Author: lauramchugh

We’d purchased these tickets on the Grey Line for city tours on the open air bus and had to finish using them by today. They were really great as a way to see various parts of New York before setting out on your own on the subway or by cab, so I highly recommend them.

Today we did the uptown tour – through Chelsea, past Columbia University, all along the west side, and up into Harlem. Then we stopped and had dinner at the Stage Door Deli – a recommendation from my dad to make sure to have the pastrami and some cheesecake – and it was really good.

Then we hopped back on Grey Line for the night lights tour. This took us over the Manhattan Bridge, which afforded a really nice view of the Brooklyn Bridge lit up at night, then back at the Manhattan Skyline from Brooklyn.

We saw Ground Zero under construction:

and I got more nighttime architecture shots, and some graffiti:

The weather has cooled off quite a bit today so we were much less tuckered out, though we ended up spending 12 hours “on the road” today.

We ate lunch at a really bad diner somewhere down near Wall Street (I won’t even link to them it was so bad, but plenty busy at lunchtime for all the business people). We then headed over to the South Ferry area to catch the ride over to the Statue of Liberty. Along the way, we saw a sign for the NYPD Museum. We went in there and saw a touching exhibit of the NYPD involvement in 09/11 as well as their other historical artifacts and Claire got her mug shot taken.

From there we found the ferry and rode over to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Nice views looking back at Manhattan, though I still find it odd/unsettling not to see the World Trade Center there in the skyline.

Rather than going to a Broadway show, Claire wanted to see Bodies at the Fulton Market. I’d wanted to see this awhile back in San Jose, but missed it.

It did not disappoint. And it made you think long and hard about taking better care of yourself to avoid disease and joint degeneration. The part of the exhibit that had to do with babies was fascinating, and I can only complain that most of the specimens they used were male, except where trying to describe female organ related issues.

I also liked the veins and arteries pieces. They used a technique called reductive oxidation (?) to get the bodies stripped down to just veins and arteries and then used alizarin pigment to pump up the red color. The veins were delicate and beautiful.

Today we got up late, after being out at Times Square so late last night. We hustled over to the Fulton Market to see Bodies, then to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, and finished with the Uptown Tour through Harlem and then the City Lights Tour over to Brooklyn. It was a fun-filled day – all 12 hours of it. Feet hurt a bit…..

Times Square at night kinda speaks for itself. It is advertising on the most grand, and garish, scale. But it just mesmerizes you while you are there, in it.

This one is sobering – a running ticker of the mounting national debt….