The Out of Towners

June 5, 2011
Day #24
Florida NY and New York City

George Washington Bridge

New York Thruway, Palisades Parkway and the Henry Hudson Parkway  along the Hudson River,  all the way to 56th Street, took a left an found a parking lot.  Jim handed the key over to a couple of guys with strange accents and I crossed my fingers that we would see our Jeep again.

There were easily 7 billion people in Times Square and vicinity on Sunday.  Most of them didn't speak English.  We saw a LOT of interesting characters...

Me and a few of the seven billion people

We walked to the Visitors Center on Times Square, bought a map (nothing is free here) and tried to make sense out of the Subway.  It was obvious that we were NOT in Washington DC anymore! 

We walked, and walked....the problem with NYC, like Washington DC, is because buildings are so big, they look much closer than they really are!  We finally made our way ($22 each)  to the Top of the Rock.  We couldn't take the NBC tour because it was all booked.  Breathtaking views of the city from all directions, very nice! 




Long way down


Lunch was  at Stage Deli, a touristy spot.  But that's what Jim wanted to do.  The sandwiches are about seven feet tall, I warned him, but he wanted a whole sandwich.  I ordered a half sandwich.  You should have seen his face when he saw this thing!  I had my 'I told your so' moment.  He ate the whole thing to prove a point...and I'm sure he was over stuffed. *One whole sandwich, one half sandwich, 1/3 cup potato salad, two small soft drinks - $44  (pickles were FREE!)

Jim's lunch (the cheese and sauce were extra)

We got on the subway and rode to the World Trade Center Site.  Hard to believe how huge this place is.  It's impossible not to re-live that day while there, very somber moments.  The new skyscraper, the Freedom Tower  is going to be beautiful, it's almost half done and should be complete by 2013.

World Trade Center construction site

Leaving that area we went to a small subway station,  only a few people were there.  Jim swiped his Metro Pass (good for a week $29) and passed through the gate.  I swiped mine...nothing, tried again...nothing.  He's on one side of the gate and I am on the other.  He's getting mad at ME because I can't get through the gate.  Soooooooo, one of the' nice young men' who were there, one on MY side of the gate and one on Jim's side of the gate, came over to help me.  He takes my pass, turns his back and swipes it on the thing on the wall that tells you how much time you have left on the pass, hands it back and tells me that it's a good pass.  However, I saw 'invalid' flash on the screen.  Before I could say anything, he walks me to the gate that his friend is holding open (and an alarm is going off) and they shut the gate.  We started walking away, toward the track an I told Jim that I saw 'invalid' when he swiped my pass.  He said that he was pretty sure that the guy had palmed the good pass and given me an old one.  We turned them over and saw that the date on one was expired...
Moral of the story:  Never, ever hand your pass to anyone, except a Metro employee, especially one wearing a HOODIE!

Later we rode the Staten Island Ferry over and back, past the Statue of Liberty.  We needed some sitting time and decided not to let one bad incident ruin all the fun of NYC.  We felt like two chumps from Podunk, we should have been smarter than that.  Half the problem was that the same thing happened in Washington DC, because Jim had put the cards in his pocket with his cell phone and de-magnetized them, the Washington DC subway people were right there to help us.  The other thing is that we have been living in Charleston, where everyone goes out of their way to help the tourists.    Live and Learn

Driving back (the men with the accents gave our Jeep back...with everything still in it) in  extremely heavy traffic (on Sunday?) on the Henry Hudson Parkway we almost made it to the George Washington Bridge, when Jim spotted a sign and veered off.  Bad move.  He WAS going in the right direction, but took the WRONG and now were were in worse traffic, going back to where we had already been and TOMTOM is telling us to take a right where there is NO road!  We ended up taking a tour of a few NYC neighborhoods...thankfully, they were pretty nice areas, if not we'd probably be dead by now.

I was very, very happy to get back to the little village of Florida NY, back to the campground, and back inside the RV.

And tomorrow we get to do it all over again!