The breakfast this morning is
the best so far. Fresh OJ, scrambled
eggs done almost correctly, very relaxing atmosphere. Well done, Holiday Inn.
Headed thru the Holland
Tunnel to NYC, some of the bus riders are excited, since they used to live in
New Jersey and visited the city often.
We are in the midst of Monday
morning going- to –work traffic and it is slow.
Driver calls our attention to taxis and says he has seen Smart Car
taxis, Hmmm, could only pick up one
person!
We see billboards for
Broadway Shows—“Silence the Musical- an unauthorized parody of Silence of the
Lambs” caught my eye.
We pick up our guide of NYC,
Nadine, who has lived here all her life.
She handles people well and can be heard in a crowd. She told us a little about herself as we passed
her apartment building. She lives on the 5th floor of a 20 floor
building which has 300 apts in a 650
square ft. 2 bedroom apt. Her kitchen is
6 X 8, but it’s rarely used because she and her boyfriend eat out most of the time.
The city has 8 Million
people, 13,000 taxis, 9% unemployment rate, and a moderately low crime
rate. 90% of people in Manhattan live in
apartments.
As we drive around she
mentions where celebrities live—Denzel Washington $15 M apartment, Sting $30 M apartment. We are driving on the street that the Macy’s
parade uses and we go by Spielberg and also Michael Douglas/Catherine Z Jones’
apartments. We also drive by where John
Lennon was shot outside the Dakota.
We stop for a bathroom break
in Central Park (150 years old). It is
not the largest park in NYC, but it is the most famous. With 22 playgrounds, it
is 2 ½ miles long and ½ mile wide (843 acres).
There are 26,000 trees and 7 bodies of water. The park has it’s own police precinct.
We stopped by a lovely
fountain for a bit and then visited a French Garden, about the size of a large
back yard in Tx.
We left the park, headed to HARLEM.
I’m not sure what I expected,
but this wasn’t it. Too much t.v. I
guess. If I hadn’t known, I would have
thought it was just another part of any city.
There are statues of Black notables (Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglas,
Adam Clayton Powell, Duke Ellington etc).
It became a black neighborhood because at the
turn of the century developers were turning farmland into apartment complexes
for middle class families, but they were reluctant to move from their current
housing. The prices were lowered and
black lower economic families who previously hadn’t had good housing- moved in. During the ‘20’s, there was an abundance of
night clubs with black musicians, which only
served whites as customers. The
area was originally owned by the Dutch and the word Harlem is from the Dutch
language. Nadine said that the area has
been revitalized and is a multi-racial,
very diverse area now. This is where
Bill Clinton’s office is. Some
businesses of note are the Apollo Theatre, which still has big name
entertainment. Madame Alexander Dolls are manufactured here The Cotton Club was here.
UPPER EAST SIDE-
The Harlem Meer (Dutch for
little sea) isn’t in Harlem, but is a part of Central Park. The Meer covers 11 acres and is available for
“catch and release” fishing.
Some stores we saw were
Cartier Jewelry, Tiffany, Sacks, Juicy Couture, Versache, original Apple store with a huge line to get
in.
We stopped for lunch at
Rockafeller Center, we had an hour and that was ample time to visit the food
court, find a place to sit (the most difficult part) and then walk around a
bit. The center was built in the ‘30’s
as an office building with shops. There
is a statue of Prometheus by the area which in winter houses the skating rink,
in summer it is an outside café/ dining area.
As suggested by Nadine, we went to Hale and Hearty for
soup/sandwich. I wouldn’t like to work
there because of all the noise and the hurry, hurry, hurry. 2 medium sized cups of soup, with potato
chips and one lemonade cost just over $18.
Having finished that we went in search of Ben and Jerry’s and finished
the meal off right. We did some people
watching and noticed teenagers in graduation gowns—not sure if the ceremony was
there or nearby, but outside waiting for the bus, we met a graduate and her
parents.
TIMES SQUARE- It is named for the NY Times Building and is
7 blocks long and houses 40 theatres.
GARMENT CENTER- is where wholesale clothing is bought and
sold. Used to be the area where clothing
was made, but that is no longer the case.
Macy’s is the largest department store in the world, followed by
London’s Harrah’s.
We drove by the Pennsylvania
Hotel where Glen Miller took the phone number and made it into a famous swing
song “Pennsylvania 6-5000”
Drove thru GREENWICH VILLAGE,
where Nadine can get discounted tickets of all kinds and lots of freebies
SOHO I learned that this is a high fashion area
and it stands for South Of Houston Street—and they say How-ston, not Hugh-ston
as we do.
TRIBECCA is where Robert
DeNiro lives and he put on the film festival of the same name to gather funding
for businesses in the area after 9/11 when this part of NYC was closed down.
We visited the Episcopal St. Paul’s Chapel which is across the street
from where the Towers were. This building was
a refuge for the rescuers and those who were digging through the rubble. Here they could find a place nearby to eat,
to sleep, to have someone to talk to, to get medical attention.
The chapel now houses memorabilia that people
left near ground zero—letters, stuffed animals, and all sorts of mementos.
It also has a cemetery in back. When the towers fell, not a piece of glass
was broken, not a tombstone was cracked or overturned. The only damage was to a large tree which was
felled. It is a fascinating place of
remembrance of the ministry at Ground Zero.
This chapel is where George Washington worshiped when he was President
in NYC before Washington DC was built.
The chapel also escaped being burned in the Great fire of 1776, and President James Monroe’s funeral was held
in this chapel
 |
| Freedom Tower |
Altho’ we did not go to the
9/11 memorial (tickets must be secured a long time in advance) we did see the 4
towers that are being built and are in different stages as memorials to the two that went down. The Freedom Tower (#1) will be the tallest structure in the world.
Items of interest that we saw—trapeze school with folks practicing,
at the place where the Titantic was slated to dock.
Quirky stores/signs—Organic
Dry Cleaner (how do they do that?)
Potted Potter (Harry Potter stuff)
Costs—Dog walkers charge $20
per dog for an hour, Parking garage special ½ hour for $8.45, a month of parking in a garage- $600 Jackie Kennedy’s apartment where she raised her children near
Central Park originally cost her
( in the 60’s, remember) $120,000—on her death
the apt. sold for $7 million and recently sold again for $30 million.
Row houses and apartments are different. I think of row houses as brownstones – an
entire house on several levels but very narrow (front door on the street),
whereas apartments rarely have direct access to the street
As you can tell if you’ve
read this far, it was an information filled day and altho it is an interesting place to visit, I absolutely know that I don’t want
to live in NYC.
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