Norton travels, USA and beyond: The Big Apple

We finished up last week’s Pennsylvania visit in the town of Strasburg. While there we took a ride through Amish farmland on the oldest short line railroad in the US, then ate in a restaurant in an old caboose. Before leaving the area I had to visit another quilt shop and make a couple small purchases.

Then it was off to the Big Apple. We stayed just across the Hudson River from Manhattan, with a view of the Statue of Liberty from the RV park. After we got set up we took the subway to the World Trade Center Memorial. The fountains that mark the footprint of the twin towers are surrounded by the names of the victims and first responders that died there. It’s very sobering to see so many names. The new buildings are still under construction around the memorial plaza. The next day we bought three day passes for the hop on/hop off tour busses so we could tour the city. It’s really the best way to see everything in the city, and gets you above all the traffic and craziness of New York Streets. The first day we did the lower Manhattan tour starting in Times Square that goes by Wall Street, the Empire State Building, Flatiron Building, Brooklyn Bridge, United Nations, Trump Towers, Park Avenue, Rockefeller Center, Radio City Music Hall, Chinatown, and more.

Day two we took the Staten Island Ferry to see the Statue of Liberty. Both the Statue and Ellis Island are closed because of damage to the docks from superstorm Sandy. So the ferry is the closest you can get to them right now. Then we took the bus back to Times Square, ate some NY pizza, and went to a Broadway show. We saw “Nice Work If You Can Get It” starring Matthew Broderick and Blythe Danner. It’s a musical comedy with many familiar songs written by the Gershwin brothers. The production, singing, dancing and everything about it was wonderful! Definitely one of the highlights of this whole trip for me.

Day three we took the tours of Brooklyn and upper Manhattan. Brooklyn has some beautiful neighborhoods of brownstone walk-ups. The upper Manhattan route took us past Central Park (beautiful), Grant’s Tomb, Lincoln Center, Columbia University, Harlem, the Apollo Theater, the museum district and lots of beautiful churches and homes. All our travel in the city was by train, bus, or walking, which we did plenty of. Walking around Manhattan is an experience in itself because you are constantly walking with masses of people moving at a frantic pace, and there are all these skyscrapers where ever you look. The car and taxi traffic is crazy, but we learned that you cross when no traffic is coming. The walk/don’t walk signs are apparently just a suggestion for tourists. The police were everywhere in large numbers, more than usual because of the Boston bombings which had people here on edge. We also heard plenty of sirens around town, but apparently it’s illegal to honk your horn, there was none of that useless noise.

NYC has a way of sucking one's wallet dry, so today we left for Mystic, Connecticut. The worst part of the drive was getting through New York where the I-95 goes across the George Washington Bridge ($37 toll with the trailer) and through the Bronx. After that the traffic lightened up and became a pretty drive. We were glad to hear that the police got the Boston bombers, especially since we’ll be headed there next week.