Robot Claw

That’s breakfast. What am I doing? You’ll find out in a future blog post. What I’m eating is a single egg and bacon on toast. It was as dry as a desiccant pack, and delicious!

We had a late start today and after breakfast revisited several shops to buy the stuff we should have bought yesterday. We brought three travel suitcases but we’re heading home with enough stuff to fill five! It’s mostly food, books and model kits, some of which will be blogged eventually.

Kristin had avocado on a bagel. In one word, she said it ‘slayed’. She gave the crumbs to a tiny bird so plump it looked spherical. As you may infer it’s still not too cold to be outside in the city, although the opposite is true back home. Everyone comments on her hair by the way, which is only slightly brighter than real life in the above processed pic. I helped dye the back!

Some of you will recognize the above mascot, although his ramen brand is far, far too spicy for a plain chicken ramen aficionado such as myself. They were at Bryant park handing out hot sauce packets for people braver than me (including KLS, who got one).

Aren’t those stickers cool? If you look back at my July NYC trip post you’ll see I saw others then. Whoever is putting these up on random street poles: I salute you. Also is that Jane Wiedlin in the first pic?

The hotel staff recognize us now, perhaps not surprisingly since we’ve been staying there for many years. They have renovated half the rooms and when we next stay they’ll have finished all of them. Maybe we’ll stay in an even fancier one next time?

We went on a cruise today, all around Manhattan Island. I didn’t even know this was possible until a few weeks ago, so I was looking forward to it quite a lot.

The cruise began on the west side at Pier 83, and took 2.5 hours to circumnavigate the island in a counterclockwise direction. There was a little mist at the start but this burned off and the weather was pleasant and sunny, and our views were good.

After rounding the bottom of Manhattan we cruised up right alongside ‘The Statue’ for a good look and photo op. There were other cruise ships scattered around as well: this is surely the big draw as far as NYC Harbour cruises go. This was the closest I’d ever been to The Statue and it was very impressive.

We cruised under many bridges – maybe a dozen – some of which were only about a foot above the top of the boat. We also went through a rail swingbridge, which carries the track that the train to and from Albany travels.

The tour including a guide who was a font of facts and figures and as a NYC resident for 40 years obviously knew the city inside out. He spoke about the city then, now and tomorrow and the great changes it had undergone since Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and of course the pandemic. Even today some of the iconic skyscrapers in the city (such as the Chrysler building) stand mostly empty with uncertain futures.

Perhaps the most interesting thing I learned was that NYC has a rail bridge that was the inspiration for a famous bridge elsewhere in the world. Here’s a photo (from wiki) of the ‘Hell Gate Bridge’, can you guess which other bridge virtually copied it:

After the cruise we had planned to go and see some of the Saint Columbus Day parade but food and shopping got in the way 🙂

We’re back in NYC for another birthday trip. It’s warm and sunny and unusually nice for mid October (back home it’s much colder).

The city is as lively as ever, possibly because there’s a major parade tomorrow (which we didn’t consider when we booked this trip). We just got back from Times Square and it was bonkers busy.

Today we walked over 10 miles hitting most of ‘our’ usual shops and just soaking in the city vibe. One church we passed was blessing animals today and we saw the minister blessing this police horse. There was also a child waiting in line with a little hamster in a cage. It was very cute 🙂

Those are paintings for sale in the markets near Union Square. They were all massive – about as tall as me, and the choice of subjects was… unusual. We not really sure if that is Jesus in the bottom left. What do you think? And which would you buy?

The hotel costs an arm and a leg but we always love staying here and to our surprise they put us in a newly renovated room with a wonderful view. They even gifted us a bottle of champagne and a balloon for the birthday girl!

We saw police setting up barricades on 5th Avenue for what we assumed was tomorrow’s parade, but then to our surprise a different parade started! It was the Hispanic Day Parade and we watched groups of people from various Hispanic countries dancing in national dress. It was quite spectacular and tomorrow’s Columbus Day Parade now has quite a bar to reach. Will we be able to watch it tomorrow? I hope so, but we have another activity beforehand which may get in the way. Check back tomorrow to see what happens…

Stickers are the new graffiti, and they cover every postbox and lamp post and whatever the thing in the above pic is. They also seem to change every time I’m here. Do they get removed? Do they just fall off due to weather? And who’s applying them and when?

Almost every street corner in Manhattan has one or more food trucks or carts. Down near Times Square the proliferation of these is incredible: I counted nine in total at one intersection. I buy drinks from them sometimes, but in all the years have never bought any food aside from the sugared nuts.

I sent loads of postcards this trip, since I had been ‘saving up’ Postcrossing cards. I think over 40 went into mailboxes during the past three days. I also bought over 100, many of which cost only $0.10 each!

The above statue had a matching friend on the other side. It’s a clever illusion, but I thought the pallet he was standing on was best since it’s also painted metal (I think).

Times Square is full of people – usually middle aged Hispanic women – dressed as Disney/Marvel/Minions characters who will pose for photos with you for a price. Yesterday on the subway I saw a lady in a Pac Man ghost outfit, with the head off, no doubt heading to work 🙂

I had fun these few days in the city. I already look forward to the next visit at Kristin’s birthday.

New York has five ‘observation platforms’ and in the last two years I’d visited four of them. It was time for the last one.

I took the subway downtown which – despite my many visits to the city – was a new experience. It was full of tourists, and many of them disembarked at the same stop I did.

The above photo was taken overlooking the memorial for the south tower of the old World Trade Center. You can see the names of the departed, one of which had a white rose placed in it. Water eternally falls down into a pit that was once the basement of the tower. It’s a moving memorial, and it was impossible not to think back to the events of that day almost 23 years ago.

Overlooking the memorial is a very tall tower – One World Trade Center – and today its peak was lost in the clouds. I had a reservation for the observatory on the 102nd floor!

They told me the visibility was ‘zero’ and I could come back another day within the week. Since I didn’t have that option I chose to go up anyway. There was no one else in line and I had the elevator and the introductory movie all to myself, and once I reached the 102nd floor the above was all that could be seen out the windows.

And yes, visibility was essentially nonexistent. At times the clouds temporarily blew away under the observatory level and you could see directly down, but distance vision was completely obscured. It’s worth noting also that the view was worse than the above pic, which was taken with the camera at ground level right up against the glass.

There was only about half a dozen visitors up there; fools like myself who enjoyed wasting their money! Obviously I can’t compare One World Observatory to the other four since I didn’t actually see anything. Maybe I’ll go back one day since now I’m even more curious.

Afterwards I took the subway uptown for a bit more shopping and exploring. Right next to the Flatiron building I found this:

It’s a ‘portal’ to Ireland. See those people on the screen? They’re looking at a similar device in Dublin where they saw us watching them. It’s in real-time, and a lovely way to connect people on (somewhat) opposite sides of the globe. Wouldn’t it be fun to arrange with a friend to see each other through such a portal?

After lunch the day was still young and although I still had some shopping to do I returned to another place I like to visit: the United Nations.

Once again I visited the UN stamp shop and sent some postcards. Actually I sent quite a few, including some postcrossing ones. Watch your mailboxes for exotically-stamped cards and be sure to tell me how wonderful I am when they arrive 😉

I did some more shopping, went and had a gander at Times Square, and ate some more delicious things. It was been another long, hot and humid day, and I know I’ll sleep well tonight!