corner to see what we could find. Plenty of touts for bike taxis & horse-drawn carriages were the first things we found, along with a few portrait & caricature artists plying their trade on the walkways. As we went further into the Park, there were fewer of them, apart from one guy advertising handwriting analysis, but he was packing up as we walked past. I was a little bit tempted... but only a little bit. After a while of wandering, we came to the Carousel & because it’s the USA & because it’s Central Park & because we’re on holiday, we had to have a ride... & a photo of us having a ride... & then buy the photo... Nice one of Julia, terrible one of me. Further on & in, we came to Bethesda terrace & its synonymous fountain at the end of ‘The Lake’
Here was another hive of activity – giant bubble makers, musicians, more portrait sketchers, a few food carts & a man in black who seemed to be doing some sort of cross between Tai Chi & Flamenco dancing (Taichenco? Flamenchi??). As we sat with others on the steps & watched, he became more animated than any Tai Chi practitioner I’ve seen, so we decided it must be Flamenco. No olives were squashed however & not a single “Ole” was heard... As we were taking photos of the fountain & lake, a troupe of hip-hop dancers arrived to shake things up a bit. They shook, we moved on
Past the Lake, we found the going a bit more serene, with the Fall season’s changing colours photogenically evident
We were aiming vaguely for Belvedere Castle &/or the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) & managed to find a path that went straight between both without going to either. Deciding to save MoMA for another time, we angled across to the Castle & its pond full of ducks & turtles. The afternoon light was perfect for Nature photography, but then we realised that the shadows were lengthening & were surprised to find it was nearly 5pm. At the same time we began to feel a bit footsore, having been on the go since about 11.30am. So we headed for the 5th Ave side of the Park, then walked down a few blocks to Lexington Ave & the ‘6’ subway which would take us down to Greenwich Village, where we planned to have dinner at the Tapas Bar we’d visited last night while waiting for our table at Momofuku. The menu had almost been tempting enough to change our plans then, so it was an easy decision for dinner tonight
Getting off at a different station to last night, we walked a few blocks back to the Bar, which looked to have only just opened, as we were the only customers & had our choice of tables. A couple of drinks were quick to arrive & our Tapas choices followed not long after. Cod chunks, chorizo & potato, potatoes in aioli, a selection of meat cuts & cheeses, bread & oil & calamari in its own ink were all eaten with gusto... then we tried to get up & leave. That’s when the food resettled & we had to remember how to walk properly. Eventually we waddled out & began the four block walk to the ‘C’ subway station. Fortunately, or unfortunately, this turned out to be an eight block walk, so we were feeling a bit less full by the time we boarded the train back to Brooklyn. Still very tired though... & the walk from the station back to our lodging seemed to be a lot longer than it had been last night
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Date: 2021-10-24 01:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-10-25 01:29 pm (UTC)