After visiting the Sea and Air Museum aboard the USS Intrepid, Collette and I walked next door to the dock that housed the Circle Tour company. When planning this trip to New York, we created a list of things that we wanted to do; we knew that we would not be able to do them all in 4 days but the goal was to "check off" as many as we could; we already had crossed Central Park and Times Square off the list.
The Circle Tour, a boat cruise around the island of Manhattan was something that I've always wanted to do. I thought that it would be the best way to really appreciate the scope of the city and to easily view some of the landmarks that had made our list.
The boat left from mid town, on the Hudson River, then sail down into New York Bay to see Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, up the East River, across the Harlem River and back down the Hudson, passing under 27 bridges. Along the way we'd see many of the famous NYC landmarks, including the Empire State Building, which we planned to visit later in the day
It was a beautiful day for any time of the year, let alone March. We floated down the Hudson with Manhattan on one side and Jersey on the other. No, we did not see James Gandolfini in Jersey searching for his career but on the New York side we passed the Chelsea piers, a multi million dollar recreational complex which included a multi story golf driving range surrounded by a massive fence to catch the balls; they didn't want then to sail into the river and be mutate into off Broadway bit players
On the Manhattan side they had golfing, on the Jersey side they had a giant clock or as it turns out, giant product placement
As we moved down the Hudson into the bay we passed Ellis Island where millions of people immigrated into the United States. The whole island is now a museum but we were content to watch the beautiful Gothic architecture glide by
Just south of Ellis Island we found some Jersey Shore girl, fresh from a toga party, holding up a can of Bud Light and wearing a tiara .. .no wait, let me clean Collette's lens. Oh ... it's the Statue of Liberty
After the lady, the boat turned as it began to make its way into the East River and were able to see the very tip of the island of Manhattan with all its skyscrapers including the Freedom Tower, still under construction
The East River is much more narrow than the Hudson. There were sections where it seemed you could swim from Manhattan over to Brooklyn ... of course you'd have grown a third eye by the time you got to the other side and how would you explain that to the goombah's. Better to drive across or even walk across, on one of the many bridges. First one we passed under was the Brooklyn Bridge. I understand it's for sale.
The next bridge, as we went up the East River, is the Manhattan Bridge, which connects Brooklyn to Manhattan ... those old New Yorkers, they made beautiful bridges but they were not so imaginative with the naming. Probably a good thing, makes it easier to find your way home when you're drunk
On our way to the 59th Street Bridge, on the Brooklyn side, we passed this beautiful Victorian building now abandoned that once upon a time had been some kind of insane asylum
The 59th Street Bridge is a beautiful steel frame bride with Roosevelt Island sprawling beneath it. You can take a tram, suspended under the bridge by a cable, over to this island. This tram was featured in the 1981 Sylvester Stallone movie
Night Hawks; but it first appeared in an old Spiderman comic. So there
A lot more bridges as we passed by Harlem, some of them incredibly low as you'll see in the video. We moved into the Harlem River, with The Bronx on the other side. This river seems quite narrow compared to the other two, which brought us Blue Jays fans far too close to the citadel of the enemy ...
As we turned back to join the Hudson River once more, the unusually clear March day allowed us to look far down the river, away from the city, into the Hudson River valley. With the high wooded palisides on the Manhattan side it was easy to think you were in the middle of nowhere ...
... until you turned around
We returned to the pier at 42nd Street but our day was not over. We had another checkmark to make on our list: The Empire State Building. This is something we both wanted to see, we felt that you can't visit NYC without going up to the observation deck on the Empire. For Collette this would be a challenge. Most people are, to some degree, afraid of heights, this is called common sense. Collette has a true fear of heights, that manifests itself in physical responses. But with the possibility of great shots looming, she was able to conquer that fear. Inside the lobby we were presented with some gorgeous art deco examples of the building's history
One of the interesting things about the tower is that once you go up to the observation level on the 86th floor there is no time limit for how long you can stay. The deck is open until around one am. We had no intention of staying that light but we went up just before sunset with the intent of getting some shots in the daylight, then later as the sun went down.
I had had an impression from movies that the observation deck was very broad and deep and in one movie I seem to recall the characters sitting at a table .. don't believe what you see in movies. The deck, which goes all the way around the tower, is fairly shallow and it was pretty crowded while we there. It's cold too, even though the day was warm. The wind was definitely ruffling Kong's fur
To say the view is spectacular is an understatement. It was interesting to have a different viewpoint of some of the same landmarks we had just seen on our river tour. You could see the island narrowing down to a point, a river on each side
As the sun went down the view became even more spectacular ...
... and as we all know, night time in New York City is bound to bring out some strange characters ...
Here's the video. A small note about the music: I couldn't do videos about New York City without including some George Gershwin
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