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Thursday 1 February 2018

Better Late Than Never: New York City



August 14th to 21st, 2017

We made Port Washington is located on the North Shore of Long Island and we used it for our base for visiting New York City.  The anchorage is huge, the train service to NYC was great and we were back in the company of Tourterelle and Aura.

 

A panorama as we arrived motored into Port Washington, which seems to be the name for the area as well as the hamlet; Aura and Tourterelle.

We made two trips into NYC with a day off in between to recover.  We were pounding the streets  Our plan was to just wander around.

The first day we went in with our sailing friends Simon, Kim, Ian and Ann.



My first view of the NY Subway; Kim and Ann; Simon in the sunglasses across from a very nonchalant looking Tim and sadly only Ian's toe peeking out from behind the pole.



First view of New York Streets; Car parking as we had never seen before; The 9/11 Memorial.


The panorama is distorted but it does give you a feel for its size and how impressive the Memorial is.  
A little hungry by this time, we started walking (and walking and walking) through Manhattan trying to locate a Chinese restaurant that Simon and Kim had visited previously.


Sometimes the only way to appreciate the size of the buildings was to fill the frame with them; Despite maps, phones and iPad it took us a long time to find our lunch stop - a the wonderfully quirky dim sum restaurant, which I don't have photos of as we were the only non-Chinese diners there and taking photos would not have been appropriated; I loved the way the New Yorkers had kept or allowed trees to grow out of sidewalks and on roof tops; The colour co-ordinated fire escapes were beautiful and decorated the streets of Chinatown. 

After lunch we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan to Brooklyn.

Brooklyn waaaay in the distance; Manhattan should be farther away by now and mind the cycle path!; it's hot and we're not there yet.

   
A panorama looking back across the bridge to Manhattan.  It was a long hot crowded walk and we were very footsore by the time we got to Brooklyn.


Firmly on the Brooklyn side.  Tim and I visited Central Park on our own two days later.  Central Park really is a wonderful wilderness surrounded by skyscrapers.  There were wonderfully cool promenades lined with artists and food stand all in the shade of towering trees.  It contrasted wonderfully with the hustle and bustle of Time Square.

We also visited the The High Line, which is a garden walkway built on the old overland railway.  It was absolutely marvellous.
 

Our first impression didn't prepare us for the variety of the gardens, art work  and vistas we found.

We didn't walk the entire length of the garden but were very satisfied by all we'd seen.

I particularly enjoyed seeing the little girl patting the oh so understated water feature - a thin layer of water flowed to just under the seat where her mother sits and then disappeared down the crack in the pavement.  There was just enough water for a little splashing without ending up soaked.

The High Line is well worth a visit.



Next in our Better Late Than Never series is our trip from Port Washington up the East River to the Statue of Liberty.


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