29 May 2023: New York City 1

We went to the local bagel place for breakfast - Zuckers. I got an everything bagel with salmon and cream cheese and red onions. Mark go a poppyseed with egg and cheese. Always choose the everything bagel - they need the flavour burst. Coffee was pretty good in comparison to the last few! This was going to work!

NYC has this great program for tourists - it’s called the ‘Big Apple Greeter’ and they match you up with a local who’ll spend a few hours with you showing you ‘their’ New York. You make a request via their website and put in the areas you want to visit and what you already have planned, and they try to work it out from there. I put in the Bronx and Queens because I figured they’d be areas we wouldn’t go to ourselves and that we’d like to experience. I also put ‘greeter’s choice’ as we’d left it a little late to book. Don’t do this. Choose your areas and stick to them. Don’t worry about Manhattan as it’s easy to navigate on your own. 

They found us a match pretty quickly - his name was Arnold and he sent us an email telling us when and where to meet him. We were meant to meet him at 10:00am and so we made our way to the subway he advised us of on 23rd street. We didn’t realise that there were more than one subway entrances on 23rd street though. We tried emailing and ringing and texting to no avail. I got a ‘no such number’ message when we called his number. We figured we were in the wrong subway station. Next thing, my phone rang, but no Arnold - just a pocket dial. A long one. When I hung up, it rang again - same pocket dial bit. I rang the number, it picked up but nothing… just background noise. Then, mine rang again and whoa, it was Arnold! He told us we were at the wrong station and that he said 23rd & 7th… I swear there was no 7th in the email (I checked, and there wasn’t). He was a bit miffed and sounded like he was very old. We raced off to find the right station, and Lo and behold, there was Arnold in his white cap with a red button just where he said he’d be (on the subway platform). Lovely guy and all, but I think he was about 100 years old. He’s been a greeter since he retired. He’s been a greeter for 36 years. 

Anyway, Arnold found, we jumped on a train. We were very grateful for the introduction to the subway. He also gave us a metro card to top up. Lots of things change in 36 years, and I’d suggest - don’t get a Metro card. They now have tap and go and if you use it 12 times, every other trip is free. We missed out on this due to topping up the card as Arnold suggested. Anyway…

We ended up at the Staten Island Ferry stop. Ever Vlogger said not to bother with the ferry as it was dirty, pushy and always too full. I’d agree with that. Don’t do it. We hustled on - the benefit of being with a very old man is that he just pushed his way to the front and so we just kind of awkwardly followed. He was pretty deaf, so if we lost him, he’d not hear us calling him. Anyway…

We shoved onto the ferry with everyone else and here was one of the benefits of Arnold - we ended up on the right side (the right hand side) towards the front, so we got a good view of the Statue of Liberty. With every man and his dog. The ferry got to Staten Island and everyone madly ran off the ferry. Arnold hustled us along too to get to the re-boarding section. This was why everyone was in such a hurry - if you miss the boat, it’s a half hour wait. So Arnold pushed his way to the front again, and we followed. This time, he got us to the very front of the boat. It was open, and freezing as the wind hurled straight in. The only view from here was straight onto Manhattan, which was nice, but not spectacular and I had Arnold in my ear telling me not to take photos yet and that he’d tell me when. Sigh. So I didn’t take photos until he told me when, where I had bout 10 seconds to line up the pic. Sigh. Anyway…

Off the ferry and into the financial district. Arnold knew the names of each building there. Some were interesting, others weren’t. Some of the buildings were really lovely though. We looked at quite a few buildings, all to do with shipping way back when. Then we went to the Native American Museum. It was in an old bank building - we know this because Arnold took us to see the old teller stations on the way out. This place would be fascinating to look around in. There was a lot of information amongst the displays, but Arnold raced us through and we weren’t able to stop and read much at all. He wanted us to see the clothing section. So we saw the clothing section. Really interesting though - I’d go back here if I came to NY again and would take my time going through it. We’ve seen plenty of museums with stolen artifacts, dinosaur bones and butterflies on pins - this one was more up our alley - where we could learn something special. Anyway…

On to an old park, Manhattan’s first park, that had it’s original fence (Bowling Green fence) from 1771. That’s definitely older than Arnold. We walked through the little park and came out behind the Wall Street bull. Arnold raced past, which was ok because we didn’t really want to line up for a photo anyway. But, it was a bronze bull, so I took a photo and you can clearly see the parts people rub the most. 

Then we saw the facade of a building that George Washington occupied for 6 months in 1790. Then we came to a church, I’m not sure which one and Arnold didn’t hear us when we asked a few times, but we walked past a fence where Alexander Hamilton’s headstone was on the other side. We couldn’t read it though. We walked past the Stock Exchange building and saw the little girl statue, but again, no time to stop and take a photo with the statue, just of the statue instead. Past another few buildings and then into one that had a large atrium (again, not sure what the building was about) and then out the other side to go and see the Federal Hall National Memorial (I know this because my photos are telling me that’s where we were). We saw old bank vaults and a stone that was the balcony that Washington stood on when he took the oath of presidency in 1789. 

Then we headed back to the little park to grab some lunch. Arnold wouldn’t let us buy him lunch, or even a drink, or bottle of water! Very generous of him but we felt like we’d like to give him at least something for his time. He asked us to make a donation to Big Apple Greeters instead. Seemed fair. There were food trucks everywhere (it was Memorial Day long weekend) and we went to a gyros (yiros) one and grabbed two skewers each. Yummy chicken and yummy lamb. We sat down and enjoyed them as we were starving!! We tried to make conversation with Arnold but he couldn’t hear us. Anyway…

Then we were off again - we saw the Oculus which according to Arnold, cost too much money to build. Really great architecture though. Then we were on our way to the 911 memorial. We had not planned to visit. It may sound weird, but we don’t visit places like that. I understand there is a respect thing happening, like at Arlington, or a history thing, like at Alcatraz, but we both find them all a little too ikky and morbid. We pay our respects, just not in the places like this. Anyway. We walked past the fire station that was across for the WTC and they had a lovely memorial plaque on the outside. Across the road was ground zero. The memorial that they have built is wonderful and extremely poignant. If you haven’t seen the design, you’ll find it here. I’m glad we went in the end. I cried. It was so sad. It’s a lovely way to ‘fill in the space’ and you get a real sense of what went missing. 

Arnold described the whole 911 event to us. Not from a personal perspective, or what it was like to be in NY during that time - but from a news report perspective. Anyway…

By this time it was 2:30pm and we had had enough. Interesting, but we also felt like the day was wasting away. We convinced Arnold that we were ready to call it quits. So then he took us back to the occulus to sit down for him to give us a lot of brochures. He said there was a place to sit in there, so he took us to the apple store and we sat at one of the Genius tables. We got a lot of brochures. Arnold told us which train to catch back to transfer at some other station to get a train to 23rd (& 7th) and pointed us in that direction. The only problem was that those trains weren’t running that day due to the Memorial Day holiday. So we got on a different train, got off where we were told to transfer, only to find that the train from there wasn’t running either. So we headed back onto the street to find that we were about two blocks from where we started. We gave up and called an Uber. 

We rested up for a bit as it had been a big day already and I had booked a cruise for that night. There are so many different cruises you can do to see the skyline from the water - and they are all expensive. I found this ‘North River Lobster Company’ and it was. $5 to board their boat and you just needed to buy a meal on board. A 2 hour sunset cruise out to the Statue of Liberty and back. Bargain! We jumped on board and ordered a cocktail straight up. The sun was out and it was fabulous sitting on the top deck in the sun. I felt very (wait for it)… New York! I should add, we walked to the pier via the Highline - an abandoned railway line turned into a park like pedestrian mall. It was a very pleasant stroll andI’d say the highline was a worthwhile thing to do. We also saw the Vessel at the end of the walk. Buggered if I’d be walking up all those stairs though. Admiration from the ground was enough - and so we headed for our boat. 

The boat took off and we ended up with a very cool old couple sitting on the table next to us. They turned out to be great fun to chat with. The couple on the other side of us were visiting from Barbados and were into the whole lobsters as soon as we left the dock. The old guy ordered the cocktail I had and said ‘easy on the ice’ to the waiter, and told me to always do the same. I took his advice. We ordered lobster rolls and a corncob. The rolls were good, nothing special but a good price and nice and fresh. The corncob was wonderful and I made an appropriate amount of mess. 

We sailed out to the Lady and got some excellent photos as the sun was setting. This was how we wanted to see the statue. We were right there, without people pushing and shoving. The skyline of Manhattan on the way out (in the sun) and the way back (in the dark) was mind blowing. It’s everything you see in the movies and we had a blast looking at it and taking a million photos. It got really, really cold up on the deck though so we went downstairs and inside to sit with the old couple again (who hightailed it into the warmth much earlier). We sat there chatting and they gave us a few recommendations for restaurants around the place. We exchanged numbers as the lady wanted to get me about unusual places. She texted names and addresses of the restaurants but not of anything else. we appreciated the recommendations though - but they were all a little out of the way. Turned out that they were Joan and Howard Oestreich and when they said they lived uptown, they may very well mean in one of those apartments overlooking Central Park.

After a completely long and exhausting first day in New York, we uber’ed it home to the Chelsea and jumped into the beautiful, big, plush, king size bed and slept like logs.

Check out the very large amount of photos here.