We thought we would start with an easy day, especially as Joanna had a long journey yesterday.
There are lots of different tourist ticket schemes here, and we have New York Explorer Passes loaded with several chosen activities and first up, we stopped here at the Rockefeller Centre to exchange our voucher for a timed ticket to visit the Top of the Rock later in our stay.
We continued down 7th Avenue, passed all the huge billboards and hoardings to Times Square, which was pretty quiet this early.
It was also really a bit early to be tucking into New York Cheesecake, but we passed Juniors, one of the city’s oldest bakeries and picked up a couple of treats.
We continued to the shore of the Hudson River, to find the Circle Line boat which will take us for a cruise and give us our first taste of Manhattan from the water, and munched cheesecake while we waited for it to leave.
Chris went for brownie explosion and Joanna and I picked strawberry and blueberry. We were pleased we tried it, but the portions were very large, it was very sweet and quite solid and we probably won’t have any more! In fact it was so filling, we skipped lunch!
It was a shame the day was a bit grey as the photos have all turned out a little moody but the trip was great, helping us to get our bearings. As we set off down the Hudson River to to the tip of Manhattan, the Empire State Building was instantly recognisable and seemed to be in every shot.
Turning the other way we saw another Circle Cruise boat …
… and also Ellis Island which was the busiest US immigrant port and processed over 12 million immigrants from 1892 to 1954.
Next up, The Statue of Liberty came into view, standing with her torch in the air and has welcoming visitors to New York since 1886. She was created in Paris by a French sculptor called Bartholdi and is made of sheets of copper which were taken apart for shipping then reassembled over a framework made by Gustavo Eiffel.
And yes … we were all there!
Returning, we got a good view of Manhattan dominated by The One World Trade Centre which was built as a memorial to the Twin Towers and at 541 metres, the “Freedom Tower” is the tallest building in the Western hemisphere.
The bright orange Staten Island ferry setting out certainly brightened the photo!
We turned up East River to a parade of bridges. Brooklyn Bridge is one of the oldest suspension bridges in the United States, and connects the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn.
Next up is Manhattan Bridge …
… and the Williamsburg Bridge.
A shot of the Empire State incongruously caught between chimneys and then finally one with my favourite, The Chrysler Building which is another Art Deco landmark and held the record as tallest building for nearly a year before the Empire State Building was completed.
We turned and concentrated on the other bank as we passed DUMBO, which stands for ‘Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass’ with cobblestone streets and converted warehouses and we will be returning here on foot a day or so.
A pair of bridges – Manhattan and Brooklyn …
A final photo of the tip of Manhattan with Battery Park in the foreground and the Empire State peeking through behind.
Once back on dry land, we made our way to the Highline, an elevated urban greenway made from a disused freight railway which extends 1.45 miles above the district of Chelsea. An increase in trucking made it obsolete by 1980 but rather than being demolished, in 2009 it was reopened as a public space.
The first part circled Penn Station with the huge new Hudson Yards development above with a red structure in front. This is Vessel, created by Thomas Heatherwick, as a new kind of public landmark: engaging and interactive, meant to be climbed and explored. Comprised of 154 intricately interconnecting flights of stairs with 2,500 individual steps and 80 landings – ‘Vessel will lift the public up, offering a multitude of ways to engage with and experience New York, Hudson Yards’.
We admired the views and the art installations as we wandered along.
We stopped at Chelsea Market, housed in the old National Biscuit Company (aka Nabisco) factory and the legendary home of the Oreo cookie … today home to a huge collection of speciality shops and restaurants where you could probably buy any food your heart desired! We had a quick look round, but still weighed down by cheesecake, we didn’t linger.
With almost 8 miles walked, we headed back to the B&B for a rest and later found another local restaurant called The Edge for dinner. It was billed as cozy and rustic with a menu reflecting their British and Jamaican heritage, spiced up with a healthy dose of New York. It was exactly that with Joanna enjoying mussels, Chris a vegetarian pie and me delicious spicy lamb shank.
Off Travelling Together 