Category: NYC

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 🙂